What Are You Sowing for Your Future?

Well, happy sabbath, everybody! Hope you had a good week. See, like the weeks are going fast as we plow ahead toward the Feast of Tabernacles. This past week, I've been working to try to bring together the Feast in Hawaii, which sometimes is a little more difficult because of the fact that Hawaii is one of those areas when people come to the Feast. You know, it's not like if you go down to Southern California for the Feast, because you have people going there every single year.

In Hawaii, everybody's new. And so sometimes you don't know who can do what in terms of service within the Church, and it just can be very difficult to pull it all together. But somehow it always comes together. You know, it's like God's hand is there, and it always comes together. We're getting there. It's close. But one more loose end I've got to tie up, and then I can sort of button it up.

It would have to be, you know, a case of Ra. It's a Ra, you know. What will be will be. If you follow the stock market, you probably know that the last couple of days, Thursday, Friday, the stock market fell over a thousand points. Now, some are calling it a course correction, by the way. It may very well be in terms of, you know, just a matter of an adjustment in the market. And it may go again to continue to go back up afterwards. But some are actually saying it could be much, much worse. But, you know, think about the fact that usually it happens in October when these things happen.

When you go away to the feast, you shocking things begin to happen. I remember one time we were in Spokane, and the stock market took a nosedive before we went into a reception, a big recession. And, of course, China is the wild card here with everything that is really causing a lot of consternation around the world, not just in this country, but around the world.

Markets are disrupted around the world, so it could be an interesting situation. But, you know, you look at the stock market, and what is the reason for what is happening with markets? You know, why do we have the bubbles that we have, like we did with real estate, when the bubble popped, and then everybody lost all their money with real estate?

Well, it is because of debt. And the country is in debt. $16 trillion in debt, and it's growing. The government also is spending too much money. You know, somehow they don't understand about a budget. Now, you've got to know about budgets in your own life, but the government doesn't seem to know about budgets, you know. And so they've been overspending for far too long.

And not only that, but since, of course, 2008, we've been propping up, you know, all of the money markets. No, the government has been pumping billions of dollars into the economy. So, you know, you don't really have to be a genius or a rocket science engineer to figure out the country is going to have economic problems. And so it's interesting that outcomes are usually predictable based on what has been done before something happens. And, of course, the depression came because of many of these precise same reasons.

And the only thing that brought America and, frankly, the rest of the world out of the depression, rather, was World War II. And so, again, outcomes are predictable. So if, in fact, this thing knows dives even further, you can predict there's going to be a major conflict ahead of us. And I don't know whether or not the match that's being looked, that's going to light that fuse to get it going, will be a Korean situation. I don't know if you know, but there have been fire exchanged at the DMZ zone, you know, over in Korea. And the United States was conducting maneuvers with the South Koreans. They broke it off. They pulled out of it.

And now they are trying to negotiate some sort of a settlement there. But it may start there. It could start somewhere else. We just have to see a lot of these things. Of course, you have to watch and keep your eyes open. But outcomes, ultimately, you know, can be based on what has been done before it actually happens. You know, someone who figures this out in life, by the way, is often considered a genius ahead of their time. It seems like a very simple thing, doesn't it? Very simple formula that outcomes can be predicted based on what happened before, what people did before, what took place before.

You know, this concept, by the way, is true in science. It's based on that premise, in fact, so that something can be predicted with sometimes incredible accuracy. You know, imagine this. They can actually predict an incoming asteroid. They can predict where a comet is going to be. You know, with incredible accuracy, because, again, of that principle, outcomes are predictable based on, again, what has been done before. And so true science is based upon that principle. It's true not only of science in that regard. It's true of economics. It's true of astronomy. It's true of agronomy and agriculture. It's true of biochemistry. And most all fields of study are that way.

Your outcomes are predictable. You know, and you know what, brethren? The reason I'm bringing this up to you is because it's true about life. Your life. My life. It's true about life. Well, Jesus Christ knew human nature. And He knew that outcomes, you know, come about because of the way people are. They're called nature. And, you know, this is what, of course, He was able to analyze. I think, certainly, too, Christ was able to read minds. That was one major difference with Christ. You know, He had a big edge on other people.

But He knew human nature, too, the way human nature is. Here, the fact of the matter is, brethren, people tend to make the same mistakes every time. And the results do not change. You know, of course, they say that's a definition of insanity, isn't it? Doing something, you know, the same way every time and expecting different results. Well, I mean, look at the economy of the United States. How many times have we been through this? You know, it goes up and then it comes down. It goes up and then it comes down.

The more a long public system was a country, a nation of the United States of America. People make the same mistakes all over again. And the results, again, don't change. And this is where the world is generation after generation. And what generation does is it replicates what the previous generation, their parents, did. They follow the same patterns and they get the same results. Well, brethren, are you tired of basically living on that proverbial treadmill that the mouse is running on that's going around and around and around, you're not making a re-headway, you're not changing things?

