Tuesday, December 6, 2016
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My wife was just a girl when her grandparents down the road started building a little farmstead to live in. Because she had expressed a desire to be a missionary someday, Granddad thought she needed to know how to do things for herself – including laying block for a building. So, she got to help lay the block for her grandparents' house. Well, in the amazing, surprising ways of God, we ended up getting to live in that house many years after it was built. I used to kid her that the crooked blocks are the ones she did!
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Building Now What You'll Live In Later."
My wife could have never imagined it what she built as a girl she would one day live in! But then, aren't our lives like that? We live in tomorrow whatever we build today.
That's exactly what the Bible says in that famous statement in Galatians 6:7. It's our word for today from the Word of God. "Do not be deceived; God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows." What you're planting today, you'll be eating in the future; what you're building today, you'll be living in later on. You know, in a very real way, the life you're living right now, the things you love and the things you hate, it's the harvest of the choices you made months ago or years ago, right? Except you may not have realized at the time what the choices were that you were making or the significance of them. You were actually building your future. You were choosing a road. See, that's why it's so important to realize it now. I mean, to realize about the choices you're making at this point in your life!
What you do with your body, what you do to your body now you're going to be living with down the road. Right? The way you treat your parents, the way you treat your children, the way you treat the other people in your personal world – you'll be living with that in your relationships for a long time to come. You will reap what you sow, you'll reap the sacrifices you're making, you'll reap the appreciation you're expressing, the generosity you're showing. You'll also reap the criticism you give, the sarcasm, the meanness, the harshness, the hurting words and the neglect. Oh yeah, they'll come back to you.
The way you talk to people, the way you talk about people – I hope it's something you'll want to live with in the years to come. Your words are seed you sow, and later you'll be living with the harvest of those words – a beautiful harvest or a bitter harvest. And one thing we're all building, for better or for worse, is a reputation. You're developing a reputation right now for trustworthiness or unreliability, for honesty or deceitfulness, for moral purity or moral laxity, for consistency or inconsistency. And much of what you get in the future will be the harvest of the kind of reputation that you're building today. You really do reap what you sow.
So don't compromise just to get out of a jam, or to get a quick fix, or to cover up something, or to meet a need today in a way that you're going to regret tomorrow. Draw out the lines of the choices you're making. Where's this going to take me? Am I going to end up where I want to end up? I'll be meeting what I'm sowing today later on. So, live openly, live honestly, and live gently.
Jesus gave us great advice in Luke 14 about all decisions. He said, "First sit down and estimate the cost." So someday you'll be living in what you're building today. So, come on! Build something that will last, and build something you'll want to live in for a long time.