God Delights In Giving
“But this I say: He who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.” 2 Corinthians 9:6 NKJV
It is a simple thing for us to understand, that if I fail to plant corn seeds in the spring I will not be able to harvest any corn crop in due season. I would not expect to harvest any crop if I had never planted any seed, it would be ridiculous for me to expect too. The concept is simple and straight forward. You can’t receive a harvest if you have not planted any seed.
This which is self-evident to us concerning things in this natural world is just as true in the spiritual realm and concerning spiritual things. God has promised to bless you and He is faithful to the things He has promised. All of those things He promised are already established for you in the spiritual realm. But we have a part to play in this. If you are struggling in the area of finances this is a concept that will set you free and walk you into all the promised blessings He has for you. He is faithful but we have something to do in order to receive all that He has prepared for us. To live this out in all areas of His promises we first have to learn to apply the principle of sowing and reaping to our finances. The truth is that if we cannot trust Jesus in the area of our finances, we will fail to trust Him in any other area of His promises.
The verse above instructs us that if we sow sparingly I will then get back very little and what I do get is with a lot of difficulty and frustration. Very little means that I give just a little to others in service to the Lord and what I do give I give grudgingly and with the wrong attitude. When we hesitate to give we are essentially saying to Jesus that we are not His stewards. We are refusing to admit that anything we have is what He has entrusted to us. We are saying that the money we have is ours and not the Lord’s. Doing this cuts off the flow of money to us because Jesus can’t trust us with it, that He is not able to trust us to be good stewards of what is His and what He has entrusted to us.
But, if we give generously, if we sow bountifully, we will then also reap bountifully. To give generously or bountifully means that we give a lot, not just what is required or what we feel we can get away with. It means that we are aware that all that we have is not ours but His and we are just His steward. And finally, it means that we give with a heart that delights in being a blessing to others, just as Jesus delights in giving to us.
If this is how you give, this is the same way that you will receive. Give a little and you will get very little back. Give a lot and with the right heart and you will find that you cannot outrun the blessings that He pours back upon you. God does not want to withhold, He delights to meet your needs with abundance! The choice is simple and it is ours.
J Todd Hostetler