Michael Todd - Faith Like A Farmer - Part 1
Hey, what's going on, friends? I am so glad you joined us today, and I can't wait for you to hear today's message 'cause I know, some of you, this is exactly what you've been needing to hear. See, God has so much more in store for you than you've ever experienced up until this point. I don't care how old you are. I don't care what you've experienced. There is more, and it's time to take a hold of the vision that God has for your life and plant a seed so that you can see the harvest in a different season of what you planted today. It's time for you to experience some Crazier Faith. Let's go.
Today, we are in week six of a series we're calling Crazier Faith, and today, I have a special assignment from God to talk and preach through a message that is so powerful, and it's a powerful piece of scripture, but I need us to set some parameters before I go into this scripture. I need you to allow me to teach this scripture outside of the box it was introduced to you in. Okay? When I say this scripture, you're going to think something automatically. I want to step outside of the box that you would normally hear this scripture in, and I want to reveal a crazy faith principle that will literally change the trajectory of your entire life. Can we do that together? I said, can we do that together?
So today, I want to read 2 Corinthians chapter 9, I'm going to read verse 6 all the way through verse 10, and the box that this scripture is usually in is in the offering box. You only hear this scripture when people are talking at offering time. There is no offering being taken today, no second offering, no hundred dollar lines. Nothing's happening. I want to teach you a principle that will change your life. Are you ready? I said, are you ready?
2 Corinthians 9:6. It says, "Remember this. Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously. Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion. For God loves a cheerful giver and God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things, at all times, having all that". I like all them alls right there. That's a lot of alls, "That God, in all things, at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work". Somebody say, amen. Sit down.
As I walk you through this crazier faith principle, I gotta go back up to the beginning in verse 6, 'cause he's saying, the apostle Paul is saying, "Remember this," as he's talking to the church of Corinth. He's saying, "Remember this". Everybody say, "Remember this". That means don't forget it. That means when you get busy and blessed, don't forget this. That means when God does answer the prayer and things start going good, and you don't need as much prayer time because you feel like you got what you asked for, don't forget this. Remember this, and these two words messed me up. Whoever. Whoever sows. If you all get this, it changes everything. It literally says whoever.
And this, when I see "whoever" in the Bible is an indication that this is not for special people. It is a principle in the earth, and most believers get out of character and bent out of shape when they see people who don't believe in God like they do prospering in ways that they don't. Ah, I'm coming to your house today. Well, they live like that. And how does that happen? 'cause they've caught the whoever's of the Bible. They've caught the principles that create a life. The sad thing is they don't get to take it with them so they can have all of this on earth, but it means nothing in eternity, because they never caught the second half of it. But they living good on earth while you living hell on earth. 'Cause they caught the principles of, everybody say, "Whoever".
Write this point down. Whoever gets this, gets this, so get this. Or let me say it in a different way so you can get it. Whoever gets this principle that's about to be shared in the Word of God gets this promise. So get this, please. I'm asking you to check in for the next 45 minutes to get this one principle, and the other thing that everybody has to know whenever the Bible says, whoever, whoever includes your haters. Whoever includes the people that hurt you and whoever includes the people that live like hell today, and you think that you should be better than them. God has made promises that, and principles that live on the earth, that apply to them, too. Sit with it, 'cause most of you are mad at somebody who has seemingly what you want, but they didn't have to go through what you're going through to get it first off, you don't know their story.
It's the first thing. Second thing is God allows his principles, many of them to work for the just and the unjust. This is the Bible people don't preach, because it makes you locked into religion by fear. Well, I got to do it like this, 'cause if I don't do it like this, God won't bless me. There are people out here living completely opposite of God, but have tapped into principles that the church is missing. And all I'm saying is don't live like them, but don't miss this. Hear what I'm saying. Somebody shout at me, whoever. Okay? Now there's a principle. It comes right after the word. Whoever, write this down, underline it, and make it big, get a tattoo of it on your face. Sows, whoever sows. Everybody say, sow.
That's the principle I want to give you in crazy faith today, because many people in the body of Christ have been void of sowing. God spoke to me so clearly, mike, and he said to me, he said, Michael, he said, my people are believing for a forest where they've never planted a seed. Crazy faith! You ain't sown one seed. I'm going to have a business with all these people who work with me and they're passionate and you don't serve nobody. I'm about to take over this territory and see God do a mass move, and you're not part of a church. You have not sown. And when I looked at this, I started to think, whoever can sow whatever according to the scripture, the reason I'm taking it out of this box is so that you know that this scripture is talking about money, but it applies to everything.
Look what it says. "Whoever sows sparingly will reap sparingly and whoever sows generously will reap generously". You can sow your time, your talent and your treasure. You can sow information, influence and ideas. You can sow a platform, a plug, you can sow connections and contacts, but you're stingy. And God said, why would I trust somebody who won't sow what I've already given them with more so they don't sow that? Today, I want to ask you if you have the faith to sow what's in your hand. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I know, like, you think, oh, get just offering out your mind for a second. What's in your hand? What gifts and talents has God given you that are becoming decrepit because you won't give them away. Well, that idea is just for, no, no, no, no, no. That idea was a seed. It wasn't the harvest. It wasn't the fruit. It was just the beginning.
Somebody say just the beginning. The best thing that God's ever given you was a seed, and right now, people are protecting seeds when they should be sowing them. Oh, I'm about to preach this thing. Oh, it's kind of starting off a little slow. No, I'm about to teach you how to sow. I'm about to teach you a principle, you all see how hype I am already? I'm trying to control it. I'm trying to teach you a principle that ended me up on this platform today. I'm trying to teach you a principle that took us from not having anything to now being an answer to people's prayer. I'm trying to take you, and the principle is that if you do not sow now, it will never grow. The seed outside of the soil cannot grow.
