Pour Into Your Tree

7/7/1991

(Transcript begins part way into mp3.)

It’s sort of the catch 22 situation because let’s say you don’t feel as if you have good that you can share and then you have a feeling of inadequacy about that and a feeling of resentment towards others because they have something you don’t have and you’re just no good. When you begin to walk in unbelief you’re essentially sowing seeds of unbelief in your heart that yield bad fruit. See it’s a catch 22 because if those are the seeds you sow, then that is the harvest that you’ll have. That’s exactly what you have to offer. If you walk in introspection and unbelief and fear and resentment and comparison and judgment, if you walk in those things because you’re not bearing good fruit, if that’s your response to it, then you will guarantee a harvest of bad fruit in the future that will be even worse than your current bad harvest.

The right response is when you feel inadequate, when you feel as if you’ve failed, when you feel as if you don’t have much to offer….the right response is to say, “The nature of the new covenant is that Jesus himself has come to make His home in me. Jesus is adequate. Jesus is sufficient. I’m going to deal with everything that stands in the way in my life. I’m going to rip up all the weeds. I’m going to water. I’m going to fertilize. I’m going to pour into my situation, into my tree if you will, every good thing that I possibly can. I’m going to respond to this problem rather than react to it. I’m going to see the need and I’m going to know that Christ is sufficient to fill the need and I’m going to invest in next season’s harvest. I don’t know what my harvest is now. I don’t know why it’s the way it is or maybe I do know. But this much I know: that a man reaps what he sows and so I reject introspection and fear and unbelief and accusation and guilt. I reject those things. That’s the wrong response because all I’m doing is guaranteeing a bad harvest in the future when I think that way and when I allow my mind to be poisoned by those things. So, in the name of Jesus I’m going to look towards what He did on calvary. I’m going to look towards what He did in His holy spirit as a gift as an inheritance to me and I’m going to stand on what it can be based on the authority of the Word of God and the potential that’s in the spirit of Jesus Christ not in myself. And I’m going to stand on that as my hope. Christ in You the Hope of Glory. The thing that’s yet out there that God has not yet done in my life. Christ in me, the Anointed One in me is the hope of my future. He’s my satisfaction. He’s my fulfillment. He’s my promise of the future and I stand on my future based in Jesus Christ not on my past and the bad seed I’ve sown in the past.”

We’ve got to break the curse of failure by sowing seeds of faith rather than seeds of destruction and seeds of despair and discouragement and self-centeredness. Reject that stuff or you’re planting bad seed for the future and it will be a self-fulfilling prophecy a perpetuating issue of unbelief and lack of fulfillment.

So sow the good seed in your heart regardless of what your circumstances look like based on faith in the Word of God and the hope that’s in Jesus Christ that’s in you. Abide in Him and let His words abide in you and you WILL bear much fruit showing yourselves to be His followers. That’s His promise and that’s in His best interest to do that. If we’ll abide in Him and plug into Him and totally sell ourself out to the life and the vine…life in Jesus Christ, it’s in His best interest to bear fruit through us and He will do that. It’s His promise. And it’s His interest. It’s His purpose. It’s His passion to do that in a race of people as well as in you as an individual. And you’re not too hopeless for Him but you’ve go to sow seeds of faith rather than seeds of unbelief and selfishness. You continue to wallow in your self-pity, your introspection, your analysis God won’t be able to get out of you what He has put in you because you’ll be sowing seeds that will quench His spirit, quench His life.

Stand in faith based on the word of God, the promises of God, the spirit of God regardless of your current circumstances. Believe the Word of God more than you believe your history, more than you believe your feelings, more than you believe your abilities or your talents and stop your whining, stop your complaining, stop your groaning and believe Jesus with ALL your HEART no matter what things look like and your harvest will be guaranteed to be good for the future.