Jesus said, “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.” (Matthew 5:7) The Spirit of God opened this verse to me one day and said to me, “The way you treat other people is the same way God and people will treat you.” It is true that whatever you sow, you will reap, as we see in Galatians 6:7, 8, which reads, “Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap. For he who sows to his flesh will of the flesh reap corruption, but he who sows to the Spirit will of the Spirit reap everlasting life.”
As you sow love and mercy into the lives of others, you will reap it back from both God and people. Jesus said, “Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.” (Matthew 7:12) This is the reality of that verse: what you make happen for others, God will make happen for you! I learned this life changing truth at a critical point in the life of our church. I had felt God leading us to move from our leased church building, so I began to look around for a new, bigger building. During this time, although everything was going well with our church, we were not really growing, and we had no money to make the move to another bigger, more expensive building. While I was praying one day, the Lord told me to make happen for other’s what I needed Him to do for me.
So, we began to give chairs, pulpits, sound systems, love offerings and other things to many churches and ministries. We were constantly looking for opportunities to sow into other churches.
About six months after sowing into other churches, we began to have a series of breakthroughs that ended up putting us into a brand new building. The first Sunday in our new building we doubled the size of our congregation. From there we kept growing. I constantly look for every opportunity to bless others because we’ve discovered the power of love.
Romans 13:8-10 tells us that we should “Owe no one anything except to love one another, for he who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, ‘You shall not commit adultery,’ ‘You shall not murder,’ ‘You shall not steal,’ ‘You shall not bear false witness,’ ‘You shall not covet,’ and if there is any other commandment, are all summed up in this saying, namely, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no harm to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.”
Love is the fulfillment of the entire law. When you walk in God’s love towards other people, you are pleasing God and acting like Him. “Therefore be imitators of God as dear children. And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma.” (Ephesians 5:1, 2)