You know, the Bible provides us a way out of this cycle. Getting off the treadmill, getting off the circular treadmill, so that Christians don't make the same mistakes over and over again. If you want to change the future, what you're going to have to do, all of us are going to have to do for that matter, brethren, is lay a different foundation now. If you want to change the future. Let's go over here to Romans 8. You know, the way of man, basically, is he's been going the wrong way, contrary to God's way of life, as we understand it.

Adam and Eve chose them already. They chose the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and rejected the tree of life, in favor of that. But Romans 8, over here, in verse 5, let's notice this. Here Paul says, For those who live according to the flesh, and that is the whole world, set their minds on the things of the flesh. The physical, a construments of life is what their focus is.

And we live in a world, again, that is that way, isn't it? I walk around our neighborhood, and you've got, you know, one person's got a BMW, and walk on around the other way, and somebody else got something else, you know, and they're playing, keeping up with the Joneses or the Smiths. It's a rat race that people get themselves into. But if we think about just the things of the flesh, and most people do, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit.

The Spirit here, of course, is the Spirit of God, symbolized by the tree of life that Adam and Eve did not take of. For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. You can have tranquility in your life, you can have peace of mind when other people simply do not. So, brethren, our path, if we understand again what Paul is saying here, our path to the way that leads to eternal life, that leads to peace of mind, and leads to those great things that we want to have in our lives, must be laid in the spiritual realm.

They have to be laid in the spiritual realm. And you cannot achieve eternal life, you cannot achieve the Kingdom of God and all the things that hopefully we really do desire, deeply within us, any other way. It has to be in the spiritual realm. But you have done the pitch test. You're physical, right? You're not spiritual. But when we are baptized, we have the Spirit of God with us, and it is in us as well.

It's with us in the form of all those that surround us. And it's in us by, of course, the laying on our hands. Let's go to Galatians. Galatians, Chapter 6, over here. Like I say, if you want a better future, you want to change the cycle. You have to lay those foundations in the spiritual realm that are going to produce that. Again, it's not really humorous, it's common sense. And oftentimes, humorous is, you know, when people actually seize what the truth of something is, usually they say, why didn't I think of that before?

You ever notice that about yourself? When you finally figure something out, you say, boy, I must be really stupid. Why didn't I see that before? Well, I think many people are going to say that for the future if they did not pursue the spiritual. But here in Galatians 6, Galatians, Chapter 6, and verse 7 here, it says, do not be deceived. That is a problem of human nature, too. We tend to deceive ourselves. We say, do not be deceived. God is not mocked for whatever man soars that he will reap also. So if we sow again to the flesh, that's what we're going to reap.

That's what's going to come back. And he who sows to his flesh will of the flesh reap corruption. Well, that is a death, in other words. And oftentimes when people do sow to the flesh, and we all do, in the sense of what we eat sometimes, and what we do, I mean, I'm not looking out at a bunch of people that are in 100% physical shape.

None of us are, are we? We're not the creamer-clop when it comes to all of us having the perfect physical abilities, even what we have potential of doing individually. So in a way, all of us are going to inherit what comes with that. And we know that the physical flesh is going to eventually disintegrate anyway, but so all of us, again, participate in that to one degree or another, but I'm not talking about that. Although that is impacted when we begin to live God's way of life. But again, let's go on down through here. It says, but he who souls the spirit will love the spirit of everlasting life.

He's not only going to be inheriting everlasting life or eternal life, but those things that go with it as well. They're a part of everlasting life. And you know, all of us want that, don't we?

So what we so, brethren, in our life will determine what our future is going to be. And you know, you're already in the future in a way. You're already in the future. And you are either enjoying the rewards of what you did in the past right now, or you're not. Maybe you're, in fact, enduring the pain of what you did before. Sometimes when you're young, you burn the cannon with both ends. You think you're never going to die. I know I thought that about myself, but you're not going to die. You know, you had no thought about it. And of course, like you say, you burn the cannon with both ends. I have, you know, five brothers and three sisters. And one thing I think about all the time, brethren, is when we were kids and we would run and we would jump and we would... One particular place we lived, there was a whole forest behind the house where we lived. And we would go out there. I mean, we'd cut saplings out of the forest and we pulled all the crossed screens. And it was almost like a wonderland out there. And we, you know, you'd run all day long. All day long. But, you know, of course, once you get over, you can't do those kind of things. But maybe I could have if I was a little more careful in my life. Like the old saying, if I knew I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself.

But, brethren, what are you sowing for the future? And what foundations are you laying down right now? Right now? So you can reap in the near future those good things that come from it. And in the long term, eternal life.

