The Law of Sowing and reaping was instituted by God and the bible makes it clear that it does not apply to farming alone. We have seen how sowing and reaping according to the context of 2 Cor 9:6-8 applies to giving of money into the kingdom of God.
2 Cor 9: 6 -8
6 ¶ But this I say, He which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly; and he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully.
7 Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give; not grudgingly, or of necessity: for God loveth a cheerful giver.
8 And God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work:
In the background of the context of giving, Paul emphasises the tenet of reaping sparingly if you sow sparingly and vice versa.
We have seen how it’s important to sow. Sow you must! However, any act that you do is sowing really! If you show mercy and love it is sowing; so is it with jealously and hate! All these attitudes of the heart and actions are also sowing! One day it will come back to you in good measure pressed down and shaken together. And it is important to note that it’s applicable to the area of money as well (as we have seen last week).
We have also seen that each one should purpose in one’s heart how much one is going to give. It is not to be interpreted to mean we decide in our heart how much we are to give on our own wish. Rather we are to decide the amount of our giving based on how you would like to reap (sparingly or bountifully). It is no small matter, but it is an exercise of your faith to decide where you want to go and how much you would like to achieve based on this tenet in v 6! How do I want to set the pace of increase in my life; how do I like to move forward, what is going to happen to me as I make a decision of my faith in giving this amount? A deliberate, intelligent and spiritual decision indeed.
We also saw about the widow who put in her two mites; we saw how each one’s economic situation decides how valuable one’s seed is. More than being about how much you have given, it is about how much you have left after you have given!
And Jesus was commending how she put in much. And some deride Jesus’ action that he took away a poor widow’s purse. (And they do the same to preachers who ask for money from people). We have seen other passages of scripture that highlight what would have happened to her though this story does not record it.
You shall receive a hundred fold…
In good measure, pressed down shaken together and running over…
Then shall your barns be filled with plenty and your vats over flow…
These verses surely dispel doubts about headlines screaming,
We will never encounter such a situation because it is God’s principle:
Quality decisions have to be made in your life (based on Godly principle): You are not going to increase merely because you went to church every week for your whole life!
The reason people do not increase is because they do not make a quality decision on giving. Usually, a church goer will decide to give only when the offertory is announced; he would reach into his pocket and pull out what is there; out of what they have there, they would give something in the offertory.
They leave home without a thought about giving; they hastily do the math based on what they have in their pocket at church! Even the most generously minded would make a quick calculation how much it would cost to get home, deduct that and give the balance; smug they have given all! They have not considered their life; they have not purposed where they would like to go; they have not considered God’s purpose or their destiny;
The bible is full of laws; full of spiritual laws! (Just like there are physical laws, there are spiritual laws. And these laws work all the time. ) Understanding them and putting them to work will cause you to reap a desirable harvest. (Even spending time and effort to understand the sp laws is itself sowing!) In the same way, everything you sow, you will reap! Believe in the law of sowing and reaping!
For students, the time before the exam is a time of sowing: a strenuous time but committing oneself to God, Asking for God’s help and putting in the effort to sow, will cause you to reap a rich harvest. You will not get a harvest without sowing!
Sow Bountifully. The next way to sow is to sow liberally, sow bountifully (in order to reap bountifully). If there was sown other way, you could but there is not!
Pr 11: 24
24 ¶ There is that scattereth, and yet increaseth; and there is that withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty.
Biblical principles are so different from the world’s way! The world commands not to give.
A penny saved is a penny earned…
Some have thought scatter means to splurge… spend money loosely. A man who already one was known to fritter it away went home after hearing a sermon on scattering told his wife: “Did you listen to the preacher? We have to scatter it all away!”
To understand scatter we have to relate it to the practice of scattering in agriculture. The writer of Proverbs envisions a sower who scatters seed.
A sower would not scatter the seed on a highway but he would be careful to choose the ground, plough and prepare it with diligence and be generous with the seed to the ground made ready. Scattering is not loose spending; but being generous and liberal about sowing money as seed.
There is one who withholds and becomes poor. The farmer knows that if he refuses to give, he will not get back enough the next time.
God gives bread to the eater and seed to the sower.
Whenever God gives you salary or income, the money has two parts to it: the bread side and the seed side.
Be careful with it: if you eat the seed side along with the bread you will not have bread tomorrow! You have to be smart and think. That is why it is written as he purposeth in his heart!
Therefore some savvy farmers will shrewdly decide to reduce what he would eat so he would have more to sow! Setting aside a large portion is kept side by shrewd investors since they reckon wisely that if they sowed more they would reap more! Decide on the basis of how much you would like to reap! Look at what God has given you as bread to the eater and seed to the sower; decide how much you would eat and how much you would sow.
The more I sow, the more I would have the next time for eating. If I sowed less the food to eat would be the next time around…
Discerning what you can sow is a major step. You could sow into learning. Your salary you could tithe out of; but you could spend your earning on buying good books and reading them. Though some would decry and debase it, such sowing would ensure a rich harvest. Renew your mind to think that you are not poor; if you sowed into renewing and fortifying your mind with word of God you will have enough to keep at learning more truth and have more than enough for all your other needs!
