Sowing and Reaping Part 1 (The Truth About Mindsets)

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Will you really reap what you sow?

In case you don't know, the theory of sowing and reaping claims you get back what you put in; you get what you deserve. We often apply this principle to the choices we make.

If you make stupid decisions with your money, you'll be broke. If you treat people poorly, others will treat you poorly. If you don't take care of your body, you'll get sick.
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But is there more to it than that? What are the effects of a negative attitude? Can you really be successful by having a positive mindset?

Our failure to understand the Law of Sowing and Reaping is one of the main reasons we continue to struggle in life.

Physical Law vs. Spiritual Law

It's easy to understand and trust physical laws because we see them in action. Drop a rock and watch it fall to the ground. Bang, there's proof that the Law of Gravity exists.

Unlike physical laws, we can't see spiritual laws with our human eyes. Because of that, we often wonder how real they are. But they exist whether you believe in them or not--and they're impacting your life every day.
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People are suffering because they don't understand the spiritual law of Sowing and Reaping. It's the reason so many of us feel anxious and out of control. If we want to see real change in our lives, we must learn how this law works and how it affects us.

I thought they were black.

Before we can see and understand spiritual laws, we need spiritual eyesight. I love football, so I'm going to use it to explain how spiritual eyesight works.

In the 1980s, I loved watching the Chicago Bears on TV. For as long as I can remember, I always thought their uniform jerseys were black with orange trim. But one day, something changed that.
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I was watching one of their games on TV when I finally realized something I had never known. The Bears' uniforms weren't black--they were a dark shade of navy. A particular camera angle working in combination with the sun allowed me to see this.

​Something I had never seen before was now obvious. 

As many times as I had seen Bears' games, I thought their jerseys were black. But now I knew the truth. Some years later, this came up in a conversation with friends. It turns out I wasn't the only one to think the Bears' jerseys were black.

This illustrates how we can suffer from spiritual blindness without knowing it. Receiving our spiritual eyesight allows us to see things in a new light and with a clarity we never had before.

But to do that, we must believe.

We must accept that the spiritual realm is real. We must also believe that God works the way the Bible tells us he does. Then, we turn to faith (another spiritual law) to help us believe we'll receive what we've asked God to give us. We will be rewarded for having faith (Proverbs 28:20).
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Ask God to give you spiritual eyesight. Don't worry about understanding everything from the beginning. God will change the light and camera angle, revealing more as you progress. It's our job to trust his process. It may not happen right away, but keep asking and it will.

The Power of Positivity

Do you believe in the power of a positive attitude? The Power of Positivity is based on the premise that if you want good things to happen, you must believe they will. Most successful people say a positive attitude helped them achieve their goals. Modern science claims to have proven that positive thinking works.

The Power of Positivity is evidence that the Law of Sowing and Reaping exists. By having a positive mindset (sowing), we can increase the likelihood of being successful (reaping). If this is the case, then the opposite must also be true with negative mindsets.

I've suffered from negative mindsets to the point of being miserable. But I didn't just wake up one day and decide the glass was half-empty. Recurring cycles in my life supported my negativity.

In school, English and history were easy for me but math was much more difficult. I could have made better grades in math if I had worked harder. Even though I made extra effort on occasion, I didn't believe I was smart enough to be good at it.

I saw other people getting good grades in math without having to work as hard as I did. This created the belief in me that they were smarter than I was. This started the process of sowing a negative attitude, followed by the reaping of a negative result.

I continued getting Cs and Ds in math. To me, those Cs and Ds confirmed my fear--it was proof that I wasn't smart enough to be good at math. I felt that no matter what I did, my situation would not improve. This pattern carried over into my adult life.
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Like so many of us, I didn't learn how to combat negativity. I grew up believing that if something was difficult for me, then I wasn't smart enough to do it. This negative mindset gave birth to a new adversary--hopelessness--which led to depression.

Do you have faith?

​Faith is being confident that a positive result will occur even when we don't know how it will happen (Hebrews 11:1). It's the cure for negative mindsets.

We often make the mistake of relying on positive results to help us defeat negativity. With math, I relied on better grades to help me build faith. But instead of working harder and pushing through the resistance, a negative mindset took root.

This pattern handcuffed me and for many years in my adult life. When something required hard work and perseverance, I didn't think I was smart enough to do it. It became so bad I even believed God wanted me to fail at times. Not getting the result I needed--and as quickly as I wanted--confirmed that I was going to fail.

Next week, in Part 2, I'll discuss the Law of Sowing and Reaping on a deeper level. We'll find out how dangerous--or even life-threatening, our mindsets can be.

Have you allowed negative mindsets to keep you from being successful?

Keep in mind, success isn't always about money or a job. It could be why you're struggling to get a breakthrough in your personal life as well.
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Are you ready to defeat negativity and see your life change?