Rev. George Ellis
Pastor’s Corner
Today, I want to talk about something that is so important. It is a message within a message. But it speaks to the heart of all of us today.
Sometimes we need something repeated to us before we can truly get the message. But the message good or bad must be delivered, and somebody must deliver it. Today, I am the deliverer, and I have a message from God almighty. In fact, I am on assignment to declare this message.
We are all reapers today, every last one of us, and the word “reap” in the sense that I want to talk about it today means “to receive (a reward or benefit) as a consequence of one’s own or other people’s actions.” Keep that in mind as we walk through this message together.
This affects all of us. It is all-inclusive because we all will receive a reward or benefit based on our own actions today. In other words, “what we do today, good or bad, will have consequences tomorrow.” In other words, whatever we plant today we are going to have to eat tomorrow; be careful how you make your bed because YOU will have to lay in it; be careful of the bridges you burn today, you will have to cross those same bridges tomorrow; be careful about the ditches you dig for others today because you may fall in them yourself; we cannot plant corn and expect popcorn to come up.
In other words … we will reap what we sow.
But people don’t really believe that. Action speaks louder than words and the way some people do, and how they act, and how they live, leaves me to think that they don’t believe this.
Somehow, some people think that you can plant (or sow) one thing, and reap something else. Some seem to think that you can lie, cheat, steal, murder, live an immoral life … but somehow be blessed in life and the afterlife. But that’s not the principle of reaping and sowing.
This message is to call us to be mindful of what we’re doing right now; look at our lives, and look at the seeds that we are sowing (or planting now); look at our actions now; look all around us and ask ourselves, “what am I doing?” Because everything we are doing right now is SEED, being planted in the ground; and one day that same seed is going to come up.
In other words, if you plant hate, you will reap hate; if you are a liar it will come back to haunt you; if you live a life of crime, chances are you won’t live too long; for every action, there is a reaction! For every deed there is a consequence.
There are people in intensive care units with tubes running through their noses reaping the seeds that they have sown; people battling lung cancer as a result of smoking cigarettes over the years; there are some whose bodies are no good today because they abused their bodies when they were younger.
A few years ago I was talking to somebody I knew well that was the same age as I was who had to get on dialysis. I asked him what happened? He said, “abusing my body over the years, and now I’m paying for it!” I knew his lifestyle and the fact that he spent most of his adult life in prison and using drugs; the seeds he sowed came up.
There are others I grew up with who are not here today as a direct result of their lifestyle. The seeds that they planted came back to haunt them. There are some people on death row and some have been executed as a result of not listening to somebody who tried to help them — they murdered somebody and now they must give their own life.
Years ago I had a prison ministry and the thing that bothered me about that ministry was the young men in there who were gifted, could sing, talk and had nice personalities. I hope we know that everybody in prison is not bad; some just made some bad choices, listened to the wrong people, sowed some bad seeds. They were nice, courteous and respectful. Maybe they should have heard this message, it could have saved them.
My community friends, our lifestyle today will bring blessings or cursing tomorrow! The Apostle Paul gave a lesson in reaping and sowing; he establishes the fact that God doesn’t throw around empty words; He says just what He mean; and it is God that says, “Be not deceived (don’t fool yourself); God is not mocked (teased): whatever a man sows (or plants), that SHALL he also reap (Gal. 6:7).”
This also applies to our financial giving. The basic principle of sowing and reaping is found throughout the entire Bible. What we are doing now is setting up an account at the First National Bank in heaven; and whatever we do now is a deposit into that account.
Keep sowing GOOD seed; do the right thing, harvest day is coming. Newsflash: “we will reap what we sow.”
The Rev. George Ellis is pastor at Union Grove Missionary Baptist Church.