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Truths to Live By - One Day at a Time
Devotional: December 15th

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“They that sow in tears shall reap in joy. He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.”

In HYPERLINK "javascript:" the children of Israel are reminiscing about their return to the land after their captivity in Babylon. It had been as if they were in a dream world, filled with laughter and singing. Even their pagan neighbors had commented on the great things the Lord had done for His people.

Now that they were back in their own land, they had to start planting crops. But this posed a problem. They had brought back only a limited amount of grain with them. They could use it as food now; after all, there were no crops in the field for them to harvest. Or they could use it as seed, sowing it in the ground with the hope of an abundant harvest in days to come. If they decided to use most of it as seed, that meant that they would have to live frugally and sacrificially until harvest time. They decided on the latter course.

As the farmer went out into his fields, dipped his hand into the seed, and scattered it broadcast on the plowed land, he would shed tears at the thought of the privations he and his family would have to endure until the time of harvest.

But later when the fields teemed with golden grain, his tears would be turned to joy as he brought the ripened sheaves back to the barn. All the sacrifices his household had made would be richly rewarded.

We can think of this in connection with our own stewardship of material things. The Lord entrusts each of us with a limited amount of money. We can spend it in self-indulgence, buying up whatever our hearts desire. Or by living sacrificially we can invest it in the work of the Lord—in foreign missions, in Christian literature, in Gospel radio broadcasts, in the local church and in many other forms of evangelistic activity. In that case it will mean choosing a modest standard of living so that everything above essentials will go into the work of the Lord. It will mean living on a restricted budget so that souls will not perish for want of the Gospel.

But any such sacrifices will not be worth mentioning when the time of harvest comes, when we will see men and women in heaven as a result of our sacrificial living. One person saved from hell to become a worshiper of the Lamb of God for all eternity is worth any sacrifice we can make now.

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