Devotional Song: Go to this link – Please take your time to see a video of the poignant truth in song, performed by the group 4Him, singing Where There Is Faith, exclaiming that we must sow the seeds of faith in His field to yield a fruitful crop of love in our lives.
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Highlight Passage #1 - NLT: Hosea 10: 12
12 I said, ‘Plant the good seeds of righteousness, and you will harvest a crop of my love. Plow up the hard ground of your hearts, for now is the time to seek the LORD, that he may come and shower righteousness upon you.’
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Highlight Context - NLT: Hosea, Chapter 10 … GO TO THIS LINK …
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Reference Passage #1: Proverbs 11: 18-19 … … [NLT]
18 Evil people get rich for the moment, but the reward of the godly will last.
19 Godly people find life; evil people find death.
Reference Passage #2: Galatians 6: 8-10 … [NLT]
8 Those who live only to satisfy their own sinful desires will harvest the consequences of decay and death. But those who live to please the Spirit will harvest everlasting life from the Spirit. 9 So don’t get tired of doing what is good. Don’t get discouraged and give up, for we will reap a harvest of blessing at the appropriate time. 10Whenever we have the opportunity, we should do good to everyone, especially to our Christian brothers and sisters.
Reference Passage #3: Galatians 5: 19-23 …GO TO THIS LINK ... [NLT]
My Journal for Today: Don’tcha just love God’s timing!
Today, I read through Os Hillman’s devotional, taken from Acts 21; and it wasn’t striking a chord of harmony with my heart. For some reason, I couldn’t get into it. It wasn’t striking a chord of personal application or Spirit-led direction; and so I prayed that God would give me something from His word [see attached photo], possibly from my rich field of memory verses which would strike a chord in my heart. And at that exact moment I got a text from a young man whom I’m mentoring, … who, in his morning devotional time was struggling to interpret a passage from Hosea, Chapter 10, Verse 12, copied above with a link to the whole chapter.
So, I stopped to help him via texting; and in doing so I realized that God had provided me an answer to my prayer with a verse and passage which had rich personal application … and one which I could discuss with my young friend, who just happened to live all the way across the country in Connecticut.
God is so good with His timing and His seeds of righteousness.
I think y’all know the very rich study which the book of Hosea provides. It is filled with word pictures imbedded inside other word pictures; and poor Hosea, as with many of the so-called “minor prophets,” had to prophesy to a hard-hearted people of his day. And Hosea was also having to deal with many personal problems himself at the same time. But in the highlight passage which God brought to me today via my young friend, we read how God tells His people, through Hosea, that God, through His Spirit, wants to plant seeds of righteousness in the field of our hearts. However, that will not take place until and unless God’s field in our hearts is properly prepared – by faith – to receive God’s seeds of truth.
It’s God’s law of reciprocity. … We reap what we sow. … What goes around, comes around.
If we sow evil seeds (i.e., the seeds of unrighteousness), we will reap evil fruit (see Prov. 11: 18-19 above). And this truth was picked up and emphasized by the Apostle Paul as well in the NT, in the reference passage above from Galatians 6: 8-10, which clearly restates this truth of reaping and sowing. We will only reap, from our hearts, a harvest of fruitfulness, if we’re willing to receive – by faith – God’s seeds of righteousness from His grace. And when we do, we will glean the fruitfulness also described in Galatians 5: 22-23, the fruit of the Spirit, … as opposed to sowing the fields of our hearts with the seed of fleshly living, which will always produce the fruit of the flesh (see Galatians 5: 19-21 from the link above).
May I assume that you, as well as I, desire to live fruitful Christian lives? Well, if so, we must do as God proclaimed in the OT through Hosea and in the NT through Paul. We must prepare the soil of our hearts by surrendering it – in faith – and allowing God’s Spirit to plant seeds from God’s truth (i.e., His word) so that the soil will be receptive to what God’s Spirit plants with His seeds of righteousness, which, if properly tended by the disciplines of the faith, will yield harvests of fruitfulness for God’s glory.
My Prayer for Today … Lord, I tend the soil of my spirit, to be receptive and ready for Your seeds of righteousness. Sow them in me today from Your word as pictured in the photo attached. … Amen
Blogger Note: Everyday during this year, my daily devotional blogs are influenced by the reading and study of the online blog entitled Today God Is First [TGIF], authored by Os Hillman. If you GO TO THIS LINK on the date of my blog, you’ll find a link to read Hillman’s TGIF blogs; or you can subscribe to the blog via email at that site.
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