You Reap What You Sow - Part 1

I think most people have heard this phrase their whole life without realizing it came from Paul.

“Don’t be deceived: God is not mocked. For whatever a person sows he will also reap, because the one who sows to his flesh will reap destruction from the flesh, but the one who sows to the Spirit will reap eternal life from the Spirit.” — Galatians 6:7-8 (CSB)

The secular world calls this karma. But Paul isn’t talking about the universe balancing itself out. He’s talking about something more precise and more serious — a law God built into the fabric of reality that you cannot trick, cannot shortcut, and cannot escape.

Whatever you sow, you reap. Always. In both directions.

It Goes Both Ways

I think we read this verse and immediately jump to the positive side — sow good things, reap good things. But Paul leads with the warning, not the promise.

“The one who sows to his flesh will reap destruction from the flesh.”

I lived that before I understood it.

For a season of my life I was fat and depressed. And I didn’t get there dramatically — there was no single moment of crisis, no obvious turning point. I just sowed consistently into my flesh, day after day. Overeating. Low activity. Negative self talk. Consuming content that romanticized depression and made staying there feel normal, even appealing. The algorithm fed me more of what I was already drowning in and I let it. Choosing comfort and consumption over discipline and life every time the choice presented itself. Small seeds, planted daily, for a long time.

And I reaped exactly what I sowed. Slowly, quietly, without fanfare. That’s how it always works — the harvest doesn’t announce itself while you’re planting. It just arrives one day and you look around and realize this is what all those small decisions built.

That’s the sobering side of this verse. You are always sowing something. The question is never whether you’re planting — it’s what you’re planting.

The Harvest Takes Longer Than You Think

“Let us not get tired of doing good, for we will reap at the proper time if we don’t give up.” — Galatians 6:9 (CSB)

Paul wouldn’t write this if it weren’t a real temptation. You don’t tell people not to get tired of something unless people actually get tired of it.

The gap between sowing and reaping is where faith lives. And that gap is almost always longer than you expected.

My weight loss took about a year and a quarter. Not dramatically — no big reveal moment, no week where everything suddenly changed. Just consistently sowing differently than I had before. Eating less. Training more. Showing up when I didn’t feel like it. And honestly? I barely noticed it happening. I have body dysmorphia so the mirror wasn’t showing me what was actually true. I went from fat to fit and the reap was real before I could even see it.

That’s usually how it works. The harvest is happening before you can perceive it. The seed is doing something underground that you can’t observe. And if you quit in that gap — if you get tired of doing good before the proper time — you never find out what was coming.

What Three Years of Sowing Looks Like

I started at Black Box VR three years ago as a QA engineer. The lowest pay at the company. The most grunt work — just testing the game and the app, finding bugs, doing what nobody else wanted to do. No code experience. Just a willingness to sow.

I didn’t solve problems nobody knew about. I just chose to do something about the problems everyone complained about and nobody fixed. Slowly, block by block, I learned. I went above and beyond when it wasn’t required. I rewrote our entire 250,000 line backend — the cloud infrastructure our entire business runs on — into something clean and maintainable. I built our support tool and our booth management software backend from scratch.

Three years from QA tester to owning the entire backend infrastructure of the company. Not because I was the most talented person in the room — I work alongside really talented frontend developers who are gifted in ways I’m not. But because I sowed consistently in my lane, chose excellence when nobody was watching, and trusted that faithfulness would eventually produce something.

I didn’t expect to end up with this much responsibility. That wasn’t the plan I had. But that’s the thing about sowing to the Spirit — the harvest often looks different than what you imagined, and usually better.

Sowing and Reaping at the Same Time

Some of the most important sowing I’ve done has been relational — and this is where it gets interesting, because the reap sometimes starts before you’re even done planting.

Coming to Christ changed how I show up for Maddy. Denying myself, picking up extra slack, choosing to serve even when it costs me something. And she does the same. What that’s produced is the happiest, most even relationship we’ve ever had.

My friendships are the same. The best ones I have now required real sowing — showing up when it was inconvenient, being vulnerable when it was uncomfortable, investing time and money I didn’t always feel like spending. Uncomfortable at first. But the reap is some of the most life-giving relationships I’ve ever had.

Those feel like sowing and reaping simultaneously — like the harvest is already coming in while you’re still planting. I think that’s what Paul means when he talks about eternal life from the Spirit. It’s not just future. Some of it starts now.

What I’m Still Sowing Into

Then there are the seeds where I genuinely cannot see the harvest yet. Where faithfulness just has to be enough.

Black Box VR from a life impact and financial standpoint. My spiritual growth and wherever that leads — I feel like I’m in a preparation season right now, possibly moving toward something in ministry, but I can’t see the shape of it yet. I just keep sowing and trust that God is doing something with it underground.

And this blog.

I post and sometimes it feels like crickets. I put real time into these posts — around a full time job, around wedding planning, around everything else. And I hear from some people that it’s hitting them somewhere real. But mostly I don’t hear anything. I just put it out and don’t know what happens to it.

But here’s what I keep coming back to: I know this glorifies God. I know it serves whoever reads it. And that has to be enough. The how and the when of the harvest — that’s not my department. That’s His.

And I think that’s actually the entire concept of this verse.

What Are You Sowing Right Now?

Paul says we are always sowing either to the flesh or the Spirit. Never in between. Every moment is a seed going into one ground or the other.

That’s not meant to be crushing — it’s meant to be clarifying. You don’t need a dramatic overhaul. You just need to look honestly at what you’re planting daily and ask whether the harvest that produces is what you actually want.

The small seeds are the ones that matter most. The daily training session. The consistent time in the Word. The choice to serve when you’d rather check out. The work you do with excellence when nobody is watching. The post you write even when nobody responds.

Small seeds. Planted faithfully. Over a long time.

That’s the whole thing.

“Let us not get tired of doing good, for we will reap at the proper time if we don’t give up.”

Don’t give up.

If this landed somewhere for you I’d love to hear about it. And if you’re in a sowing season right now with no harvest in sight — keep going. The proper time is coming.

Part 2 coming soon. Will be much more application and study of what this means for you focused.

— Raiden