Spring is Here: It’s Time for Planting for a Harvest

“There is a season for every activity under the heavens,” Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes 3:1. Life, as we know, definitely has seasons. In fact, spring, summer, fall, and winter rotate each year consistently. The Lord has pressed upon my heart in the last few years that there’s a time for everything, a season for everything. In the last year alone, He’s pressed upon me the importance of the planting season. Without planting, there is no harvest later.

Friend, Spring is here: It’s time for planting for a harvest.

Furthermore, what is planted is important because that determines what the harvest will be. Farmers understand if they want a harvest of corn in the fall, they need to plant corn seed in the spring. If they want beans, they plant bean seeds. If they want wheat, they plant wheat seeds. 

God is no different. What He plants in us is what He wants to grow in us. In fact, He’s planting for a harvest and we can too.

A Time to Plant

When we become a Christ-follower, a believer in the salvation of Jesus Christ and His Lordship over our life, guess what? In that very moment, Jesus planted some mighty seeds in our hearts. 

What are these mighty seeds Jesus planted and what do these seeds become? 

Well, Galatians 5:22-23 tells us exactly what seeds Jesus planted and what they become:

The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

These nine fruit seeds were planted in us when we became Christ-followers. And Jesus nurtures these seeds in us so that they will grow as we grow in our faith and relationship with Him.

The harvest Jesus is looking for with these seeds is the harvest of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Jesus planted love because He wants love to grow in us. He planted joy because He wants joy to grow in us. He planted patience in us because He wants patience to grow in us. 

It’s no different than a farmer who plants a certain seed to grow a specific plant. Jesus did the same thing for us. He planted all nine of His Spirit’s seeds in our hearts because that’s what He wants growing in us.  And He’s looking for a harvest of His fruit.

Nurturing the Seeds

While Jesus is the Master Gardener and He planted His Spirit’s seed in us, we also have a job to do to make sure His seeds grow. We need to make sure we are feeding, watering, and tending to them. 

I didn’t completely understand this process as a Christ-follower for years. But thankfully, in the last twenty years, I’ve learned more and more about the fruit of the Spirit. I’ve learned we need to make our hearts open to growth. 

We need to be reading God’s Word. We need to be hearing God’s Word. We need to be obeying God’s Word. All of these help keep our hearts’ soil good, healthy, and fertile so God’s seeds can flourish.

If these nine fruits are not very evident in our life, and/or others can’t recognize these fruits in our life, then I assess we have some work to do with Jesus Himself. Only He can be Master Gardener and only He knows exactly what it will take for these mighty seeds to grow into the strong and mature fruit of His Spirit. 

But we have to do our part too. 

A Time To Uproot

Unfortunately, there are plenty of weeds that want to choke out the fruit of Jesus’ Spirit. We need to accept that weeds like to grow in our fields of good fruit. But, God wants us to uproot them, weed them out so that we will not be overtaken by the weeds of the world.

“There is a time to plant and a time to uproot” (Ecclesiastes 3:2). 

Sometimes we have to uproot weeds we think are pretty, or we believe are not impacting the growth of our spirit, but they are. Weeds are sneaky like that. 

A weed is something that is not valuable where it’s growing. It can actually be hurtful. There are invasive plants that actually choke good plants and kill them. So, it is with our spirits.

To weed means to remove or free something hurtful or offensive. It’s getting rid of it. In other words, uproot it. As in get the roots all out to remove the invasive, hurtful, not valuable weed.

There is a time to uproot, as in exterminate, certain things in our life because they have become weeds. Maybe they’ve always been there and we didn’t know they were weeds. Or maybe they just weren’t as prevalent as they are now. Maybe, these weeds have taken over and are already choking the fruit of the Spirit in us.

Friend, it’s time to uproot them.

Planting for a Harvest

As I mentioned, Jesus has pressed upon me the planting season is a real season. He’s been showing me the importance of nurturing His seeds. He’s also shown me the importance of uprooting the weeds that like to choke them.

I’m starting a nine week series called “Nine Weeks of Growing the Fruit of the Spirit.”

Beginning the last week of March, for nine weeks, Jesus is asking me to focus on each fruit of the Spirit listed in Galatians 5:22-23 with an emphasis on Ecclesiastes 3:2: a time to plant and a time to uproot.

We’ll let Jesus lead and reveal to us what each of His fruits look like according to His Word, and how He wants to grow them. We’ll also look at things that may be hindering their growth, the weeds that need to be uprooted. 

We will look at what we can do to help the growth of the Spirit’s seeds, and what we can focus on in our lives that will help produce a harvest of beautiful fruit for our Lord Jesus.

Planting season is here, friend. I’m eager to learn, grow, and share with you during these nine weeks. I’m excited to see what Spring planting will bring for us.

May love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control grow in us and produce an abundant harvest for the Lord Jesus Himself.