You know, someone once said, as you sow, you shall reap. Unless, of course, you are an amateur gardener. Most of us, of course, don't have green thumbs. But all of us, brethren, are amateurs of life.

You know, what should be bad results of our life are sometimes rescued by God, our Father, in Jesus Christ. I know that with all of us, we were heading to the bottom of the barrel, pretty much, probably, before God called us. Maybe you weren't. Maybe you were perfect when God called you. And you were just really happy in the world. And, you know, it was so renderful out there.

No, no, obviously, there was a reason for you to repent, right? To come out of the world and change. And God rescued you. And the outcome you would have had, God changed. So, in a way, we were... because we were amateurs in life. You know, I find very often, by the way, that God heals people who are in the faith, sometimes faster than He does those who have been around for a while. Well, because we're amateurs in life. We don't know enough. And God wants to make sure that we don't get discouraged and, you know, go back into the world.

So He intervenes for us. But when we get older, God expects us to have the fruits of the Spirit more, to develop patience with Him. And a lot of other things. We could spend a sermon about that, couldn't we? What a mature person, a Christian, should be able to do. So God has rescued us all, particularly in our ignorance. But here, it's also been said that if a farmer knew no more than the average Christian does about producing a spiritual harvest, He would never make it through winter.

Hosea, the prophet, says, my people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge. And sometimes when we don't change our lives, brethren, we're not moving forward in our lives. So it's because we're ignorant of how to do it. Or we might be downright lazy, too. That's another problem. Sometimes people know, but they just don't make the effort. And that's, of course, another problem of lethargy and letting the Spirit of God begin to dim in us.

Now, if you read the Bible from cover to cover, even the things that Jesus Christ Himself said in the New Testament, you will see, brethren, that there are terms such as soul, reading. We've read them already. The harvest and there throughout the Bible. Those terms, those symbols are throughout the Bible. And these are given, brethren, as an illustration of how blessings and cursings come about. You go over to the blessings and cursing chapter in Deuteronomy in Leviticus over there. In Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28. God says, if you do this, I will bless you. Now, if you do not do this, then this is going to happen.

The cursings are going to come. Okay, it's very simple. Very simple how God puts it for us. And I do think we need to have it simple, don't we? But that, of course, is the film of the entire Bible. Most of the time, you and I have lived in, though, this has not been an agricultural age. Most of us don't farm.

I think Mr. M. Reddy has a new farm up at his house. He's got fruit trees and all kinds of things. But most of us don't farm. And it's a lot cheaper for us to go down and buy some tomatoes that will raise them. If I were to raise them, they'd be about this big. So, you know, it's a lot easier to do that, and that's what most people do.

They don't really know a lot about farming. What I know, of course, has come because I've been a lot of the church areas where there were a lot of farmers. And people that were connected with the farm. And so there's a lot to learn from them about different things like that. But we don't tend to know that in our society, is what I'm saying. And consequently, we don't. And so we're not really attuned to this sort of sowing and repaying and what you do to do that. How do you accomplish that so you can have a really great harvest in your life?

And when I say harvest, brother, I mean an abundant life. An abundant life. A happy life. Now Christ said that He came to give us a life and to give us a life more abundantly. God didn't want us to live a life that was miserable and down and all this suffering. He got chains on you all the time and your clothes are torn and tattered. You're starving. He didn't want that to happen to any of us. Now sometimes this happens to God's people. Sometimes not because of what they did, because of what others have done.

But God wants us to learn in our lives because generally speaking, God's people don't have to go through those things. If you were a Jeremiah, you might have to go through those kind of things. When you were the apostle Paul and you were running from the Jews, you might have to go through something like that. And maybe even you'd understand why it was that Paul had to do that.

Because remember, he was guilty of killing Christians. And maybe it was right. It was just as far as God's eyes. But maybe it would be good for Paul to run a little bit about running, about fear, about what it's like to go through things like that. So God is of just God in so many ways. Paul was a very mighty man and he saw these things. He realized that it was important for him to go through what he went through. But, you know, like I said, outcomes are predictable.

And it's almost like there's a wall that is involved with it. First of all, let me give you an example of this. The walls of nature dictate that gravity is in action all the time. All the time. You know, I could do an experiment. I wouldn't do it very much. But we're going to drop this on the lectern here, okay? Now, I wonder if I do it again, it'll go up.

I'll let go of it. It goes up. No. Every time it's going to drop. You jump off a building, even if you think you're Superman. And you're going to go down? It reminds me of Stephen when he was an old boy, you know. And his grandmother bought him a Superman suit, but the cake did not come. I don't know how old Stephen was. When was he? Three years old. So he was a real little guy. And anyway, he had the leotard pajama with the big ass on it.

