What Do You Want?

In this new year, what goals and results do you want to achieve?
What would you like to see happen in your relationship with God, in your ministry, in your marriage, in your family, in your employment, and in your finances?

It is important to have goals. Billy Graham once said, “if you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time.” Goals will tell you how it is before it is. They will move you past present obstacles and into future possibilities.

Most of you have no problem knowing what you want. Your main struggle is in how to achieve the things that you want. This is especially true in your Christianity. The Bible is full of goals that come in the form of promises that you should aim for and attain. Your problem is not in knowing what you should have, but in the attaining of what you should have. You know there are a lot of things in the scriptures that are legally yours; like the abundant life, the victorious life, and the joy filled life. The problem comes in trying to take what is legally yours and making it actually yours.

“Do not be deceived, God is not mocked: for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap.” Galatians 6;7 (NASB) What you achieve is determined by what you sow. If you want to reap quality results, you are going to have to sow quality seeds.

When you look back over your life, was what you wanted ever undermined by how you were or what you did? You need to understand that what you want is always seeded by what you are and what you do. Your behavior is the seed bag of your life. How you are and what you do is the seed that you sow, which ultimately determines the harvest that you get.

The law of sowing and reaping is not limited to your money. Sowing and reaping refers to all of your behavior. “You shall be treated as you have treated others. Your deeds will recoil upon your own head.” Obadiah 1:15 (NASB)

All of your behavior will return. Deception will return – 2 Timothy 3:13. Judgement will return – Matthew 7:1-3. Unforgiveness will return – Matthew 6:9. Trouble will return –Revelation 18:6. Mercy will return – Matthew 5:7. Blessing will return – Luke 6:31-38. What you sow out will determine what you will receive.

When people come to me and their finances are in trouble, or their marriage, or their family, or their employment; the first thing that I must get them to see is that the reason they have what they have is because that is what they sowed for. My next task is to get them to see that there are no easy answers to their problem, but there are answers. There are no quick fixes, but things can be fixed. The answer to most of their problems is very simple. If they want a better harvest, then they are going to have to sow better seeds.

As easy and as simple as that sounds, I have found that most people won’t follow through and begin to sow the kind of quality seeds that will bring a quality harvest into their lives. There are two reasons why this happens.

1. Lack of instant results. One of the things that happens is while you are now sowing good seeds, you will have to continue to eat the bitter fruit of the harvest you had sowed from before. It is a hard thing to begin to sow positive actions and still reap negative results. And yet it is going to take time for the new seeds to take root and produce a good harvest. “And let us not lose heart in doing good, for in due time we shall reap if we do not grow weary.” Galatians 6:9 (NASB)
2. Lack of favorable conditions. Most of you will wait until things get better before you begin to sow the necessary seeds which will bring about a better harvest. Most of you will want God to help you out of your present difficulty and will promise as soon as He does, you will be different. But God’s word to you is, if you will become different, then that seed will bring you out of your difficulty. “He who watches the wind will not sow.” Ecclesiastes 11:4 (NASB)

You can’t want to reap one thing from God and sow out another thing to others. Proverbs 20:10 states, “Differing weights and differing measures, both of them are abominable to the Lord.” As I was meditating on this, as to what it meant to have differing measures. I felt the Lord speak to my heart these words. “Son the measure that you want from Me differs from the measure that you give out to others.” Then He went on to say, “Son, I will get a balanced measure, wither you align your measure with Mine, or I will align My measure with yours.”

In other words, how I am towards others and what I do for others will determine how God is toward me, and what He will do for me. The seeds that I sow into others will determine the harvest that I reap from Him.

All of you need to know what you want from God in the different areas of your life. You also need to begin to sow the kind of quality seeds that will achieve those results for you.