“Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.”  – Galatians 6:7-8

God, in his grace, has laid out several universal principles upon which our world and lives turn.  One of those principles is very simple – you reap what you sow.  Be it physical or spiritual, no one can escape the universal truth of what a man sows is what a man reaps.  No matter how you look at it, there is no way around the principle of sowing and reaping.

Holiness is not cultivated in the periodic ‘heroic’ acts of faith.  No, holiness is cultivated in the 1,000 small decisions we make every day.  Your spiritual life tomorrow is the direct result of what you’ve sown into the soil of your heart today and the past few days.  The difference between the person who grows in holiness and the one who does is directly related to what each has planted into the soil of his or her heart.  In short, “holiness is a harvest.”[1]

Sowing to the spirit means we regularly feast upon those things that stir our affections for God.  When we say “yes” to Spirit inspired desires and fill our hearts with truths about God we are sowing to the Spirit and not the flesh.  One of the main means God uses to strengthen his work of grace in our heart and feed our faith in Jesus is the spiritual disciplines. In short, we sow to the Spirit when we regularly practice the spiritual disciplines.

We must be careful to understand the spiritual disciplines do not in themselves change us.  “The true efficacy of spiritual disciplines is not their power to bribe God but their usefulness in opening hearts to the perception an exercise of his power.  Spiritual disciplines enable those made righteous by Christ’s work to breathe more deeply the resources that God freely and lovingly provides for the wisdom, joy, and strength of Christian living.  Through disciplines we inhale more deeply the air God provides for the Christian race, but such disciplines do not produce or maintain the oxygen of God’s love.”[2]

---

[1] Bryan Chapell, Christ-Centered Preaching (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic), 293.

[2] Joshua Harris, Not Even a Hint (Sisters, OR: Multnomah Press, 2003), 162-63.