Sow Seeds From Heaven

7/7/1991

(Starts 30 into the track)

The point is just in simplest terms just this: “Our battle is not with flesh and blood, it’s with principalities and powers.” We’re not talking about events and circumstances and talents and abilities and Type A personalities and all this kind of junk. What we’re talking about is that the existence of human life is a spiritual existence primarily. And the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, they’re strong and mighty and powerful for the tearing down of strongholds. And part of what the divine weapons that the scriptures say that we have, is the casting down of imaginations and tearing away everything that exalts itself against the Lordship of Jesus Christ. (2 Cor. 10 if you want to look that up.)

The point is just this, that satan’s battle, the way that he wages war with us, is primarily in our minds: the forbidden fruit, the things that you can’t have or the things that drive you, the things that you’ve failed in or the things that haunt you. And what God has said through His Son Jesus, (and He said it in many other ways through the prophets and in diverse manners, but especially through His Son Jesus in these last days) He said that our battle is a supernatural one that has to do with things in the unseen world and the weapons of our warfare are the Word of God, the implanting of the promises of God and apprehending those things by faith. It’s doesn’t have to do as the world sees things, after the flesh. We see things in the Spirit. We see things after the promise. We call things that are not as those they are, because that’s where the battle is won. It’s won in the unseen world. It’s not won in the unseen world.

And so how well you do in a particular circumstance, you can respond to that in any number of ways. You can say, “Now there’s a pattern. That pattern has repeated itself many times. I don’t have any current strength to overcome this pattern, therefore I am destined to repeat the pattern.” Or you can say, “On the authority of the Word of God and the power of the Holy Ghost, I don’t have to accept this in my life. This is not a pattern, this is not me! Christ lives in me, I’m dead to the world and the world to me and I reject this! And if it happens again five minutes from now, I reject that too.” Resist the devil and he’ll flee from you. Deny your flesh, deny the thoughts, the imaginations, cast them down. Everything that exalts itself against Jesus’s Lordship, reject that and walk by faith and not by sight. “This is the victory that overcomes the world, even our faith.” Not your successes, not a repeated pattern of successes. When you begin to lean on a repeated pattern of success, God will be certain to make you fall in order that you not lean on your own understanding and on your own successes. “I have the key. I know how to overcome sin now.” As soon as you say that, you will fall into sin and the very sin that you are so proud to have overcome, you will fall into that because our battle is in a realm of faith. It isn’t in a realm of experience and emotion and flesh and hormones. You can’t lean on those things as an excuse for the way you are. “My mom was this, my dad was that--my hormones--you don’t understand about my ailment or my sickness or my insomnia or my number of children or my this.” The battle is never fought there. The battle is in the unseen world.

And if you sow the seeds of doubt, fear, skepticism, accusation, laziness... If you sow those seeds into your heart and into your mind rather than casting them down and dealing with them with severity (based not on your experience, not on your strength, not on your past record, not on anybody else’s record, but based on the Word of God--the seed from heaven, the unseen world issue--the seed from heaven.) If you base your response on anything other than seed from heaven, you are sowing seeds of the flesh and the seed of satan’s work in your life. Your complaining, your whining, your withdraw, your criticism, your skepticism, your despair, discouragement, “woe is me”... Whatever those things happen to be, if you don’t cast those things down you, will destroy next season’s harvest because they are bad seed. Our battle is not with flesh and blood it’s with principalities and powers. And the things that you allow in your mind to sit there, if you don’t destroy them, if it’s satan’s seed, it will reap a bad harvest in the future.

Look at the life of Jesus, the teaching of Jesus, the character of Jesus, the aroma of Christ, the fragrance of His personality, the strength of His overcoming heart, the Lion of Judah and murdered Lamb. Look at the Jesus of Nazareth that was born into the world. THE Eternal Life, as John called it. Look at what God has done for you and in you and accept nothing else as input. Accept nothing else as resident in your heart and in your mind no matter how you feel, no matter what’s just happened or what the world and satan are telling you is about to happen. Reject EVERYTHING that doesn’t emanate from the heart and the mind and the Spirit of Jesus Christ.

In so doing, you will guarantee a future harvest that’s glorious and awesome that has to do with your character and your personality and your emotions and your success. All the things that you desire, those things are the harvest of the seeds that are sown in the Spirit in the spring. Those things are never reaped until due season as the scripture says and it’s in the fall that they come. Sown in the spring, reaped in the fall and a lot of work in between to protect those seeds and to nurture and to water and to care for those seeds. But the seed of God is in the unseen world and it’s in your mind and it’s in your heart. And you will have no harvest worth having if you demand instant results and you’re angry when you don’t get them. You’ve got to deal with the things of the heart and the mind if you want a future harvest.