Of course, he would go around the house, you know, at his grandma and grandpa's home, and he would be very proud of it. And anyway, eventually the cake came through the mail. And he put that cake on, you know, with the blue suit and the big ass on. And he went into the bedroom and put it on and came back out. And he was crying. And his man, he said, well, what's wrong? He said, I can't fly. So he thought, you could fly if you had the cape, you know. But, you know, like that Bible, he put a hole in that pier, and the rock is going to fall.

Gravity is always in motion. And God's way, brethren, is that way as well. In fact, you don't even have to know about gravity, do you? Well, I guess, until Isaac Newton came along, I don't know exactly, you know, how they defined it. He didn't discover gravity. We know that, brethren, gravity has been around a long time, you know.

I guess God could abrogate the law of gravity if he wished to do that, but he has not done that in this physical universe that we live in. Well, brethren, if we want positive outcomes for the future of our lives, we must soul for it. And God, by the way, will not make your choice for you. He's not going to make you do everything.

He's not going to make you do anything, as a matter of fact, because character is not a free choice of knowing good from evil and doing what is good every time, no matter what the obstacle is. But he began to keep God's law, in other words, and he didn't let anything stop you from keeping the law of God. One of the greatest commandments that, in fact, there is for us when we first called him in church is the Sabbath, because it's the test commandment. And Satan will throw that at you every time. The sermon that was on the subject of meditation. We need to, again, meditate on this, on what we're talking about here, of what you're sowing in your life.

Are you sowing for positive outcomes? Yeah, they say that when one is about to die, that your mind sort of re-plays everything in your life. How many of you have heard that before? Am I the only one who has heard that before? Do you have two or three of you? I know what happened to me. When I was a teenager, I almost drowned.

And I was trying to paddle my way back to the shore. My brother was, you know, a shredder of worth, maybe. Both of us were very young. I mean, I hadn't been a teenager at that time. But, anyway, he would grab me by my swim trunks and push me up, and he'd go down. And then he would, I would go down again, and he would grab me by my swim trunks and push me up, and we were trying to make our way to the shore. But after it happened a few times, I thought, oh, this is it.

I'm going to drown. And all of a sudden, it's like I saw many things in my mind. Now, I don't know why exactly that was. And maybe it's just something that happened to me. It hasn't happened to other people. But I've heard people talk about that. So for me, at least for that time, it happened. If it happens another time in the future, I don't know.

I don't know what's going to happen again. But imagine, brethren, I want you to just imagine this. What if your life was played before you? And everything you ever did, good or bad, you saw somehow in an instant. Maybe you were a ledger, you know, showed all those good things that you did. And maybe some of the negative things that you did. But the reality is that you and I are going to stand before Christ and give an account someday.

In fact, the Bible says every idle word you're going to have to give an account for. And boy, you know, I guess all of us have a lot, like Lucy said, a lot of struggle to do. For what we did or did not do. But we follow God's mercy and that God is very, very forgiving. And we hope that our lives at the end of it, with God's forgiveness and His mercy, that God says, Well, I think you, you know, I want to accept you into my family.

That's what God wants to do. So, let's hope that that is the case. That you and I, again, are living the lives, the positives in our lives far outweigh, particularly since we have received God's Spirit and the knowledge of God and God's way of life, that our lives are different. I want to talk to you, though, I said to you that we tend to not understand about the agricultural principles. And I want to talk to you about the principles of soul and a reaping.

The principles. Because, again, it's based on principles. Well, I'm going to make it easy. Number one. Number one, we reap more than we sow. Now, isn't that a wonderful thing? We reap more than we sow. Now, this is the reward of sowing right seed, by the way, because we're blessed with far more than we sow.

I mean, otherwise, why would a farmer plant seeds? I mean, why would you plant trees if you only got, like, one apple off of it? You know, you wouldn't do it, would you? You just eat the apple. Forget about seeds. But because it's like there's a behind our house, by the way, there's a couple of trees back there.

One of them is, you know, a tree that is very, very productive, you know, that is producing fruit. And we enjoy the fruit from it. And it's actually overproduced, more than we would like to have. But anyway, that's the nature, isn't it? When people plant trees, they want a tree that will produce much fruit. So, rather, we tend to reap more than we sow. Let's go over here to John 4. John 4, again, these children in spiritual, biblical principles. But in John 4, John 4, John 4, verse 37, it says, For in this the saying is true, it says, When sows and another reaps.

Now get that, brother. What do you say down here? I sent you to reap that which you have not labored, and others have labored, and you have not in and of their labors.

Now, as you Christ was talking to his disciples, and it was saying, look, one sows and another reaps. That's kind of hard to conceive of the fact, brethren, that what you are is of some total of all those that went before you, and what they did. And I'm talking about whether in the physical or the spiritual. Of course, the focus here is on the spiritual, right? Now, when we begin to reap, we are reaping because we are standing on the shoulders of those who went before us so that our harvest is greater. You know, you and I, brethren, have a greater understanding of the Scriptures because of the prophets.

