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 Faith, Love and Seed Sowing
Good Morning, Good Morning, Good Morning!
I like things in triplicate! It helps you remember better.
Anyhow, Haowdeee! Sorry. I guess I grew up listening to too much of Minnie Pearl.
Coffee’s on. Mine’s steeping at the moment, and I’ll pour me a cup directly.
Ann was trying to tell me about Aebelskivers yesterday. Those are them little….Hmmmm… what do I liken them to….crispy critters…yeahh, that’s it! Crispy Critters. Vitamins. The kind of snacks so good you stash them where others can’t find them…you hope!
It’s a Scandehoovian thing, you know! If you’ve got any Scandinavian blood, you know what I’m talking about.
Must have been fifteen or so years ago when I was running my newspaper distribution business for the Anchorage Daily News. One of the District Managers was a real nut about Belgian Waffles. He invited Della and me over to his house one day for breakfast.
Whenever Della and I are in southern California, we like to go to the Wharf at San Pedro. Haven’t been there lately, but there used to be a restaurant that specialized in Belgian Waffles. We really developed a craving for them.
Anyway, Jack made us some of his Belgian Waffles that day and I asked him for his recipe. Decided I was going to learn to make them. In the years since, my recipe has changed so much that it doesn’t look anything like Jack’s, but they’ve become my specialty. They don’t resemble the waffles at the Belgian Waffle restaurant at the Wharf, either.
Bet you we’ve spent hundreds of dollars on Belgian Waffle makers throughout the years, looking for just the right one. There must be six different Belgian Waffle irons in our kitchen cabinets. We finally found one – the perfect one, you understand -- last year at a hardware store, of all places, in High River, Alberta. Paid a hundred bucks for it Canadian. Worth every dime of it, too.
I’ll tell you about my Belgian Waffles more, later on, but we need to get this day cookin’ – no pun intended…..uhhhh, pun intended.
OK. Now I can start. Coffee’s poured. Yummm!
Let me begin today by picking a bone with a doctrine I’ve grown up with. It’s called Dispensationalism. A sixty-four dollar word – and doctrine – that says God did things throughout time and history in dispensations: The Dispensation of Law, The Dispensation of Grace, etc., etc. One of my Bible College professors was one of the primary architects of this doctrine. He wrote books on it, taught on it, was highly esteemed within his denomination, and all that.
First time I heard of Dispensationalism, my spirit went “thunk!” It just didn’t fit what I already knew of the Lord. The teaching suggests that what God did yesterday, He doesn’t do today because He’s doing something different. I guess there’s a certain degree to which that’s true, but when you take this teaching to its logical extension, it stands in direct opposition to what Paul preached when he said,
“Jesus Christ the same, yesterday, today and forever.” (Hebrews 13:8)
What really fired me up over this doctrine was the fact that those who believed it used it for an excuse not to be operating in the love and grace of Jesus Christ today. They used it for an excuse to say that apostles and prophets died out.
Folks who buy the idea of Dispensations also frequently believe that the age of miracles is past – that Jesus doesn’t pour out His Spirit today like He did on the day of Pentecost, or that raising the dead, making the lame to walk, healing the sick and casting out demons disappeared with the apostles.
One of the most frequently quoted supposed “proofs” for this doctrine is the extraction of a phrase out of I Corinthians 13 – often called the
“Love Chapter.” The phrase they extract out of context is,
“…whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.”
(see verse 8)
What these folks leave out of the picture is not just the rest of what Paul has to say on the subject, but his premise for these remarks. They forget to also quote,
“For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.”
What gets left out of the whole equation is this: that whole chapter talks about Love as being the basis for all to function the way it was meant to function. There is simply no excuse for leaving out the fact that Love is the “that which is perfect” he is referring to. Take a look at what Paul writes.
He says (and I’m paraphrasing), “If I speak with the tongues of men and angels (the “tongues” of verse 8), and don’t have any love driving what’s coming forth, I sound like noise. What I’m saying has no lifeforce to it – no power or authority.”
Then in subsequent order, Paul applies the same principle to prophesying, having all knowledge, having the kind of faith it takes to move mountains, giving everything you’ve got to charity, or sacrificing your life on behalf of others. He continues to say that if you don’t have Love, you’ve just wasted everything you’ve done.
I should perhaps point out that the “Love” to which Paul refers is not the love of human compassion. It is not the love we feel for our brother or sister. It isn’t the romantic love we feel for our wives or husbands.
The love to which Paul refers is Agape. That’s another sixty-four dollar Greek word. The long and short of it is: God’s love!
Let me illustrate.
In Mark 11:22, Jesus says, “Have faith in God.” (KJV) The Greek text actually renders it,
“Have the faith of God.”
Kinda changes things, doesn’t it? Changes one’s perspective. It isn’t your faith that you are having in God: it’s His faith that is functioning in and through you. This isn’t a case of screwing up your willpower screw so you can believe that God wants to work in and through you. This is where God decrees something by and through His authority, instills that decree in your spirit so that it becomes reality within you; and then you pass that decree on.
I can hear it now. Thought we were talking about love!
So wait, already. We are!
