SPRING FLING
Falling in love with Jesus is not just a fling. It’s time to grow in Christ!
March 22nd, 2023
a PACKET of SEED
1 Corinthians 3:6-9, ‘I planted the seed; Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, Who makes things grow. The one who plants and the one who waters have one purpose, and they each will be rewarded according to their labor. For we are co-workers in God’s service; we are God’s field, God’s building.’ (NIV)
Everyday when we go out into the world, we have opportunities to increase the harvest God is cultivating. In other words, you and I carry seed in us to be planted along the way. Prayerfully, our efforts to ‘plant seeds’ will produce crops of Christ-followers, who will love Jesus, and in turn, desire to share His love with others, so they too can know Him, then grow and also share Him with others.
In fact, our work is so important, that Jesus cannot return to bring us to Himself and take us Home to Heaven with Him, until all our seeds are planted, until we have attempted to give away to others what we have been given, until all the people we each individually know has heard about God’s great love for mankind.
This world is so conflicted; it is broken and messy. There are multiple times a week anymore, when I whisper to myself or a loved one, that I just wish Jesus would come again and take us out of here. There are days when I have a hard time breathing, when I am struggling to keep hopeful, when I remind myself: He is victorious and He has already overcome the world, which means Christ-followers have overcome already also. I am reminded, if Jesus were to come right now, this minute, because I am crying out for an easy and quick escape from the pain and tragedy of this life, that means some of my loved ones and many I work with and some in my neighborhood, and even several family members might not be found beside me in heaven on the day I arrive there. Someone I love may suffer eternal damnation because I haven’t done my due diligence to introduce them to the greatest love of all time, because I failed to tell them that God so loved them, He gave, because I forgot to live Jesus before them causing them to want what I have; because He looked so good on me, they wanted to wear Him too.
Even as I write this and think about it, I have a collection of faces flash across my mind, who might end up in hell because I chose not to take my packet of seed and plant inside of them this great grace God put in me. I got in a hurry; I got lazy; I got scared and wished Jesus would return; I was too proud to be loud, too hypocritical to be silent. I thought only of my own safety net as I crashed through the splinters of life in search of eternity. I’m so glad He reminded me today that there is work to do; there is a time fast approaching, and the harvest is vast, but the harvesters are few. He is showing me the seeds I must sow in others. How the seeds planted in me can catch the momentum and scatter into others’ lives. How to nourish and cultivate those seeds in myself, and then in others, so they grow and flourish and scatter yet again. And again. And again.
Happy planting! Happy picking!
Isaiah 55:10-11, ‘”As the snow and rain that fall from heaven do not return until they have accomplished their purpose, soaking the earth and causing it to sprout with new life, providing seed to sow and bread to eat, so also will be the Word that I speak; it does not return to Me unfulfilled. My Word performs My purpose and fulfills the mission I sent it to accomplish.”’ (TPT)