The disciples, you know, we're going to have a better understanding, far better understanding than the prophets of old.

And, quite frankly, brethren, we have a greater understanding because of the apostles.

You see? So we are able to reap what they have sown.

And a lot of times, it was blood and sweat, literal blood, and sweat and tears on their part.

Agonizing work. We don't just reap, though. We continue to sow because we are sown for our children and their children.

You see, we're reaping far more than we actually sowed ourselves.

It's like here in this area, if you go back and look at the history of the Oakland congregation, it started with maybe a couple of people.

Adam Martin was one of the original here in the area.

Others were originals. And, you know, were part of the church when it just began in the Bay Area.

But imagine this. There was a time when there were two or three, and the whole Bay Area.

Now, what if they had given up back in the sixties when your church began here?

What if they had given up? But they didn't, did they?

Then they persevered. Eventually, somebody else came in, and they stuck with it.

And here you are. You and I are here today.

And, you know, so we are being blessed by the work and labor of what other people have done.

Let's go to Matthew 6.

Well, this is undoubtedly, by the way, what Jesus Christ meant.

You know, our children, by the way, don't they reap the benefit of what we lay down for them?

You know, sometimes parents can work very, very hard to lay up things for their children.

They work hard to teach their children the right principles, the right way, because they want them to not make the mistakes that even they made.

And children tend to reap those benefits, and they really don't understand how much their dad and mom, their grandparents did for them.

They really don't understand. You don't expect them to understand, do you?

But let me let Matthew 6 over here. Matthew 6. Let's notice over here.

In verse 25.

Here we see a natural process going on in life as well.

Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you shall eat, or what you shall drink.

See, the main focus should be the spiritual aspects for us.

This is what Jesus Christ was talking about.

But it says for about your body, what you will put on it is not life more than food and the body more than chlorine.

Unfortunately, that's what Carmel might have been thinking, isn't it?

But it says, look at the birds in the air, for they are so nor reap, nor gather the barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them.

Are you not of more value, he says, than they?

What is really important, brethren, to realize is that God is the one that gives the harvest.

And what I grew from this, brethren, is that your job and my job in life mainly is about sowing.

Because if we sow in the right way, we don't have to worry about the reaping.

We don't have to worry about the harvest. That will take care of itself, because God does that.

He's in charge of that anyway, and frankly, you can't do anything about it.

And He's going to give to you and me what He wants in terms of that harvest at the end.

And so, brethren, our main job is to make sure we're focusing on, you know, what we're laying down, the foundations we're laying down for the future.

You know, like I said, God's very merciful with us, and He even, you know, will help us even when we do things ignorantly.

He will bless us and make things turn out in the right way.

And it's like with... Also, we need to understand, I don't know if it's God that are helping us, but other family members that are helping us.

Labor with us, like Jesus Christ is labored with us as well to make it work, to bless us, to help us.

Now, think about this, brethren, that you and I are living in a land that we do really not deserve to live in.

A land of abundance, a land of affluence. But you and I didn't really do much about it, did we?

If it had not been for Abraham, we wouldn't be here. This country would not have been blessed, as it has been.

So again, that really shows that God is the one who does the blessing for the reaping part of it.

We're reaping the benefits of what was done by a man 4,000 years ago.

And what is important, though, is what are you going to do from now on out in your own life?

What are you going to do, brethren? Well, God has shown us grace, His unmerited pardon, and we know ultimately eternal life is a gift.

You can't earn eternal life, but it's through God's grace that we're given it.

But we need to be, again, laying down the right principles in order to receive that free gift from God.

Because even though it's a free gift, it is not cheap. It's not valueless, brethren.

In fact, it is priceless, that gift that God is going to give to us ultimately.

Though God is so merciful, brethren, He's merciful to you.

In every way, if you really meditate on it and think about it, the Bible says the sun shines on the good and the evil, and God sends rain on the just and the unjust.

And God does that, brethren, for everybody. Everybody.

And the Bible tells us that every good gift and every perfect gift comes down from the Father of lights in whom is no variableness or shadow of turning.

That's the kind of God we have, brethren, the kind of God that we serve.

So again, brethren, are we laying down the foundations for our future?

What are you storing for your future?

What kind of future do you want, brethren?

What future do you want in a month or a year or at the end of your life?

We know the Bible says that if you sow sparingly, you will reap sparingly.

So if you give sparingly, you will then reap sparingly as well.

So again, number one, brethren, we reap far more than we serve.

Number two, brethren, we reap the same kind of family we sowed.

Now, let me explain that to you, brethren. What do I mean by that?

