“Our desires reap ruin, His desires reap righteousness. Are you weeping or reaping?”
Good morning RU Nation! Recently, as is my custom after every holiday of Thanksgiving and Christmas self-indulgence, I started the process of watching what I was eating. As a part of my new focus, I found God wants me to starve my appetite for my favorite food (for at least the foreseeable future.) In other words, God has granted me no liberty to enjoy greasy, McDonald’s french fries!
While this remains one of my favorite foods and it is still one of my strongest daily desires to eat those greasy pieces of potato, I must stay away from them. You see, I have a desire, given to me by God, to regain my preferred weight. God’s desire is that I maintain a healthy, proper weight; but my desire is to eat french fries.
I can do one of two things: I can eat french fries and sow seed to my fleshly desires creating a larger appetite and reaping ruin on my physical weight; or I can sow seeds to His spiritual desire for my maintenance of a more healthy weight. When I yield to my desire for french fries, I am going to reap ruin on my health, but when I yield to His desires, it is simple and blessed obedience and righteousness.
This brought me to think also of my past. When I was saved, I was miraculously born again. God placed within me desires for righteousness. Desire is the old English word for the modern English word appetite. I had an appetite for righteousness! But as I grew older, I now realize I hadn’t been feeding that appetite. Instead, I was yielding or feeding the appetite of fleshly and youthful lusts. When I started get right with God in 1993, I began slowly feeding myself that which He prescribed as His desires.
Having yielded to my desires for over ten years, I often found myself homeless or having an apartment without furniture. My desires brought me ruin! But then, as I began going to church and yielding to God’s desires for my life, I started to reap in righteousness. I was able to get a good paying job in a machine shop. Shortly after that, I was promoted multiple times by God until I was slotted in an executive position making a six-figure income! I was reaping from my cooperation with His righteousness!
God talks about this in the Bible in Galatians 6:7-8. “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit, shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.” The Apostle Paul is giving us several admonitions. First, he is telling us not to fall into the self-deception of thinking that we can live an unrighteous lifestyle and get away with it. There is His guarantee that if we live unrighteously, we will suffer for it. Most of us have learned this lesson, but there is a deeper lesson here I would like to share with you.
How do we mock God? We mock means to imitate. We imitate Him when we try to do His work for Him, albeit in our power. The word reap means to receive in return. So, when we do God’s work in our own power; that is in the flesh, we will receive in return corruption or decay. We will suffer a spiritual death when we try to do God’s work in the flesh. Therefore, Paul is warning us against both unrighteousness and self-righteousness.
We know when we do God’s work in the Spirit, it reaps life everlasting. No, I’m not talking about salvation alone; I’m also talking about enjoying the benefits of our sanctification – that’s the abundant life!
So, my friends, if your reaping is leaving you weeping, ask yourselves why? Develop a walk that is deepening and you will start keeping what the Spirit is heaping!
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