KFLCC Kingdom Economics

F INANCIAL S ECURITY IN THE L AST D AYS

over his household, to give them meat in due season?

M ATT . 24:45

I T T AKES T IME TO G ROW A NYTHING From seed planting to harvesting requires patience, as the process involves time. Time is often viewed as an adversary, as we each are given a certain amount each day and an assigned amount for a lifetime. When we plant it takes rain, sunshine, and time to bring a harvest. When building a church it takes prayer, preaching, personal ministry, and time to build a congregation. In business, it takes wise decisions, hard work, and time to bring in a steady clientele. As time turns to days and weeks, it is patience that enables a person to wait, trusting for and expecting a good outcome. The Almighty, however, has a unique ability to manipulate time and speed up the process of harvest. For example, in John chapter 2, at the wedding of Canaan, Christ took six pots of water and supernaturally turned the water into wine. If a person were to desire a harvest of fresh grape juice, it would require pruning the vines, watering the vineyard (or lots of rain), then harvesting the grapes, crushing them, and collecting the grape juice (also called wine in the New Testament era). In about eight months, you could have six large stone pots from your grape harvest. Christ, however, instantly removed the time element required to grow, harvest, and crush the grapes. Consider a second miracle, the feeding of the five thousand men, plus women and children (Matt. 14:21). What would be required, and what amount of time needed, to prepare fish sandwiches for this many people at an evangelistic event? Perhaps you could rent several hundred boats and hire out hundreds of bakeries, and in a few days come up with the amount of bread and fish needed to host a large outdoor picnic. But Christ prayed over two fish and five loaves of bread and supernaturally multiplied the fish and bread to feed over five thousand people. An event that would have taken a restaurant owner much money and many days to accomplish was classified as a miracle when Christ removed the time element using the seed of a little to produce the harvest of a lot! These two narratives illustrate how needs can be met when God alters the amount of time normally needed to accomplish a task. G OD C AN M ANIPULATE T IME

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