Prosperity is God’s Idea: Rules of Reaping

06/10/22 • 47 min

Welcome to Word of Life Study Series- Rules of Reaping. Here is a provocative question, “can Christians sleep through their harvest?” We have to sow before we can reap and our lack of giving often finds its roots in a lack of faith. If we were to give as the Lord has asked us to, there would be no problem in reaping a harvest today. However, for most of us, when prompted by the Lord to give, we have doubts that He is able to get it back to us in time in order to meet our other obligations that are coming up. “Well Lord, if I give that $500 to so-in-so, that I have set aside for this bill that is due in 15 days, can You really get it back to me in time?”

1. Why Some People Don’t Have Harvests

There are many in charismatic circles today who think that all there is to prosperity is making confessions and turning in prayer requests and calling hotlines. But that is not enough, we have to sow, give and plant financial seed to reap a financial harvest. We will see in the teachings of Jesus and the apostle Paul, they both compared natural sowing and reaping with spiritual sowing and reaping. It’s a mistake for us to separate spiritual things from natural things- thinking that they have nothing in common. In reality, God patterned the natural world after the spiritual realm by design, so we would make the connection.

2. They Got Tired, Waiting for the Harvest

Don’t ever put a time limit on when the harvest is ready. Stay in a state of eager expectation and don’t quit until it comes to pass in your life. What if it took 5 years for something to come to pass? Abraham had to wait 25 years for Isaac to be born- Genesis 12:4; 21:5. You will reap a harvest if you do not quit; it’s through faith and patience that we receive the manifestation of the promises of God. If there are things you believed for and you gave up, go back and pick it back up and keep believing, keep expecting.

3. Many Think Reaping is Automatic

The parable of the growing seed is talking about the spiritual counterpart to the natural process of seed growing in the soil. So in this parable, who sowed the seed? The man did. Who caused the seed to grow and develop? The soil or God does. Who reaped the harvest, God or man? The man did. Many are of the opinion that they have nothing to do with the reaping aspect of the harvest, that it just automatically happens whether they know the harvest has come or not. Reaping the harvest is no more automatic than sowing the seed is.

4. How to Reap

So the next obvious question is this, “having sown material seed, how do we reap a material harvest?” We can be walking by faith in one area of our life, and not walking by faith in another. We can be living in divine health, but be struggling financially. Faith in one area of the promises of God does not automatically make all the promises of God manifest in our lives. We know when it comes to receiving healing that we simply have to claim it by faith based on the redemptive work of Jesus Christ and receive. We need to stop praying for money and about money the way we have been up until now. The money we need is in this world, God does not have it in heaven. If we are a giver in line with the Scriptures, we are sowing material seed, then according to the Bible the provision is already there and available. Therefore, what we need to do in order to reap our financial harvest is to claim what we need out of this world system. Be specific and name the dollar amount that is needed to meet those needs. Believe that you receive it and claim it in Jesus’ Name.

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1. Why Some People Don’t Have Harvests

2. They Got Tired, Waiting for the Harvest

3. Many Think Reaping is Automatic

4. How to Reap

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Previous Episode

Prosperity is God’s Idea: Biblical Laws of Increase Part 2

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Welcome to Word of Life Study Series- Biblical Laws of Increase Part 2. Our God is the God of blessing . The Lord wants all areas of our life, spirit, soul and body to prosper and increase and be blessed. God has established laws that govern these areas of increase. It is more up to us how blessed and prosperous we are than it is the Lord. We need to cooperate with Biblical principles in order for us to receive His highest and best for our lives. The Lord is not impressed with large offerings. What He looks at first are the motives of the heart, faith and joy in our giving.

1. The Laws of Sowing and Reaping

If we sow, we will reap, if we give, it will be given to us. That is a spiritual law, it does not just sometimes work, it works all the time the same way for everybody! If we really believed in this spiritual law, we would be living our lives so much differently today. Even in the natural, the world knows about making good investments in order to gain wealth- real estate, stocks, commodities. The reality is, we will never get a better return than investing in the work of God than anything else on this planet. But most believers don’t see giving as an investment. But everything we give into God’s Kingdom and God’s people, should be seen as seed sown for an expectant return.

2. The Law of Stewardship

If we are going to prosper, we have to follow this law of stewardship. If we are faithful in a little, He will add more to us. This principle applies to all aspects of our life: money, anointing, revelation etc. We could be sowing big and still not be prosperous and get in debt. Having more come in does not necessarily denote prosperity, this is where stewardship comes in and having the wisdom of God in dealing with finances. God wants us to have the best and plenty of it, but He is big on stewardship! We must learn to have wisdom with things, to know when, who, where and how much to give. Unless we are led by the Spirit, we are not going to be prosperous. Our priorities need to be right, in our heart and in our faith.

3. The Laws of Diligence, Obedience and Faith

There are two extremes to hard work and diligence with people. There are those who we would call “workaholics” and think it’s all up to them if they prosper or not, and they work night and day- burning the candle at both ends. They do not know how to rest and let God move on their behalf. They need to come into the middle of the road and do less and believe more. Then there are those who all they want to do is lay around on the sofa and make confessions and not do anything. The Bible states that whatever we put our hands to will prosper. If we will first wait on the Lord, and get His plan, purpose and pursuit, than with that vision in hand, go out and do it with all diligence. But don’t go until you know!

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Prosperity is God’s Idea: Why Some Have a Small Harvest

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Welcome to Word of Life Study Series- Why some have a small harvest. Here is an important point to consider, the people of God are reaping a harvest, but they are much smaller than they need to be. They are reaping a small harvest, when they should be reaping a large harvest instead. Let’s look at some reasons why people reap only a small harvest.

1. They Sowed Sparingly

When folks get a revelation of this, they will start liquidating their assets so they can get a lot of seed in the ground, because they realize that is the secret to big harvests is big giving. It’s more up to us than it is up to the Lord. Unless the Lord leads us with a specific amount, we will make the decision of how much we are going to sow. In making that determination, we are determining the size of our harvest.

2. They did not Sow in Good Ground

The seed sowed into the hard, stony and thorny soil did not produce a harvest at all and so was wasted. We can have good seed and sow a lot of it, but if the ground is not good, we are not going to get a very good harvest. However, if we put the very same seed into very good ground, we would have a much larger yield or harvest from that seed, because the ground is going to produce of itself accordingly.

3. They Forfeit the Blessing of God

In the natural, when a developing crop does not have the proper balance between rain or sunshine, those factors will affect the outcome of the harvest; these are conditions that are outside of our control. This is God’s part, when He blesses our seed by providing the right elements to cause it to grow.

4. Allowing the thief to come in

Yielding to our flesh and treating people wrong, opens the door to the devil to devour our harvest. It matters how we live and how we treat other people; walking in love will always keep us on the side of God’s blessings for our lives.

5. Did not discern their harvest

People do not even realize that they need to discern the harvest in order to reap it. I am talking about discerning the timing of the harvest. People may think that the harvest is at a different time than it really is. It is like baking something in the oven, if you pull your apple pie out too early- gooey.

6. Need to discern amount of the harvest

Here is an important question that needs to be answered, do we know how much our giving has been in the past year? Are we keeping track of what and where our seed has been sown? We need to journal that information. Also, did we first check to see if that ground we sowed in, was it good ground? Next, ask yourself what a thirty, sixty or one hundred fold return on that investment into God’s Kingdom would be.

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