Increasing Your Harvest
Now He who provides seed for the sower and bread for food will provide and multiply your seed for sowing [that is, your resources] and increase the harvest of your righteousness [which shows itself in active goodness, kindness, and love].
2 Corinthians 9:10
→ You sow money, you reap righteousness.
For a long time I misread this verse. I thought it was talking about giving and getting more in return. That I am given some seed to continue sow and some seed to eat. And the more seed I was given, the more I would sow and the more I would eat. But that is only part of what this verse is talking about. In reality, one of the most important points of this verse is actually the connection of sowing in terms of resources and money and reaping in the harvest of righteous living. The focus is on the harvest of righteousness, not so much the harvest of more money! And I love in the amplified version it says that righteous living shows itself through living in goodness, kindness and love.
Sometimes the meaning of righteousness isn’t too clear because we use it so much in the church world and its become a common phrase we might use by not fully understand. But basically righteousness is right living in God’s ways. One way to look at it is that we are choosing to walk down the paths of right living, which is the path of God. Righteousness is not living under a religious mentality of forcing good living. No, true righteousness comes from an inward transformation of encountering God.
That is why righteousness is the fruit from the harvest of sowing financially. Because the more that you choose to give and move in generosity, the more your heart is shaped into the heart of God. Because giving is God, He first demonstrated radical generosity to us. God so loved that He first gave. Out of that, we then are able to demonstrate that to others, sowing our seeds of finances into the church, ministries and others. And the harvest we experience is an increasingly transformed heart. A heart that looks like God, and as the amplified version says, a heart that bears goodness, kindness, and love in life.
Yes, giving transforms us. It makes our hearts look like our Maker. The more we give, the more we experience this change and the more goodness and kindness and love show up in our lives. Generosity at first might not be the easiest. It’s hard to step into something that our thinking and beliefs are counter to. But as we do, we will begin to see miraculous fruit in our lives. Yes, more multiplication of seed to continue to sow but more importantly, a greater harvest of godly ways of love and kindness.
