Day 17
Friday, March 21st
Don’t be misled—you cannot mock the justice of God. You will always harvest what you plant. Those who live only to satisfy their own sinful nature will harvest decay and death from that sinful nature. But those who live to please the Spirit will harvest everlasting life from the Spirit. So let’s not get tired of doing what is good. At just the right time we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don’t give up.
(Galatians 6:7-9 NLT)
He does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities…as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.
(Psalm 103:10-12 NIV)
The Bible says that we reap what we sow. When we sow seeds of patience, gentleness and perseverance into our friendships or our marriages, we reap relationships that can withstand any storm. When we plant seeds of kindness and compassion into our children, we reap the joy of watching them grow into kind and compassionate people.
But we don’t always sow good seeds, do we? We all have moments or seasons of our lives when our dysfunctions were in control–when selfishness, anger, impatience, indifference, or destructive habits hurt the people around us.
It took me a long time to realize that brokenness from my past was holding me back from loving the people in my life the way they needed to be loved. Never intending to do harm, wanting desperately to love the people closest to me well, I ended up living out of my dysfunctions instead and I can’t do anything about that now. It’s my biggest regret that it took me so long to recognize that my past was affecting my present, that it took me so long to go to counselling for help in sorting it all out.
But we can’t go back and un-plant the bad seeds we sowed.
How do we reconcile the principle of sowing and reaping with God’s assurance that “He has removed our sins as far from us as the east is from the west”. How do we reconcile it with the truth that “He does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquity.”
The answer lies in the mercy and grace of God. “Mercy is God’s favour that holds back from us what we deserve. Grace is God’s favour that gives us what we do not deserve” -Rolfe Barnard
Because of Jesus, because of God’s mercy and grace, we can pray for a crop failure–we can pray that the bad seeds we planted will wither and die and that the good seeds will thrive and grow.
Repenting of the ways I have let people in my life down, and trusting in God’s mercy and grace, helps me break out of the futile cycle of regret. Instead of looking back and wishing I would have done so many things differently, I can ask God to use me to bless my family now. In Jesus, all things are possible.
As a father has compassion on his children,
so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him;
for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust.
But from everlasting to everlasting the Lord’s love is with those who fear him,
and his righteousness with their children’s children
(Psalm 103: 12-16 NLT)
Mercy gave the prodigal son a second chance.
Grace gave him a feast.
-Max Lucado
Pray and thank God today that He does not repay us according to our sin.
Pray to see God’s promise of restoration fulfilled in the lives of the people we love.