The “Harvest” Mentality – Part 2

So what is the key to escaping this “harvest” mentality of unrealistic expectations and the desire for control, which seems to be so alluring?

Righteousness

I believe the first step is the revelation of righteousness: when you know that you are right with God just the way you are, it changes your whole life and your view of God. No longer are you trying to please God according to your works. Now, you are able to see the Father’s love for you and rest in the assurance that He absolutely loves you no matter what you do and how you behave.

God is Good

The next step is to come to the point whereby you are certain that God has a good life for you. If you do not trust God with your life, you will always be trying to control yourself, circumstances and other people. There is something freeing in knowing that God is in control, He loves you and knows what’s best for you. When you think you have to control every little detail of your life, you do not have faith and you do not trust in God.

God Will Bless Us Unconditionally

Allied with the point above about control, is the fact that God will manifest blessing and provision in our lives without our intervention: there is no need to claim and attract things through affirmations and prayer. If you will be honest with yourself, you will come to the realisation that most or all of the time when you have tried to claim things from God – your efforts have been driven by a fear that God demands something from you and that nothing good will ever happen unless you do something about it.

Interfering With God

This leads us to the question of why nothing good happens in a certain person’s life and what they can do about it. I would say that the irony of the situation is that the more people try and control their life, through worry, prayer, affirmations and such like – the more they are interfering with God. It is our own fear and the efforts we make to control our lives, which prevent God from moving freely in us. The more we try to prevent certain things from happening in our lives – the more we find that our efforts actually attract those things to us.

What Makes a Person Truly Happy?

We need to have a new perspective on what it is that really makes a person happy and popular with other people. It is not what we do or what we have that determines our mental and emotional state or the attitude of others towards us. No, our life experiences and the way that we see them and feel about them, are determined to a great extent on whom we are on the inside. But when a person is wrapped in fear, it seems as if “normal life” is simply not appealing enough. This causes a person to feel disappointed with everything that happens in their life. This causes people to gravitate upwards mentality so that they are always looking to get bigger and better things and to achieve great things. This approach is encouraged by many people in the world and seen as something positive. But if what you do is driven and motivated out of fear and lust, rather than from love, it will eventually consume you and confine you to a life of frustration and misery.

When a person falls in love with someone, everything around them seems to change. The sky seems to be that bit bluer, the grass that bit greener and the birds singing in the trees seems that bit lovelier. It is easy to assume that this new found happiness is caused by the other person – as if they have magic powers or something. But in actual fact, it is simply a change of heart on the inside of a person. The other person was simply the catalyst for what already exists within you. When you fall in love, it seems as if everything changes, but in actual fact, it is your heart that has changed. I think it is about time that we fell in love with life and got to that place in which we are no longer living from fear and the wretched disappointment it brings, and instead, learn to live from a heart of love and experience the true splendour of peace, joy and contentment.

Effortless Cooperation

In my experience, I find that the best way to cooperate with God is to do nothing. The less we try to help God by figuring out what we can do for Him and how we can avoid certain things and speed the good things along – the better we are able to experience life to the fullest. We have no guarantees that we are all going to be millionaires or that we are going to have a successful worldwide ministry or whatever else our fantasies may revolve around. But we can get more of God in our lives as we assure ourselves of His love for us in Christ and the belief that He will build His church and that He will add to our lives whatever it is that we need, when we need it.

³¹ "Therefore do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' ³² "For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. ³³ "But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.

Matthew 6:31-33