Can You See 03: Do Not Miss Your Harvest!

You should as a Christian, blessed and highly favoured, be having harvests every single day of your life. But again, due to a lack of insight and eyesight most Christians miss their harvests.

• Anyone who is a blessing to you – they are a harvest. Whether they are teaching you, blessing you, inspiring you, challenging you, edifying you, encouraging you, comforting you – that is a harvest.
• A lot of the ideas we have are harvests caused by the seeds we have sown in others. Especially ideas that help people.
• Any increase that comes your way, financial or otherwise is a harvest.

The problem is that a harvest must be harvested, but if you do not perceive your harvest, you will not honour your harvest, and then you will not receive your harvest. This is basic Biblical principles and you have to grasp and appreciate this.

One of my sons told me this week that he appreciates God for me being his father because I am easy to honour. I understand not every father is easy to honour, but actually – the way I am now he is an adult is the harvest to the way he is sowing seeds. The way he is now is a result of the seeds I have sown in his life. It all comes back to sowing and reaping. Remember, when Jesus told everyone the parable of the sower He said that if you do not understand this parable, you will fail to understand everything in the kingdom. If you fail to understand sowing and reaping, you fail to understand the entire kingdom of God. The principle that holds above all is sowing and reaping. To act like sowing and reaping is not sow, according to Galatians, is to actually mock God!

I believe harvests are coming our way daily and we do not see them. It is our responsibility to develop the ability to perceive our harvests. We had a lady leave our church (this is years and years ago) and before she left she wrote me a hand-written letter explaining the reason she had left was that during her time at Tree of Life Church she had received nothing from God during the worship or the teaching, and certainly she had received zero return on her giving.

Now, let me tell you as clearly as I can – I do not trust anyone who can write down that they have received nothing from God in a whole year. That’s not a failure of God, that’s a failure of their perception. It turned out in her time with us, she had gone from unemployed to employed, her children had got into the school of her choice, she had developed some great friends. I don’t know about you – but all those things are a harvest to me. This ladies’ failure to see harvest opened the door to bitterness.

Pastoring Tree of Life is a harvest, and that might be obvious to see. But being an accountant is a harvest, being a taxi driver is a harvest. Having a job is a harvest! When I got my first post-Bible College job, working in a fast food restaurant for minimum wage, it was a harvest – I sowed precious seed in an offering for that job! It was a harvest. Every day I would walk to God and thank God I had a job. It wasn’t the full corn in the ear, but it was a harvest. It put food on the table, it gave me people to share my faith with, and there was a glory about it all because I recognized it.

If you didn’t wake up today in a hospital with tubes running in and out of your body, you have a harvest and you should praise God. Many people went to work today and didn’t make it home. A friend of mine got on an aeroplane to fly to Africa and when the plane landed, he was in Heaven. Every plane that I get on alive and get off alive is a harvest. Get up early and watch the sunrise – it is a harvest. Thousands of people will never have another sunrise unless the Rapture.

Did you eat today? I believe nearly everyone reading this has the resources to go and eat right now until they make themselves sick. That’s a harvest. I have been in places in the world where people are literally dying due to there being no food. Feed yourself did you? Many people have to be fed by others? Have a car? There’s a harvest.

Ever heard a song and it just spoke to you? Harvest. Just look up for a second. That’s a ceiling above your head. The rain is not dripping on you, the snow is not in your house. Thank God for your harvests.

Most of us do not thank God for these things because we do not perceive them as harvests. The greatest harvest in your life is that you are a son of God because God sowed His one and only Son into your life.

So as you sit in your air conditioned car, and drive to work, listening to your favourite preachers (hopefully I am in there somewhere!), thank God for all of those things, they are part of the harvest.

The more you train yourself to see harvests, the more harvests come your way. There are many people who give very small amounts to Tree of Life Church, some people give £1 a month for example. When that £1 comes into the church bank account, sometimes I dance with joy – that’s a harvest. In the last six weeks, we have been given nearly £70k above our normal income – why? Because I learned how to recognize a harvest! If you can celebrate a slice of bread, you are about to have barns overflowing.

Now listen carefully, I have been doing this a long time and I have learned some things. Firstly, the main harvests in your life are people. People turn up and show you favour, they give you a piece of wisdom (or even correction) – that’s a harvest. That’s God responding to your seeds. Right now I am in France because I have been invited to preach there – that is a harvest for all the speakers I invite to preach in the Tree. Selah! The most common harvest in your life is people – when someone connects to you, that is a harvest. When someone tells someone else how wonderful you are – that’s a harvest.

If you do not know that harvests come in human form, you could easily miss your harvest. Jesus entered the world and came to the Jewish people as the Jewish Messiah as predicted over 300 times in the Jewish Bible. One of the saddest verses in the Bible says “His own received him not” (John 1.11). They failed to perceive their harvest had come. The harvest of all their rituals, passovers, celebrations, temple worship, all of it – was in the midst of them, and they failed to perceive Him – so they failed to honour Him, so they failed to get close to Him.

Harvest is coming to you every single day, so start to look for harvests and immediately respond with gratitude, even if it seems tiny. You must never get so busy you do not have time to thank God for what is already in your life. It’s not that God is not giving to you – it is that you are not perceiving and recognizing your harvests and therefore not honouring them, and that is breaking seedtime and harvest and mocking God.

Make a decision today, never again to say “God never blesses me” and start to count your blessings one by one. An unperceived harvest is a dishonoured harvest, and that is going to keep future harvests away from you.