We can put it in ad terms if you plant a wheat seed.

You know, what are you going to get? You going to get clogged?

You just went, will you?

You plant an orange seed, you're not going to get an apple.

Well, this is not going to happen.

But, brethren, the fruits we reap or can reap in our lives are based on what we sow in our lives.

Let me tell you an easy way, brethren, to troubleshoot problems in your life.

And we can meditate on this a little bit, and I think you will fight it very, very rewarding to do.

If you have financial problems in your life, chances are, what is the root cause of the financial problems that you have?

Where are you going to find that?

So, if you have, for instance, marrow problems in your life, where are you going to find the solution to that?

Why do you have marrow problems? Why do you have financial problems?

There might be all kinds of situations in life where you want to know, why do I have this problem?

Why do I have health problems? You could even talk about it from a physical standpoint.

But I want to again focus on the spiritual, but for instance, if you have financial problems, let's analyze it, brethren.

What causes financial problems?

Somebody, you know, what's the first thing that comes to your mind? What's that?

Overstate. Government has a problem, doesn't it? What else? Anybody?

Yes. Somebody raised their hand back there.

Faith? Or not saving? Yeah, that's right.

Well, in other words, if you want to find a solution in the financial problems, you look for what you're doing.

Maybe budgeting. You're not budgeting your money or overspending. You're not saving.

Whatever would be a reason why you're not doing well in financial. I mean, we're Christian.

You're not timing. You think that's important for receiving God's blessing in your life?

So, you see, you could troubleshoot if you got very good problems. Then we could go through the same thing.

There may be a communication problem, not communicating correctly. Maybe, maybe, the wife is not doing her part and the husband is not doing his part.

Maybe not keeping the laws that are within the Scriptures of how to have a happy marriage.

And the Bible does tell us, by the way, but it can tell you all day long what to do. But you know what? You've got to do it.

You're trying to shoot your problems. You look for what the Bible says about it. And you do those things, and you're 99% there.

You know, if you can learn to do that, rather than take the cost you're running, that would work for me.

I want to read a story from a guy. It's from the second helping of Chicken Soup for the Soul.

I'm sure you are familiar with that by Jack Kenfels and Hansen. Mark Hansen.

He said, while I was a junior in junior high, the 8th grade bully punched me in the stomach. Not only did it hurt and make me angry, but the embarrassment and humiliation was almost intolerable.

I wanted desperately to even the score. He's ready to punch you out, too.

I played him, beat him by the bike racks the next day and let him have it.

For some reason, I told my plan to Nana, my grandmother. Big mistake.

She gave me one of her hour-long lectures. That woman could really talk.

The lecture was a toe-brag, but among other things, I vaguely remember her telling me that I didn't need to worry about.

She says, good deeds beget good deeds. I don't know, good deeds beget good results, and even deeds beget bad results.

I told her in a nice way, of course, that I thought she was full of it.

I told her that I did good things all the time, and all I got in return was baloney.

He said, I didn't use that word.

She stuck her guns, though. She said, every good deed will come back to you someday.

And every bad deed you do will also come back to you.

He said, it took me 30 years to understand the wisdom of her words.

Nana was living in a board and care home in Laguna Hills, California.

Each Tuesday, I came by and took her out to dinner, and I will always find her neatly dressed and sitting in a chair right by the front door.

I vividly remember our very last dinner together before she went into the convalescence home.

We drove to a nearby simple little family-owned restaurant.

I ordered pot roast for Nana and hamburger for myself.

The food arrived, and as we dug in, I noticed that Nana wasn't eating.

She was staring the food on her plate.

Moving my food aside, my plate aside, I took Nana's plate, placed it in front of me, and cut her meat in small pieces.

I then placed the plate back in front of her, and as she very weakly and with very great difficulty, fought the deed into her mouth.

I was struck with a memory that brought instant tears to my eyes.

Forty years previously, a little boy sitting at the table of Nana had always taken the meat on my plate and cut it in small pieces for me.

It took forty years, but the good deed had been repaid. Nana was right. We reap exactly what we sow.

Every good deed you do will someday come back to you.

He said, what about the eighth grade bully? He says, he ran into the ninth grade bully.

Isn't that true? It comes back to you. It comes back to you.

The Bible tells us again that if we do that, which we command to do, God will give us that abundant life, and it will come back to you.

The title of that, by the way, was, As a Man Sows.

Number three, by the way, weeping takes place long after you sow.

Patience is a key for fishing and farming. Have you ever go out fishing?

I remember sometimes that was the most boring thing I could do.

My dad, he'd sit there all day. I have a brother that's that way, ten years old and I, fishes all the time.

If I'm going to fish, I want action.

One time we took our boys up to Redfish Lake in Idaho, and it just so happened.