Faith, Love: they’re inseparable. They work together. No faith, no love. No love, no faith.
In John’s first general epistle, he writes (and again, I’m paraphrasing),
“If a man says, ‘I Love God,’ and then hates his brother – his brother being anyone the Lord puts in his life – he’s flat out lying! How’re you supposed to claim you love God, whom you can’t see with your physical eyes, and then hate your brother, whom you can see? If you can’t love your brother, whom you can see, how can you profess to love God, whom you can’t see?” (I John 4:20)
God doesn’t hate anybody – not even Osama bin Laden! Oops, I said a baaaad word!
Really, though, He doesn’t. Hate bin Laden, that is. He hates the sin – not the person.
I know you think I’ve really wandered off the reservation this morning, but hang in there with me.
How about I Corinthians 8:3? “But if any man loves God, that man is known by God.” (my paraphrase again)
Get it? The Lord knows that person inside out. Anyone who loves God – God’s kind of love – is known intimately by the Lord.
Now, let’s take it the next step.
In his epistle to the Galatians, Paul writes in part, “For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision, but faith which worketh by love.”
(Galatians 5:6 KJV)
Let me redo that with a paraphrase: “It isn’t the keeping of the Law, nor the ignoring of the Law that accomplishes anything: it is faith that accomplishes everything, working by love.”
Understand what Paul is driving at? It is Faith that gets things done – God’s Faith. And how does God’s Faith work? Through God’s Love. Agape!
Faith and Love are inseparable. You can’t love God if you don’t have His faith operational in your being. You don’t have the faith to believe that He will work through you if His Love doesn’t function and flow in you.
Now we’re getting to my objective for today.
We’re talking about the Law of Seedtime and Harvest, Sowing and Reaping.
Lots of folks give out of duty. They pay their tithes at church, the give to the Salvation Army or the Goodwill or one of the many Catholic charities. They give because they’re “supposed to give.”
People go to church or they turn on their TV and listen to some pastor or evangelist or prophet or whatever talk about sowing seed. In their minds their focus is on how they can get more to meet their own needs, how they can get rich, how they can get their house, their car and all their bills paid off.
They listen to the teaching on sowing and reaping – most of which is dead on – but they forget the principle Laws that govern seedtime and harvest. We’ve been talking about those Laws today: Love, Faith.
If one’s objective in sowing seed is to see how much they get out of the deal, love just went out the window and their faith is a farce.
Fourteen or fifteen years ago, Della and I began to share with folks where worship has gone astray in the body of Christ. Folks get together to sing songs, praise the Lord, testify, preach, share, do a lot of things. What they don’t get together to do is to minister to the Lord. Their objective isn’t what He gets out of the deal.
Most people never even think about what Jesus Christ gets out of our relationship with Him, or what it takes to bring pleasure and delight to Him, or what it takes to fulfill His divine purposes. The focus is on what they get, how they can be blessed, what their role in the body of Christ might be, what their calling is, etc., blah, blah, blah.
When Della and I began gathering with folks whose whole purpose for gathering was to minister to the Lord, man, the things that began to happen in our midst!
See, if you love the Lord, and I mean really love the Lord, every fiber of your existence lives to please Him, to ensure that He is fulfilled by your relationship with Him.
That’s the Law that works when you start sowing seed. When you sow with love so as to ensure that the purposes of the Lord are fulfilled, the harvest that begins to come forth is virtually incalculable.
If you pay tithes because it was mandatory under the Law, your money is ill spent, and you’ll stay in debt, likely falling behind financially. If you pay tithes because you understand the principle of Holiness in tithing, and you pay those tithes with a purpose of seeing God’s Kingdom furthered, the devourer is going to get what’s coming to him.
If you give because “it’s the thing to do,” you’re throwing money away. If you give so you can look good to society, and then get your 501 (c) 3 tax deduction at the end of the year, you just blew the whole effort.
Tithing, giving, sowing seed – all of it – is so that the Lord will be blessed! It is so that His purposes will be fulfilled among men. He doesn’t need to, but He’s chosen to use men and women to bless Him, His Kingdom, and His Kingdom purposes. Thus, tithing, giving, sowing of seed are all integral to the fulfillment of those purposes.
The faith, which works by God’s love, is what drives and motivates the seed to produce. Sowing without faith is about like putting seed in your dispenser and walking along the pavement while it scatters the seed all over the pavement. Think you’re going to get a harvest from that seed? Think again.
There is no Dispensation of Faith when it comes to seed sowing. There is no period of time in which this principle worked, and then it came to an end. The Law of Sowing and Reaping literally governs everything the Lord does throughout time and eternity. The universe is established upon this Law.
Those who fail to understand the Law and its integration with Faith and Love never really prosper.
Faith, Love, and Seed Sowing. They’re inseparable.
There’s more, but it’ll wait for later.
Finish that good cup of coffee.
Let me sow some more seed into your life today. More than anything else in this world, I want to see you prosper and be in health in the same way your soul and mind prosper.
Blessings on you.
--Regner
Regner A. Capener
EKKLESIA HOUSE
RR-15, Box 6180
Mission, TX 78574-9589
(956) 583-5355
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