Greetings, and the Lord bless you again. This is Meditation Moments.

We have been on a tour and working for the Lord, and have just gotten back home. Some very precious things happened on this tour. We were able to minister for the Lord, and it was wonderful to find that His blessing was still resting upon us, and even at our age the old anointing was there as we brought the message.

There was one thing that I particularly noticed on this tour, in places that I went that I hadn’t been for years. The verse of scripture that you find over in Galatians 6, the seventh verse: “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”

Places where I had gone years ago, that I saw that they were failing God and they were giving more time to things non-essential and the things that were materialistic, I went back to visit some of these places and I saw how the reaping had surely come. They were now reaping from the lack of spiritual things, and there were problems in the home.

Then on the other hand, I visited a home up in Sacramento where we had stayed during a revival meeting years ago. This dear family where we were guests, they had had the little prayer meeting in their home, had invited all the folks in, and that was the beginning of a church that’s there now, and their children are in the Lord’s work. One young man was singing so beautifully in the choir, and the other working for the Lord, and all the children saved and true to God and really dedicated to the cause of Christ.

I thought how wonderful that those parents were reaping from that early teaching they gave. While they sacrificed so much to have that home of theirs open to the outside and to those prayer meetings, yet the children were getting the benefit of the Gospel. Now the reaping time had come, and they were having this blessed experience of seeing their children all so devoted to the Lord’s work.

I was also in the work amongst young people that were picked up off of the skid ways. In San Francisco I spoke one day, in an audience there, there were only about perhaps 50 or 60, 70 people in the audience, but in that very group there were ten narcotic addicts under the age of 16, and four prostitutes under the age of 14. These Christian workers had gone out on the streets and picked up these boys and girls and brought them in. This was their particular work.

As I heard the stories from the lips of some of these boys and girls, how they had come from broken homes, or how their parents were drunkards and there had been such a lack of God in their home, and here was the reaping in these young lives. Oh, surely it’s true that if you sow to the flesh you shall of the flesh reap corruption. If you sow to the Spirit you’re going to reap life eternal, and you are going to reap eternal things.¹

All the way on the trip this thought kept coming to me: how true God’s Word is. You know that everything you do comes back sometime, somewhere. Even every word you fling out comes back someday, and I think sometimes even our thoughts come back upon us. Thoughts are things, after all.

It seemed uncanny sometimes as I traveled about to see how the law of sowing and reaping works and how surely God fulfilled that Word. That’s the way of the law of spiritual gravity; just so the law of retribution is fixed as surely as that. Whatsoever a man casts out, it returns again upon his own life. If he throws out in the world a little kindness, it returns after many years a blessing.² If he casts forth a curse, it comes back to him a greater curse.

I saw in Waco, Texas, a home there with a wonderful mother who had prayed for years for her children. They had slipped away, some of them, into dark paths once in a while, here and there, but she kept praying so earnestly for them. Now, as I visited there, she was telling me how gradually each one had come back.

“Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6), God’s Word says. Here I saw it truly come to pass there in that home. She kept talking about the wonderful children she had and how they cared for her. Well, my reaping may come one way and yours will come another, but as surely as we live, whatever we do comes back to us.

I visited a historian in the North, a college man, a university man, just super educated, and during the days of the war he had slipped away from God. He’d had wonderful Christian training but he had turned his back upon the Lord for a while. Now he was having the reaping. There had been years that he hadn’t been as he should be and hadn’t walked with God, and there he was, he had just lost everything. He’d lost his family. He had lost his business. He’d failed in business and there was such a sadness about him. His eyes had such a story to tell.

It’s just the same, dearly beloved, on the other side of the picture, with one so true to God, when one really lives in the Word and one testifies and witnesses for the Lord. Oh, what a precious reaping there is.

I traveled for a while, most of the trip, with my son’s family in a big cruiser. Some of you who are listening know him, and he has brought those children up to witness for the Lord. They are wonderful Christians, every one of them. It was just a joy to be with them. They were happy all the time and would break out in singing, and were always praising the Lord. It was really a wonderful experience to be with such a group.

But the reason those children are that way is because the parents years ago spent much time teaching them the Word of God. Sometimes that father would take entire evenings—I’ve known him to week after week, take evenings, just giving all of himself in Bible study to those children. No wonder now that they are witnessing Christians and that they are giving of themselves to the Lord, every one of them really dedicated, consecrated Christians.

Then I noticed that someone here and there to whom I had spoken kindly, or had given scriptures, or had dealt with them years ago, and how that came back to my own heart now. Isn’t it wonderful that we are able to be so encouraged and how we can have such a joy as this, that when we fling out the Word to them and comfort hearts, that it comes back upon our own life with God’s blessing and the sweetness in hearing them say, “You were a help to me; you were a blessing to me when I needed help most.” Kind words spoken years ago gather momentum in your life, and perhaps today you are reaping love and gratitude from what you sowed years ago.

But I’ve noticed that when the parent is irritable, impatient, and is unkind and so very critical of a child, why, they get back from the child irritability and impatience. It is the seed that the mother and the father sowed, and they are getting the reaping in kind.

I met a young man on the trip that I had known years ago, who had had some faith in God but he had lost faith. I talked to him, and he told me that he began to lose faith when he began to read the type of literature his father had kept in the house, a type of literature which led only to the loss of his faith in everything. That is pitiful when a parent will keep that kind of literature around the house that the young person could get ahold of it. Now the father is heartbroken because the young man has become an unbeliever.

In those meetings that I talked about there, the youth gatherings where they’d picked these young people up off the street, I talked to a young girl. In reckless, independent spirit, she had continually been playing near the danger line and kept companions that were evil, and late nights, and joyrides. Now she had been picked up by the police, and, oh, there was such a whirlwind of retribution in that life. All those things had gathered momentum and they had come back upon her now, and her little white face showed how surely the reaping that God spoke of had come home to that heart. Then she confessed that often her mother would leave her just with a babysitter and would go to some bar.

Beloved, God’s Word never fails. God’s Word is true. I don’t know any better way to close this thought than with this, reading this passage from God’s Word. Every single verse here could be a sermon in itself. It is the sixth chapter of Galatians, from which we took the verse we are talking about.

“Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness: considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted. Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. For if a man think himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself. But let every man prove his own work, and then shall he have rejoicing in himself alone, and not in another. … Let him that is taught in the Word communicate unto him that teacheth in all good things. 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.”³

Oh, if we could only see the future and see what a reaping will come and how surely God’s Word will be fulfilled in this law of reaping, this law of retribution, how careful we would be about what we say, what we do, and whether or not we live with God and whether we walk with Him.

God bless you. He’s still on the throne. Prayer does change things.

This was a transcript of a Meditation Moments #87 broadcast. Read or listen to the next episode called Wait Upon the Lord.