God Multiplies Whatever You Give to Him

If you give God your time, he multiplies it. If you give him your money or energy, he multiplies that, too. As I’ve mentioned here before, it’s like planting seeds. Farmers know that seeds must be sacrificed by being buried in the ground; they must be given away to do any good.

If you keep a seed in a sack, it accomplishes nothing, but if you plant it, it multiplies. For example, when you plant just one watermelon seed, you get a bunch of watermelons with hundreds of seeds in them. In the same way, God multiplies whatever you give him.

What’s the key ingredient in this seed planting? Faith.

But we have to understand the difference between faith and bargaining. Bargaining is when you say, “God, help me close this deal and I’ll give you part of it.” God doesn’t work that way. God asks for faith. He wants us to sacrifice in advance, without worrying about whether we’ll get anything in return; he wants us to let him figure out how to repay us.

One of the great lessons Kay and I have learned is that you cannot out-give God. Whatever you give God, he multiplies. Three different times in our marriage, God told us to give away our entire savings. Each time we obeyed, and each time, God restored our finances in greater ways than ever before.

Jesus makes us this promise in Luke 18:29-30: “Truly I tell you . . . no one who has left home or wife or brothers or sisters or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God will fail to receive many times as much in this age, and in the age to come eternal life” (NIV).

And elsewhere in the Bible, we read this: “Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:58 NIV).