To enlarge means to make it bigger, implying that anytime there is enlargement, there must be two important factors involved – the object to be enlarged and the fellow who is going to be the enlarger.
You are the one to be enlarged and the enlarger is the One spoken about in Genesis 1:28: “And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.”
The Scripture above didn’t say, “Be fruitful and increase”, but rather, “Be fruitful and multiply”. This implies that if you are truly fruitful, then you will multiply; that is the true meaning of fruitfulness. God is not interested in addition, but rather, in multiplication. You must seek to multiply over and over again. We have a mandate that is to multiply whatever is in our possession.
Why then are many people, including Christians satisfied with the status quo? Some are satisfied with getting a little increase in their salary every two years, some pastors are satisfied with just sitting over one parish of their Church with the same number of people for several years. This is as good as a taboo, especially when you consider the status of the Person who said, “Be fruitful and multiply”. There is a popular saying that goes thus: “Garbage in, garbage out”.
If you really want to multiply, then you must multiply your efforts too; you must multiply everything you have been doing, in order to get the desired results. If you do this, you would soon realise that your results have also multiplied.
Multiplication is in levels; some people will multiply thirty-fold, some sixty-fold and some a hundred-fold and so on. Multiply your input in proportion to how much increase you desire in your output. Multiply your input in prayers, in work, in study, in giving and so on. We have a God who promised to multipy us in every area of our lives .
Law 1: The harvest is limited to the planting.
You can only harvest what you plant. In other words, if you haven’t sown it, God can’t multiply it. One of the clearest pictures of multiplication occurs in John 6, where Jesus is standing before 5,000 hungry people (more like 15,000 if you include the women and children). He takes a little boy’s lunch, five loaves and two fish—a Hebrew Happy Meal. You know the story: After Jesus takes the loaves and fish and blesses the food, he distributes it to his disciples until everyone is fed and there are 12 basketfuls leftover.
This miracle demonstrates the pattern of multiplication. It’s only as you put what you have in the hands of Jesus that it’s multiplied. We tend to reverse that. Well, if God multiplies what I have, then I’ll give it away. But God says, “Give it away, and it will multiply!”
Law 2: The harvest comes later than the planting.
The hard part about harvesting is that it takes time to see your efforts pay off. That’s why many people never see the harvest. They start off well, but they give up too soon.
We live in a generation of instant gratification. I know I’m like that. When I diet, I want to see the results right away. I want to eat salad one time and see the difference the next morning. But life doesn’t work like that. Real change takes time to grow.When I fast and pray I want instant results.
This is even truer in agriculture. One of our campus pastors told me about a practical joke he played on his neighbors when he was a kid. He grew up on a farm, so he al
Results take time. What you sow today, you won’t see the return of until the next season in life. Sowing is all about the future. And while it’s worth the wait, we often don’t act like it.
Law 3: The harvest is greater than the planting.
In the harvest, what comes back to you is always greater than what you sowed. If you plant a wheat seed, it will turn into a wheat stalk that can produce hundreds of wheat seeds. The law of greater says that what starts small multiplies into something much bigger than what you began with. What you reap will always come back greater than what you sow. Jesus talked about a harvest of 30, 60, and 100 fold (Mark 4:20).
When Scripture applies this to money, it teaches us that the harvest is greater than the planting in both the magnitude of what you reap and the kind of fruit you reap. Paul says in Galatians 6:8 that we reap eternal life from the Spirit by our sowing; in 2 Corinthians he calls this the “harvest of righteousness.” God often uses generosity to give us gifts far greater than money.
Think of it this way: Which would you rather have—a lot of money or the ability to be truly happy and satisfied with what you have? Only a fool would say, “Give me the money.” Why? Because the reason you want more money is to be happier and more satisfied.
What if there was a better way to get to that end? In Matthew 6:21, Jesus challenges his disciples to be generous with their money because “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” It’s the same principle. Invest your treasure in heaven, and watch your heart follow it. Having your heart set on heaven is a far greater gift than having more cash.
And you shall be enlarged in Jesus’ name
Apostolic Life 