Be careful what you spend your money on… do you spend all your money on the Chinese restaurant at the expense of investing in buying the truth and growing? If you cut the Chinese restaurant and spent more time on feeding the word, then soon you could take a trip to china to eat Chinese food! It would not matter!
There will come a day when money will become nothing: it will flow a river; it will heap from every side; you will not have pockets to put it in: but you must sow!
Soon you will not have to worry about how much the cost has gone up: how the world has changed… It will not matter to you! But you cannot get there by merely being a church goer! You have to take the law of sowing and reaping and put it to work now! And continue to sow even after you arrive.
Perceive all that you do as sowing! All of you will have to sow liberally and bountifully.
The common gripe is “I do not have enough to sow” a person with this kind of talk will never have enough? For Jesus said;
if you are faithful in little, you will be faithful in much.
It is alright if you had little, but what have you done with that little? How do you deal that little? How you deal with that little is going to decide how you will deal when you have much. It has nothing to do with how much have or the largeness of your financial ability.
You can be generous with Rs 50/- even if that is all you have. If you are not generous with 50, you cannot be generous when you have 500,000! The reason why many do not have much even after walking with the Lord for a long time is because they have not been faithful with the little they have!
“I would like to give, but I am not in a position to give right now” Miserly in outlook they make excuses. You can tell a generous person even when money is not involved. Look at the breakfast table: this young man would polish off 5 of the six idlis, and leave one for his dad!
There are fathers who will treat themselves to the niceties at the office get togethers, working lunches and on the way back from work without a thought about their wife and children! Why not think about they would like to eat: generosity does not demand you should have much and give a lot: it is the thought that matters. Generosity is in the thinking!
There are homes when meat is cooked for the father alone: the children make do with the gravy or some other curry. The reason: they cannot afford meat for everybody.
“We are poor!” You can be poor and be generous! You can share out of the little you have! If you live stingy, you will reap in good measure when you grow old! You will set a blueprint for your family as a behaviour pattern!
If you were in God’s position and wanted to bless someone, you would also like to see how someone deals with the little he has, in order to entrust more!
You can be poor but generous: there are many poor but generous who give sacrificially: share what they have with father, mother and others! They have a generous spirit; God blesses the generous spirit.
It is how you think! The miserly are messed up in their thinking: because their thinking is wrong their life is wrong! They would not go forward even if they carry their bible to church and shout “halleluiah”!
The generous mind says: God is able to give me more; let me give: tomorrow will be better! I will have more to give: as I give, it will be given back to me:
Good measure pressed down shaken together…
The floodgates of heaven will be opened and I will overflow…
My future will be great!
Such a person speaks God’s language, instead of the world’s language of want lack and insufficiency! How God will bless him and pour out a blessing! Believe in God and believe you will have more tomorrow! God will trust you with more as you are faithful in little.
Generosity Thinking. Generosity has to do with thinking…
Generosity has to do with talk too…
One said, “I am so poor, the poor call me poor” Quit poor jokes! No more poor jokes! The more you joke about it the more you enjoy it, and how can you joke if you became rich? (You‘d rather be poor and joke till you die than change the joke!) Change your talk!
Generosity ahs to do with how you think and talk! You have to say it when you don’t have it; you have witness angst those who hear, (even if they do not believe). It is a statement of what you believe: your rich mentality. How does one get that rich mentality? When you read the bible! (If you heard the wrong preaching, you can get a wrong mentality!)
It is all about mentality. Fat people cannot get free of it, not because it is physically impossible but because their mentality is so deeply ingrained!
I gain 10 kilos if I just smell pastries! Such excuses entrenches you in that mentality and it becomes a condition you do not want to get out of!
Being under debt too is like that! A mentality that does not consider sowing and reaping, is bereft of biblical basis.
Someone even said: it is a blessing to be poor. (I had to wash my ear, since such thinking is so infectious); no marks for imagining what preaching it will produce!
It is not a blessing to be poor: it is a curse: we have to do everything we can to get out of it! Poverty is not of God: God does not want even one person to be poor: if you believe in being poor, then you will I stay poor!
Renew Your mind. You have to get your mind renewed with the God of abundance; stat thinking brand new; stop talking the old talk and speak the new! Show generosity with your thought and talk: show generosity with the little you got! Show it on the dinner table, with your flesh and blood, in a real way in your life: change your thinking and talk!
Become biblical in thinking. Do not be infected with the worldly thinking! Do not glorify and exalt poverty to sainthood! From such people do you get poverty thinking, despite having read 2 Cor 9: 6-8, they do not practise it, they do not order their thinking and mind accordingly. If you have little why don’t you sow bountifully and reap bountifully?
Before you become prosperous in reality you have to become prosperous in thinking!
2 Cor 9: 6-8
It is possible to give away and become richer; It is possible to hold on too tight and lose everything.
The liberal man shall be rich; by watering others he waters himself.
Look Up. How is that possible? My giving is my sowing, whatever I sow, will come back to me good measure… I do not look wistfully at the offering box as it talks away my money; I look up to heaven after I give, cause my God is able to give bountifully back to me! He is true to his word, so my hands are raised to Him alone!
Are too tight, if you are close fisted, even God cannot get anything into your hands because you have to open your hand to receive! Do not be afraid to lose when you open your hand; it is the route to receive bountifully!
The prosperity that comes God’s way will work for everybody: get the mentality first; the money will follow later!