Love isn’t just a noun. It’s not just something that we have or don’t have. Love is also a verb. It’s a doing word. And the doing part of love, involves sacrifice. It involves sowing seeds that will result in an eternal harvest.   Planting Seeds Today The farmer who expects a harvest without planting any seeds in the field. Now I’m no farmer; I’m not even a particularly good gardener, but I’m smart enough to know that unless the guy plants some seed, he’s not going to see any sort of harvest. In fact the only thing he’ll see is an empty field full of dust or mud depending on how much rain he has had. He may be dejected, he may be upset that there’s no harvest. But what does he expect? He didn’t plant any seed. Pretty obvious – and yet all too often we live our lives on the very same, equally ridiculous basis. We wonder why our relationships aren’t producing a harvest. We want our relationships to be rich and fruitful. We want them to be rewarding. We want relationships to be fun, as well as being strong and supportive. But all those desirable attributes of relationships don’t just happen. They take investment. They take effort. And if your relationships aren’t all that you want them to be – then maybe, just maybe it’s time to plant a seed. This is the last message in a series that I’ve called, "Living a Life That Leaves a Lasting Legacy of Love". Bit of a mouthful but I guess you get the point. We all want to leave something good behind. We all want to leave a legacy of love in the lives of our children and their children. In the lives of our friends, even our work colleagues and our acquaintances. I hope that when I’m gone, some of the many people who have, over the years listened to these radio programs, will have a much better life, because I did what I did. I hope my children carry forward values that I imparted to them – decency, integrity, kindness – and hand them on to their friends, and their children. We all hope those sort of things and yet, all too often, we don’t build and nurture the sorts of relationships that allow that to happen. When you think about it, by and large, we only really allow ourselves to be influenced deep down inside by people we respect and trust. If we don’t trust them, why would we listen to them? If we don’t respect them, why would we take on any of their values or ideas? It makes sense. I want you to think right now about a relationship that’s important to you, but it isn’t quite what you want it to be. This is a relationship that really, really matters … and yet, it’s not as healthy as it should be. Do you have that person’s face pictured in front of you at the moment? Now, what do you do with that relationship? One of the options is to run away. That’s a distinct possibility if the relationship is causing you pain, or if you’re just not quite up to working on it just at the moment. Sometimes, what we want to do is give up because the circumstances are against us. I’m pretty sure you know exactly what I’m talking about. I want to share with you a story of a man who wanted to run away from something, from a situation – but instead he stayed amidst his difficult circumstances and did something very, very important. Have a listen to this story: Now there was a famine in the land, besides the former famine that had occurred in the days of Abraham. And Isaac went to Gerar, to King Abimelech of the Philistines. The Lord appeared to Isaac and said, ‘Do not go down to Egypt; settle in the land that I shall show you. Reside in this land as an alien, and I will be with you, and will bless you; for to you and to your descendants I will give all these lands, and I will fulfil the oath that I swore to your father Abraham. I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven, and will give to your offspring all these lands; and all the nations of the earth shall gain blessing for themselves through your offspring, 5 because Abraham obeyed my voice and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws.’ So Isaac settled in Gerar. When the men of the place asked him about his wife, he said, ‘She is my sister’; for he was afraid to say, ‘My wife’, thinking, or else the men of the place might kill me for the sake of Rebekah, because she is attractive in appearance. When Isaac had been there a long time, King Abimelech of the Philistines looked out of a window and saw him fondling his wife Rebekah. So Abimelech called for Isaac, and said, ‘So she is your wife! Why then did you say, She is my sister?’ Isaac said to him, ‘Because I thought I might die because of her.’ Abimelech said, ‘What is this you have done to us? One of the people might easily have lain with your wife, and you would have brought guilt upon us.’ So Abimelech warned all the people, saying, ‘Whoever touches this man or his wife shall be put to death’. Isaac sowed seed in that land, and in the same year he reaped a hundredfold. (Genesis 26:1–12) I shared that story because it has three very important lessons in it about planting seeds. The first one is about the famine – adversity. Our natural reaction is inevitably to run away, to withdraw. When a relationship is going through a difficult time, one of the things that we so often want to do is to crawl into a cave and hide from it. Anything just to get away. The last thing we think of doing is being proactive and planting a seed. Think about that difficult relationship I asked you to picture earlier – what have your thoughts been about it over the past week. Have you been thinking about how you can get out of the situation, or how you can make it better? Which one have you been focusing on. The second lesson is that Isaac, like his father Abraham, was far from perfect. He repeated his father’s mistake by lying about his wife and putting her into danger. Sometimes, we think we have to be perfect to sort things out. Well, it’s just not true – you and I will never be perfect and if we wait until we are to work on a relationship then we will never get around to it. And the third lesson is the lesson about planting seed in the middle of the famine. The most counter intuitive thing you can possibly do. Isaac sowed seed in that land and in the same year reaped a hundredfold. If you want to improve a difficult relationship then be prepared to plant seed in the middle of the famine, to plant a seed in the time of adversity, because chances are, you’ll reap a hundredfold in return. What does it look like to sow seed into a relationship? Let’s imagine that your relationship is with a teenaged son – he’s causing you all sorts of grief and you just don’t know what to do. He listens to all this weird music; he’s into all these things that don’t make sense to you. How do you sow seed into his life, to produce a hundredfold harvest? Well, it’s time to get interested in the stuff that he’s interested in. Ask to listen to some of his music, show interest, ask him who the band is, what they’re singing about, why he likes their music. Maybe he’s into Facebook and you’re a complete novice – so ask him to show you how to setup an account and how to use it. Or maybe he’s done really well at something and its time for you to celebrate with him. Entering into his space, listening to him, getting interested in the things that he’s interested in … and that’s just the beginning. Each one of those is like planting a seed. There’s a famine – the relationship is difficult. It’s a seed that says you care. It’s a seed that says I love you and I accept you just the way you are. And my friend this is a seed that will reap a harvest of a hundredfold; it’s a seed that will deliver a harvest. If we want to leave behind a lastin...

Released on 1 Aug 2021