Jim Van Gelderen: This is Jim Van Gelderen, and I am podcasting from Pine City, Minnesota. My wife and I are here for revival meetings this spring. We are traveling together without a team, going to different churches and conducting revival meetings.

We have certainly been encouraged each week with what God is doing in hearts. It has been a tremendous blessing.

Of course, I love the War of Special Forces. We will be back at that in August, looking forward to a Western tour this time. You can find a little bit about our itinerary on our War of Special Forces website.

Be praying for us; we are trusting God for a great fall. Also, this summer Minutemen Ministries is sending out the War team with Austin Brownlee. He traveled with me last fall and will be with me again this coming fall.

This summer, he will be leading the War team.

Well, anyway, it is good to have you with us. I want to deal with a very familiar verse of Scripture and perhaps just encourage you to think about it: the importance of sowing and reaping. Most of us are familiar with Galatians 6:7.

If you grew up in church, you probably memorized it. If you did not grow up in church, it is certainly a verse that is very helpful in understanding this principle of sowing and reaping.

Galatians 6:7 says, “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.”

All I want us to glean from the verse is that concept of sowing and reaping. It is a concept that helps us understand life. As you sow spiritual things in life—sow to the Spirit—by dependence upon the Word of God and dependence upon the Holy Spirit, what you do and say is planting spiritual seed.

From that spiritual seed, there will be eternal consequences. That is really what we want to do: live for eternity. Who wants to die and realize that their life had no eternal impact?

Every one of you listening who knows Jesus can sow to the Spirit. By sowing to the Spirit, we simply mean a walk of faith. Anytime we are depending on God, His Word, and His Spirit to do what we cannot do—whether speaking, handing out a Gospel tract, singing, listening to a message, or listening to this podcast—we are depending on the Lord for spiritual impact.

Then we are sowing to the Spirit, and that has eternal consequences.

If we do not do that, we sow to the flesh, and it reaps corruption. I tell young people all the time, you can choose your sin, but you cannot choose your consequences. You can sow to the flesh, but you will reap corruption, and you do not necessarily know what that will look like.

All of us have sowed to the flesh. We are human beings. We know what it is to be unkind to younger siblings, to disobey our parents, or to be sassy or sarcastic.

We know how to show the things that are not spiritual. They are fleshly; they come out of that downward pull. Every person understands that pull toward sin.

Our flesh, the Bible says, is so carnal that the carnal mind is enmity against God. It is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. That part of you that is fleshly or carnal cannot even do right if it wants to.

It is drawn to break the law of God. We all understand that, and we understand that when we cave in, the harvest is not good.

There are two aspects I want you to see about sowing to the Spirit. Number one is allowing spiritual seed to be sown in your own heart. When you are listening to a message and God’s Word comes alive, or the Spirit of God takes the Word of God and, like a sword, cuts your heart with conviction, you realize God is teaching you and showing you something.

When you respond to that spiritual seed and keep it in your heart, saying, “I want my life to be different,” and embrace the confrontation of the Word of God and the Spirit of God, there is impact in your own life. You reap eternal consequence. Sometimes it can change the whole trajectory of your life.

For me, responding to the call to preach totally changed everything. I remember hearing Paul Levine preach at the Bill Rice Ranch years ago, in the seventies. He preached against alcohol, and I remember making a decision: “I am not going to touch alcohol.”

I had never been tempted at that point, but I made a decision to stay away from it. I remember when he preached on moral purity and I made decisions about boy-girl relationships that actually changed the trajectory of my life. My mother challenged me about those issues as well.

You have an opportunity at that point to receive the seed of the Word—the spiritual seed, the Spirit-enabled Word—in your heart. Embrace it, plant it, so to speak. Nurture it, water it, and let it be life-changing.

Or you can reject it. You can be hardened ground, or you can be good ground. The parable so often teaches us how important good ground is, because that is what brings forth fruit.

Everybody’s soil of the heart is either good ground, thorny ground, hard ground, or shallow ground. It is important to be good ground. My first challenge to a young person would be this: when God deals with you, receive that word.

That Spirit-enabled confrontation usually involves the Word of God. Receive that truth and allow it to get into good ground. It will bear fruit and change your life in a good way.

It will change the trajectory of your life from defeat to more victory and greater spiritual maturity.

As a young person, God will bring you a message, or perhaps a week of messages at camp or revival meetings, that is particularly impactful and life-altering. Grab those things and allow what God is doing through His Word and through His Spirit to be kept in your heart. Those are sacred moments.

I was talking with a pastor about certain weeks in his life when he went to camp, or a message or preacher God particularly used. As I was preparing for this podcast, I realized those were good-ground moments. He took the seed of the Word, empowered by the Spirit, and allowed it to be planted in his life.

For years it has brought forth good fruit—eternal fruit. That is a tremendous thing.

The other part of it is to be a good seed-sower. As you grow in your life, there are things you can say. Some of you will preach messages or teach lessons, or give words of exhortation to friends or other people that will have eternal consequences.

They may be good soil.

I am sure not everything I have said, even when enabled of the Lord, has had eternal consequences, because not every ground is good. But I think of times when things have been said, messages preached, or lessons taught, and I find out later that there were eternal consequences. People come and say, “You preached a message and said this many times.”

I do not even remember the exact statement. Or they say, “We were in a personal conversation, and I have never forgotten that you said this.”

I realize that God was in that conversation. He led in something to be spoken, and when it was spoken, it found good soil. It was a truth from God’s Word, and they believed it.

It changed their thinking; their mind was renewed, and it had eternal consequence in their life. Truth does not stay in your heart. When you get excited about a truth, it will come out to your own children one day and to other people you are responsible for, whether in ministry or simply in life.

It will bear eternal fruit.

Let me encourage you with this simple truth: God says you will reap if you continue to sow. In due season, in God’s time, there will be a harvest. It goes both ways.

There is a negative side, though that is not really where this verse is going, but the positive side is definitely true.

It is a wonderful thing when people tell you, “This message helped me. This word spoke to me. This conversation was impactful.”

That is a blessing to recognize. That is a God thing; that is God using us. We are seed-sowers, and that is a tremendous part of the human experience that has eternal consequences.

Young people, do not be deceived. “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” It is a simple truth: what you sow, you reap.

You reap in kind. It may be farther down the road; it takes a while for there to be a reaping, but you will reap, and you will reap more than you sowed.

I want you to be encouraged by it. Young person, think about today, this week, and beyond. What seed does God want you to sow that will bear eternal fruit?

What seed in your own life is being sown? Are you good ground? I hope that you will be, because that is part of being surrendered to the will of God totally and being dependent upon His grace.