Is Your Harvest
Positively Plentiful or Woefully Deplete?
In this season of harvest you can find a plethora of colorful flowers and produce yielding wonderful additions to your home and table. What was planted months ago and faithfully tended to has come forth in richness of color and the fullness of God’s design. What a blessed season to partake visually and physically of the bounty of harvest.
I could not help but think what is the harvest of your heart? Make no mistake; what you plant in your heart will produce a harvest. It is a personal choice with each decision you make. Each thought and each action sows a seed in the recesses of your heart. Each seed when nurtured will come forth in time as a fruit in your life.
Are You Reaping What You Have Sown?
What are some examples of seeds and harvest? Seeds can be actions or thoughts of kindness, compassion, positive words spoken to name a few. On the converse, seeds can include words, thoughts or actions based in bitterness, mean spirited intention or resentment.
If the seeds you sow are positive, your harvest will yield rich relationships, good health of spirit and peace in your heart. If you choose to sow negatively into your life your relationships will suffer, your spiritual health will erode and you will lack the peace that surpasses all understanding.
Does Forgiveness Seem Impossible?
Is it possible to redirect a lifetime of toxic thinking and reacting to go forward with a heart at peace? It certainly is possible but not in your own human strength. Human nature is not naturally directed toward the positive. The way of the world is to repay in kind. The way of the Kingdom is to forgive and move forward unencumbered by past wrongs, whether perceived or actual, that may have been done to you.
Inability to forgive lies at the root of many heart issues.
Life on earth is a continual challenge to forgive. As God forgave you so you are to forgive others despite what you may ‘feel.’ Till the soil of your heart with forgiveness. Check your heart with every situation that arises.
Jesus says there will be trials in this life as it is lived in the world. The key is what you do with these trials. How do you choose to walk through a trial? Such tests can be perpetrated by a family member, someone you encounter in your life at work or church or in the marketplace, a physical or financial challenge or whatever poses a challenge in your life. If you truly follow the Lord you are no longer to react in a worldly way. He has chosen you to be His. Your choice is to follow Him with your whole heart despite what is going on around you.
What Are You Planting?
If you yield to the Holy Spirit’s prompting you will learn to plant righteous seeds that will reflect the Lord’s righteousness in the harvest of your life. You will walk in forgiveness. You will live a life set apart from the world. You will be in the world but not of the world. You will be a part of His holy nation, His royal priesthood on earth as it is in heaven.
This week take some time to reflect on the seeds you plant with every thought, word and action in your life. Look at the harvest you are currently living based on seeds previously planted. What does your harvest look like now? What would you like to see produced in the future? You are the sower. Cultivate the soil of your heart with forgiveness. Check your seeds!
Quotes to Ponder This Week
“Then Peter came to Him and said, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him up to seven times?” Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven…So My heavenly Father also will do to you if each of you, from his heart, does not forgive his brother his trespasses.” ~Jesus, Matthew 18:21-22, 35
“These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” ~Jesus, John 16:33
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law. And those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.” ~Galatians 5:22-26
“Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap.” ~Galatians 6:7
“And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.” ~Romans 12:2
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.” ~2Corinthians 5:17
“Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering; bearing with one another, if anyone has a complaint against another; even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do.” ~Colossians 3:12-13
“Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say, rejoice! Let your gentleness be known to all men. The Lord is at hand. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” ~Philippians 4:4-7
“But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; who once were not a people but are now the people of God, who had not obtained mercy but now have obtained mercy.” ~1Peter 2:9-10
A Prayer Request
Thank you for your continued faithfulness to pray. Please keep all who serve our country, our diplomatic corps, our servicemen and women and their families in prayer for salvation and safety. They are our front-line on the battlefield, let us be their front-line in the spirit. Also, let us cover all who have come home wounded that they and their families will receive the kindness, help and support they need to go forward in their lives. May the Lord bless them and keep them safe.
Pray for all throughout the world for hedges of protection against radical Muslim extremists and all forms of terrorism. We have long prayed for spiritual victory over radical Islam in Esther’s Warriors Ministry. We now see the reality of this threat come to the forefront in this time in world history.
Please pray for all in authority over us, for the full truth to come forth concerning Benghazi. We as Americans and the families of those murdered in Benghazi deserve to be told the truth. Pray that God will open doors to let the truth on all that has been hidden flow for all of us in this United States of America! The truth shall keep us free.
Pray for peace in Israel. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem. Pray for Iraqi Christians and all throughout the world that face violence and death for their faith.
May God richly bless the United States of America, bring to light every single crooked place and keep her safe. May we arise united once again as One Nation Under God in this auspicious season in our country’s history. We continue to pray for truth to prevail as we saturate this country in prayer and stand for all that is right in America and for all of us who call ourselves American. These are treacherous times and now more than ever we must maintain our walk. Fail not in this hour. #Pray for America.
Please Join Me in Prayer
Father God, We thank You that You have placed us here in this season. Teach us to plant Kingdom seeds in our hearts to produce a harvest worthy of Your Kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. Remove anything not of You from the recesses of each of our hearts. Lead us in Your ways of righteousness. Use us to lead others to You. Raise us up in fullness as a holy nation, a royal priesthood ‘for such a time as this.’ We thank You that You keep Your hand on this United States of America and that we will remain One Nation Under God. We pray this in Jesus’ mighty name. Amen and Amen.