It’s Free Friday! Today is the day you let go of the things in your life that keep you down or hold you back. To celebrate, I’m giving away “Experiencing God Day By Day: The Devotional Journal” by Henry and Richard Blackaby. Keep reading to find out how to enter.
I’ve thought a lot about the law of sowing and reaping lately. Growing up, it was applied to school work. If you want good grades, you have to sow the seeds of studying. In sports, if you want to get better at basketball, you have to sow seeds in practice. In life, if you want to have good kids one day, you better sow seeds of being a good kid today. What you sow now, you will reap when you’re older. I’ve heard it applied to just about everything because it’s as much of a law as gravity.
We all believe in gravity which is why many of us stay away from ledges and refuse to walk under heavy, dangling objects. What if we applied that same belief into the law of sowing and reaping when it came to our relationship with God? What if we really thought that if we sowed time alone with God, we would reap immeasurable spiritual benefits? I’m afraid that most of us live unproductive Christian lives simply because we refuse to make time for God each day. We’re satisfied with the bare minimum.
Each day when I go to work, I drive past a toll lane. As I get closer to it, I begin to reason with myself about the cost of driving in it. This particular toll lane has a fluctuating price that depends on traffic. I’ve seen it as low as $1 and as high as $7. Each day I choose whether I’m going to pay the cost to get to my destination faster or to sit in traffic inching along. I have to determine whether the price is worth it. Most people sit in traffic every day and never consider the toll lane because they don’t want to pay the price.
In the same way, most Christians don’t want to pay the price of getting up early, staying up late or skipping lunch with co-workers in order to spend time with God. As a result, their lives inch along and they get frustrated. They wonder why it takes so long to get to their destination in life. It goes back to that law of sowing and reaping. If you don’t plant the seeds and pay the cost, you will live life in a slow moving traffic jam getting frustrated. You’ll see other speed past you and make excuses that it’s just easy for them or that they are somehow more blessed than you. The truth is that those who excel in their walk with God pay the high cost in secret and God rewards them openly.
Where are you today? Is your life inching along in traffic? Are you frustrated that you haven’t gotten to that next level with God more quickly? Have you bypassed the toll lanes because you weren’t willing to pay the cost then? The great news today is that God won’t keep you in traffic if you start paying the cost today. God will begin to bless you and reward you once you plant the seeds of spending time alone with Him. He will move your life along if you will free yourself of the things that keep you from paying the cost. He will be free to bless you with a productive, vibrant, healthy spiritual life when you start planting the seeds of alone time with Him. I can tell you the cost is always worth the benefit when it comes to God.
If you would like to win the “Experiencing God” devotional and journal by Henry and Richard Blackaby, all you have to do is go to my Facebook page here and “like” it. I will randomly pick one person tomorrow (March 1, 2014) who has liked my page. If you have already liked my page and enjoy reading these daily devotionals, you are already entered. Please invite your friends to like my page so they can receive encouragement from God’s Word too.