I don't know how old they were at the time, but they were probably eight, nine years of age.

We were sitting there and looking out at the Sawtooth Mountains and how beautiful the lake was.

Anyway, we got our poles and put them in the boat.

We went out into the Redfish Lake and we put our lines down and caught nothing.

Well, as I looked over at the shore, I saw a big truck backed up to the lake.

They ran wild trout. They're into the lake.

Anyway, we headed over there as quick as we could.

By the time we got there, of course, the fishes were out in the water quite a bit.

But let me just say to you, brethren, our boys were throwing around with no bait, and they were catching trout right and left.

We fried up the trout at the campsite that night.

But a fisherman has to be patient.

I guess I'm not a very good fisherman that way.

But farmers have to as well. Farmers sold for the future.

And they can't know that they must nurture and care for the seed planted.

This is why they got a green fella.

Our problem, though, from a Carl human nature standpoint, is because sentence against the evil work is not executed speedily.

It says that the hearts of the sons of men are fully set to do evil.

In other words, we don't see the fruit of what we do right away.

We like to see it right away. That's why people, of course, get involved in drugs, because that's sort of instant, isn't it?

They get involved with alcohol, become alcoholics.

They do other things to terrorize the census.

But they don't realize that they're laying the foundations for failure in their life.

Do other scriptures even tell us that?

So, brethren, reaping takes place long after we sow.

That's what we need to think about.

What are we doing now, brethren?

Realize this, that our greatest blessings, God, will come in the will of tomorrow.

Although, we will have abundant lives now, as well.

You know, Jesus Christ said we would have fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters, houses and lands now, He said, and then in the will of the come.

I don't know what it's going to be like in the will of tomorrow with regard to that.

But I have an idea, brethren, that when we and I are spirit beings, that God is going to bountifully give to us in the will of tomorrow, in the millennial way.

It's going to be an astounding time for us.

And those things that we didn't focus on in this life, the physical accoutrements of life, they'll be there in the will of tomorrow.

We'll be able to enjoy them, and the descendants of our families will be able to enjoy them, as well.

But we have to lay the seed so now, brethren, for that great abundant world that's coming.

And now that we benefit now also.

A fourth principle, brethren, I'm going through these faster, we reap in proportion as we sow.

Now, this principle sounds like it contradicts that we reap more than we sow.

But it really doesn't. It really doesn't.

If a farmer wants a bumper crop, if he wants a massive crop, does he just sow a few seeds?

No! He's got to sow seed in proportion of the kind of crop he wants.

And the Bible, again, we have quoted this already.

If we sow bountifully, we reap bountifully. You've got to throw a lot of seed out there.

What seed does you can?

But if we sow seed in a new, local way, where we're sort of laissez-faire about our lives, we don't think about the future, well, we're not going to reap either.

When everybody else is jumping up and down with joy, we're sort of being the dullest of it, don't we?

Because we didn't prepare.

The Bible in the Proverbs says, Consider the ant thou sluggard.

Sow the seed. Sow the seed.

God, in fact, reorges proportionaries to how we seek and ask, even.

First, if you ask for wisdom, James 1, verse 5 says that God will give it to us, and He wants to give it to us abundantly.

That's a degree that you ask, is how God's going to give it to you.

And I think I would add to that, that you ask and then you apply.

God is not about the business of making us the wisest fools in the world.

You know what I mean by that? You know everything.

You bet people like that, haven't you?

They know everything but do nothing.

God is not about the business of doing that.

Number five, brethren. Number five.

Perseverance and work determines the reaping.

When you're saying the perseverance you put into that, the patience, the work you put into that is going to determine what you're going to reap.

The farmer, a good farmer, by the way, doesn't just plant the seed.

He cultivates the seed.

He works with the seed.

And of course, today almost people farm his first land.

We know some do not, though.

And it really depends on the farmer sometimes, the kind of produce he gets out of the land, because he does his due diligence.

And so he rejoices, doesn't he, in the harvest that comes.

Jesus Christ said, he that endures to the end, the same is going to be saved.

So it's the perseverance, the endurer that's going to be saved.

And, you know, rather, pledge to yourself to not let a good deed opportunity pass you by.

Now, if you can all do good, like Galatians 6 and 9 and 10 say, Chapter 6, Verse 9 and 10, do good, especially to those of the church, especially the Bible.

In the case we should do that to those of the church.

So with already good deed opportunity pass you by.

If you can help out, somebody else is in need rather than help them.

Even like the Bible says that if we give somebody a cup of water, God will not forget that, that we do.

Like the Bible says that if we know something is good and we don't brew it, what does it say?

It's a sin, right?

So, you know, God wants us, brethren, to understand what we ought to do with regard to sinning in our lives.

There was David, who was an incredible man.

