You Reap what You Sow

At the Shepherd’s Conference last week, i picked up a book at the last second entitled Not Yet Married, by Marshall Segal. I’ve only read the first half at this point (the book divided as follows: The Not-Yet-Married Life & When the Not-Yet-Married Meet) but what i’ve read so far has been extremely helpful, and i would highly recommend clicking the link above and grabbing a copy from Amazon.

A quote from the book as i read today solidified my desire to write this short post:

Singleness is a horrible and popular excuse for persisting in sin. In our pursuit of marriage, we often permit ourselves to fall into holding patterns in our growth and maturity. We’re so focused on finding love that we get distracted from killing sin. But we are always being either conformed to the world around us or transformed into something entirely new and different (Rom. 12:1-2). (pg. 85, emphasis added.)

And a quote from Robert Louis Stevenson on my calendar today helps to put some legs on this passage from Segal’s book.

Paul wrote similarly in Galatians 6:7-9. “Don’t be deceived: God is not mocked. For whatever a man sows he will also reap,  because the one who sows to his flesh will reap corruption from the flesh, but the one who sows to the Spirit will reap eternal life from the Spirit.  So we must not get tired of doing good, for we will reap at the proper time if we don’t give up.”

I wrote extensively on this passage just over a year ago. One of the key takeaways was that money is not the primary application of the passage (although in my post i attempted to redeem the money application of sowing and reaping).

It is hard work to bear with each other. It is hard to sacrificially give our resources away. It is often very hard to resist the desires of the flesh. However, we must rest in the Spirit and let Him manifest Himself in our lives. The truth is there: we will reap if we don’t give up sowing. This earthly life is the opportunity to sow. Sowing to the Spirit—the sowing we must not give up—is done through bearing with one another, fellowshipping with one another, not hoarding resources from one another, and by resisting the desires of the flesh. We also sow by doing the exact opposite, but that will result in corruption and we must give that up right now.

Every time we are tempted to sin we have an opportunity to either sow to the flesh or to the Spirit. If we give in to temptation we are sowing to the flesh, allowing the weed of sin to grow in our hearts. If we resist the temptation by relying on the Spirit, then we are sowing to the Spirit.

This is where Stevenson’s quote comes in. At the end of the day, did you plant more seeds for righteousness or more seeds for sin?

Soli Deo Gloria