Faithful Harvest
By Margaret D. Mitchell
Week of April 25, 2021
What have you been believing God to manifest in your life? What desire of your heart? What promise?
A few weeks ago, on Resurrection Sunday, my mother surprised me by handing me a set of antique flatware that was important to my heart. It was her and my father’s first set as a married couple. Yes, they were inexpensive, and some pieces were missing. But its sweet sunflower pattern was like gold to me, because it was the flatware I remember setting the table with when I was a kid on countless evenings, while Mom cooked dinner.
Over the past couple of decades, I wondered where this flatware was. Mom had bought new utensils and thought the old ones had gotten lost. But it kept coming up in my heart, because the matter wasn’t settled for me in my soul. God knew where it was the whole time: in Mom’s attic. And He watched over it all these years until it was passed on to me.
As I looked through the gift bag of flatware Mom handed to me, I saw that some pieces were missing. At some point, she remembered that they had disappeared years ago, during camping trips, after she repurposed the set to our family camper.
I believe God sometimes highlights moments like this in an effort to illustrate what He’s doing in our lives-at-large, during particular times and seasons. So, for me, this situation goes beyond handing down heirlooms. I believe it’s about faithfully bringing complete restoration of the natural and supernatural inheritances that we hold dear in our hearts.
It’s about regaining what was once lost (or thought to be), and rebuilding to extend legacy—30-, 60- and 100-fold.
It’s about purposed redemption—past, present, and future—and the honor of recompense.
In these ways, God faithfully expands His Kingdom from within us to beyond us.
This kind of gathering—or harvest—of what we’ve waited and hoped for involves receiving specific quantities of specific things to further fulfill a purpose.
We find this Biblical harvest precept in 1 Peter 1:9 TPT, which says, "For you are reaping the harvest of your faith—the full salvation promised you—your souls’ victory!
This precept is predicated on Hebrews 4:3 TPT, which says, "For those of us who believe, faith activates the promise and we experience the realm of confident rest!"
So, friends, we can rest in our Lord as we trust Him and move forward with Him during this faith-driven harvesttime, knowing His redemptive ways will prove faithful.
We see this faithful living and purity of heart in Ruth’s life, even after she lost more than half of her husband’s immediate family and before God brought her to Boaz.
Ruth’s story is a reminder of Psalm 126:5-6 NLT, which say, "Those who plant in tears will harvest with shouts of joy. They weep as they go to plant their seed, but they sing as they return with the harvest."
Historically, we are in the midst of Ruth’s harvest time right now.
As her story goes, Ruth stepped into her new beginning, her unknown, depending on God in her heart. She experienced God’s rapid increase of manifest blessing through her good work: from 30-fold, as she gleaned barley leftovers behind the harvesters (Ruth 2:2, 3, 7). To 60-fold, after Boaz invited her to come closer, where she gathered an ephah (two-thirds of a bushel) (Ruth 2:14-17). Then to 100-fold, when she married Boaz and was well-provided for, as she co-owned the fields with him (Ruth 3:1, 4:10).
So, Ruth’s kind of harvest required actions of faith, maturity, right timing, increasing quantities, and completed work (Ruth 2:23).
Just like in Ruth’s life, as we sync with God, we can experience a rapid increase of benefit through the harvest-work He has laid before us until the promises of our faith are made manifest (Jn 17:4).
By the way, those missing pieces of flatware aren’t missing anymore. The very day Mom handed me my inheritance gift was also the day Holy Spirit led me to complete the set by finding and ordering the missing pieces online.
And it’s just the beginning.
So, friends, what pieces are missing in your life? What will God shift in your favor to bring a redemptive recompense? What will the two of you faithfully complete as you keep a holy heart and co-labor with Him in His way?
Pray with me if you will…
Dear Lord,
Thank You for Your mercy of redemption to restore what was once lost. Thank You for enriching me, by Your grace, for my benefit and that of Your Kingdom. Thank You for bringing me to a place of confident rest to believe for and receive the harvest of my faith as I actively co-labor with you to completion (Heb 4:3, 1 Pet 1:9). Thank You, Lord, for giving me eyes to see and a heart to obey as I "…keep coming closer and closer to you, Lord Yahweh, for your name is good to me. I’ll keep telling the world of your awesome works, my faithful and glorious God" (Ps 73:28 TPT)!
In Jesus’ Mighty Name.
Amen.
Margaret D. Mitchell is the Founder of God's Love at Work, a marketplace outreach purposed to share God's greatest power source - the love of Christ.