And right there he said, God helped me to remember my days.

See, that's the problem with us, isn't it? We don't realize how valuable these days are.

That we go by, that are passing us by.

I think all of us, again, lack the wisdom that David asked him, poor God, to show.

Yeah.

And then David goes on to say, help me remember my days, so that basically I could walk these years of my life in wisdom.

In wisdom.

To utilize this time in that way. Do you have a message, of course, also that David realized from God was that this life is short.

No matter how long you live, I mean, it's short.

So you better make hay where the sun shines.

You know, like Solomon says, in the grave, there's no work, there's no reward there.

It's over.

And contrary to whether many people believe in the world, rather than, you know, when you die, you know, you don't go to heaven.

It's like, oftentimes people talk about when, you know, Sister Mabelica, they died.

She's just up in heaven, watch, look at us.

And it's amazing what people can come up with, too.

If a breeze blows on them, oh, that's Sister Mabelica.

You know, I think...

So, you know, every time the wind blows, I'm thinking, was that her, too? You know, but...

You know, it's kind of silly, isn't it?

And it's amazing. You go to a funeral and the minister preaches the person in their grave.

You know, they talk about them being in the grave, and they're going to be resurrected.

And at the same time, they talk about, well, so-and-so's in heaven.

Well, you can't have it both ways, can you?

You know, in fact, the most recent funeral I went to, the minister, I think he was really confused.

He didn't know where the overseas was. It's a strange, it really is. I was going to go up and ask him, but I thought it would be nice about it.

And it was a sobering time for me, too. But, you know, it's just amazing.

So don't ever think, don't deceive yourself.

And the thinking, somehow, well, you know, you're going to go off to heaven, and of course, everybody thinks you belong to heaven, don't they?

Because everybody said, well, I deserve to be in hell, you know. Most people don't.

Reminded me of the guy whose brother died. Both of them were just really wicked.

All of them, the whole family is a bunch of thugs and wicked people.

And so, the gangster, his brother died, and he said to this preacher, he said, If you will call my brother a good man, I'll pay you a thousand dollars.

Well, that was a dilemma. How would you do that?

Well, you know, like a lot of preachers of this world, he said, okay, I'll do that.

We got up and was talking about this, and the casket was there.

And he said, you know, Mr. Smith, you know, laying in that casket was an evil, dirty, rotten gangster.

Modern people killed people, stole from people, but compared to his brother, he thought well, he was a good boy.

So he was able to get the thousand dollars.

But let me give you a six point.

Six point, brethren, and I'll make it brief.

We cannot do anything about last year's harvest.

Once that harvest has been accomplished, brethren, and you've reaped it out of the field, you can't do anything about it.

All you can do is work on the next harvest. That's all.

Well, a lot of us, when we were called, were called later in life, some earlier.

I don't know how many people I've talked to over the years.

Oh, I wish I had been called when I was 12 or 13.

Of course, we've seen people called when they're 80 years old.

But it didn't happen.

Now is the time. Now is your time, brethren. All of us right now.

You don't worry about the past.

Paul says one thing he did, he basically left the past in the past, and he pushed himself toward the Kingdom of God, that upward call of God.

He pressed toward that in his life, brethren. So, brethren, those are six points.

Show us about re-thealing. I guess if it was in the final point, I would add to this, to make it even seven, a perfect seven.

It's finally what really counts in life is the next step you're going to take from here.

Is it? I mean, that's what it boils down to. Because you put all those steps together, and it adds up to a journey.

And if we own the journey, eventually we get to the destiny that we seek.

You know, I don't know if you can see the Charlie Brown cartoons, but in a Charlie Brown cartoon, Charlie Brown is at bat, and he struck out again.

He walks over the bench, and he slopes down out of disgust.

And he says, rats. He says, I'll never be a big league player. I just don't have it.

All my life, I dreamed of playing in the big leagues, but I know I'll never make it.

You know, Lucy was always the helpful character in Charlie Brown. Lucy turns to console him.

Charlie Brown, you're thinking too far ahead.

What you need to do is set yourself more immediate goals.

And Charlie Brown looks up and asks Lucy, immediate goals?

And Lucy responds, yes, like start with the next goal, the next inning.

When you go out the pitch, see if you can walk out to the mound without falling down.

Well, brethren, the first step toward a great harvest is the step you and I take.

Next time. Let's make sure we don't fall down.

Make the next step you take, brethren, in your life purposeful, well-aimed, and godly, and take God's word into your hand and your heart, and begin to sow in the Spirit so that you can reap a great harvest in the future.

I want to leave you with this particular saying I'm sure you've heard before, it is not new to many of you.

It goes like this, sow a thought, you reap an act.

Sow a habit, you reap a character. Sow a character, you reap a destiny.

So, brethren, what are you sowing for your future?