^2-3 I’ll make you a great nation
        and bless you.
    I’ll make you famous;
        you’ll be a blessing.
    I’ll bless those who bless you;
        those who curse you I’ll curse.
    All the families of the Earth
        will be blessed through you.”

When we give to God, how do we give?  What heart do we operate with?  Are we giving to just get something? Out of obligation? It’s the right thing to do?  Because the Bible or our pastors say we have to?  What if we just gave with a heart of faith believing in outrGod for the harvest?  We have to look at giving as a process of building faith.  First we need to plant seeds in faith that they will grow whether it be into a certain ministry or our personal lives.  Secondly we need to tend the seeds by praying in faith that they will grow and produce a harvest.  We have to believe in our seeds.

This may seem silly to some but God had me look up some facts about fruit:

Sunflowers:  1 flower produces 1,000 to 2,000 seeds and takes 80 to 100 days to harvest

Pumpkins:  1 gourd produces on average 3,900 seeds and takes 75 to 100 days to harvest

Mustard Seed:  1 plant produces 8-10,000 seeds and takes 60-90 days to harvest

Peaches:  1 peach, 1 pit, tree and 1 tree produces on average 925 peaches which takes 3 years to harvest

Cherry:  1 cherry, 1 pit, 1 tree averaging 7,000 cherries but takes 3 to 4 years to harvest

Apples: 5 seeds per apple, 5 trees averaging 700 apples, however 4 to 5 years to harvest

(I feel the apple tree takes the most faith to plant because it takes so long to produce fruit, plus I thought it was cool that 5 is the number of grace (seeds) and 7 in the number of completion (700))

Whether the harvest is immediate like the sunflowers and pumpkins or years down the road like the trees, we still need to see it as provision from God.  God started the multiplication process in Genesis 1:11-13 and He will continue to multiply our seeds because its a part of His creation and what is in the Word, God has to provide.  So when we accept the truth that multiplication was started by God we need to take the truth of the seed and plant it.  We have to believe in God’s multiplication process and decide how big of a harvest we desire and plant accordingly.

We need to come to the realization that sometimes it takes time for the return to happen. Take for example my husbands new truck that is blue-book valued at $6,000 but he got it for $3,000 with no issues….he has no idea which seed of faith he sowed to receive that..to me that was an apple seed.  And example of a sunflower/pumpkin seed harvest would be that sometimes we sow a seed and the return does not come as we expected.  Think about apples and the multitude of ways you can get it:  apples, applesauce, apple juice..ect.  Sometimes we sow a seed and it comes back to us how God sees fit not how we want it.

Final example is a mustard seed harvest.  One Sunday night my husband was deciding how much to put in the offering and he felt to give all that he had on him which would leave us with no money until Monday afternoon.  He did and that SAME night he received a card from someone thanking him for doing the sound for a funeral and it had MORE money in it than he just gave.

So what can we do with all of these fruit facts?  One:  plant seeds…we have to do something in order to activate a harvest.  In Genesis 12:1-3 Abraham had to give up his country in order for God to fulfill His promise to him, all we have to do is give up our offerings as seeds to God, trusting Him with our finances.  Secondly we have to pray over our seeds, like I saw in the planting of seeds some took as little as 60 days while others took up to 5 years to harvest, pray until we see something happen.  Thirdly, we have to trust God with our seeds and believe in His promises.

If we look in Genesis 15:5 we see how God teaches Abraham multiplication with the starts and again in Genesis 22:17 with the grains of sand.  We have to believe that God will do what He promises in His Word.   We need to believe that what we sow will produce a harvest simply because His Word tells us this is truth and God does not go against His Word.  In conclusion, it is up to us to have enough faith to believe in the multiplication process and to decide in our hearts that we serve a God who will multiply any seed we sow accordingly to His plan and purpose for our lives.

“Offerings are the spices that give you the fullness of life”