You Reap What You Sow...

 

You may remember that I posted earlier about my daughter running over a deer.  I gave her a hard time about her little incident.  Yes, I ran over a deer myself last week.  I didn't have the damage she did because, luckily, only the legs were in my lane.  But as I heard the sound as my tires bumped over the legs, I remembered joking with my daughter.  This brings me to the familiar phrase, "you reap what you sow."  I remember as a little girl sitting in Sunday School class.  My friend and I had just noticed that a sweet, elderly lady teaching our class had a noticeable mustache over her lip.  Of course, we did what little girls do.  We would glance at her lip, look at each other, and giggle.  This cycle went on for several minutes.  Later that week, my friend pulled me aside at the church and with horror pointed at a hair growing over her lip.  We were convinced that she had reaped the mustache because she laughed at our Sunday school teacher.  Did I run over the deer or my friend grow facial hair because of laughter?  No.  But our actions do have natural consequences.  If I eat donuts three times a day (which I would totally do if I could), I'm going to weigh a ton.  If I keep plucking my eyebrows, I'm going to end up with fake eyebrows.  If I say horrible things to people, I'm going to destroy relationships with words I cannot take back.  These are natural consequences that will eventually happen.  However, with God, there is a difference.  The phrase, "You reap what you sow" comes from the Bible.  Galatians 6:7,8 Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. NIV  If we sin, we will reap a bad relationship with God because He wants us to listen to Him through His Word and obey.  The natural consequence is we have created a wall between God and us just like we create emotional walls between family members when we fight and say hurtful things. But this is where it is different.  Even though we should reap a separation from God permanently, He gave us something better than we deserve- His cross.  Have you ever seen one of those inspiring military movies where someone was struggling to get over the climbing wall at boot camp.  Then you see a fellow cadet straddle the wall and grab the hand of the struggling person and pull them up to where they are.  They both end up over the wall together.  That is exactly what Jesus did.  He straddled the wall we build between us and God by our sin.  He reached down to us in our mistakes and pulled us up to where He is.  We should reap destruction, but through Christ, we reap eternal life. Now this scripture takes it further.  Once we are saved, we need to sow to please God.  If you know that your mistakes are deadly, why keep doing them.  It's like sitting in a pile of red ants, standing up and shaking them off, only to sit back down in them again!  Who is stupid enough to do that?!!  But if we keep repeating what God has already forgiven us for and told us to quit doing, we are sitting in a proverbial pile of sin ants.  Paul had the answer to our overcoming all of this in Hebrews 12:1 "let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles." NIV  We need to throw off that sin like we are shaking off ants and get away from that ant hill as fast as our legs can carry us.  It makes me really thankful that I can reap something I don't deserve every single day- God's love!

Have a great week high-heeled warriors!