There are non-profits you should be sowing your life into right now, 'cause 10 years from now, it's going to grow into a tree that everybody will eat off of. But right now, 'cause you don't got the time and it doesn't work with my schedule. You spent seven hours, your iPhone told you, scrolling this week, when you could've sowed that seven hours into something that would show back up in your life. Ah. But I understand. We don't think the way that Jesus talks in the Bible. Do you know, over one third of his analogies were about farming? Jesus talks about sowing and reaping all through the Bible.
And I begin to study in this six week of crazier faith, what is going to unlock the forest of your faith? 'Cause there, you all, I need you all to get the imagery of this, the forest of your faith, the thing your grandkids will be able to walk through and say, dang, my granddaddy believed God. My grandmamma was sowing seeds when I wasn't even thought about. Did I just get through college with no debt because of the seeds of my mom? Did I just gain a spiritual inheritance that just dropped down? I don't know. I just have something. Am I being provided nourishment and nutrition from something I didn't even, it's the forest of your faith that starts off as a seed.
The business, the book, the buildings, God will never give it to you finished. He'll give it to you as a seed. I want to bust somebody's magic bubble in Christianity. You pray for what you think you want, and God gives you the baby version of what it can be. In the book, when I talk about baby faith, I'm trying to give everybody the formula for seeing what God wants you to see. Remember last week I talked about see it before you see it? This week, I want to talk about sow it before you see it. You're never going to see it until you sow it. Let me ask you a question, 'cause it got heavy in here real quick, and some of you all are like, what is about to happen?
Stay with me. Let me ask you a question. Which one of these three people have more faith? The first one, I'm going to put it up on the screen. This is a multiple question for you. This is a tightrope walker. Would you say that this person has faith? Most of us would be like he has craziest faith. Like that don't make any sense. There's somebody else that many of you would say had faith, put it up there for me. This is a skydiver. Anybody ever been skydiving before? One black person in the room. Okay, so. Your pastor has been skydiving. My wife for some reason, thought it was a good thing for my 26th birthday to throw me out of a plane. So I've been skydiving and most people would think that this person has faith. But according to scripture in the kingdom, the person who has more faith than both of these people is this guy, a farmer.
Now he's not up on a tightrope, cascading two mountains and he's not flying 10.000 feet up in the air, but he understands faith. He understands that for you to see a harvest, there has to be a seed sown. The title of my message is faith like a farmer: sow it before you see it. Faith like a farmer: sow it before you see it. This message is counter-cultural. It's kingdom. So it's going to bother your insides 'cause some of you are counting how little you have right now. Some of you at this moment, you're turning your heart and your brain off 'cause you're saying to me, well, you don't know what I've been through, and you don't know how the pandemic hit me and you don't know what I just lost, and you don't know how that investment went south. I'm telling you that if you want your faith to go to a crazier level, you need to have faith like a farmer.
Can I prove it to you? Genesis 8:22, after God is done with humanity and wipes that whole mug out with the flood and only leaves Noah and his family, he's like, I'm sick of these people I created, I'm done with them. It's how some of you all are with you all kids. And you all be like, just go in your room. I can't stand you. You look like your daddy. Like, like, God was done with us. And then he sits down in the recliner of heaven and just chills out for a second and whoosahs, and he's like, you all know what? I messed up, I blew up on you all. I'm going to make a covenant with you, and I'm never going to destroy the earth again. But there's some principles I'm going to put in place that will be a covenant with creation. I'm trying to teach you to unlock this next level of crazier faith.
God's covenant with creation, Genesis 8:22. "While the earth remains," so you'll be gone before this doesn't exist anymore. "There will be seed time," and what? Harvest. Now we read that and it's like, yeah, there'll be seed time and harvest, okay, keep going. "Cold and heat, winter and summer and day and night shall not cease". Chapter ends. What? Like there are four things that he uses to illustrate to us this dynamic that he wants to know will always be on the earth. Day and night, oh, we got that, like that's when I go to sleep and that's when I wake up, day and night. Got that. Winter and summer. Yeah, it's fall right now. I'm going to get my winter clothes on, and then summer, it's going to be suns out guns out. We get that. Cold and heat.
My wife is in love with the cold. I freeze every day of my life in my house. And I don't know what it is to have heat in my house, even though I pay for it. But I understand the concept of cold and heat, but most believers, because we live in such a technology-advanced time, we don't understand the principle of seed time and harvest. This is what we think it is. Seed time, harvest. That's how we read it. As long as the earth remains, I love this part, this is where God does his thing. Seed time, harvest. We think it's that quick, and we think God has failed. When I gave my seed, I applied for the job, I went and finished school.
Why I'm not a millionaire? Why don't people know my name? Why I'm not distinguished yet? 'cause you read the words and didn't get the principle. Seed time, harvest. In a generation where everything is about instant gratification, we miss kingdom principles. It's not seed time, harvest. It's not start a church, go viral. Oh, you all don't. You all think I started when transformation church blew up? Do you know how many, I asked my wife the other day, how long have I worked at transformation church greenwood? 13 years. I started off as the sound man in this church, sowing seeds. What you're looking at today is the harvest. But what you didn't see, I'm about to preach this thing. Is was every day I showed up every weekend, ran sound when it was $35 a week to run sound, and I was driving a 15 passenger van at that time.
So $35, you all think I'm playing. My mama laughing on the front row. $35 would get me a fourth of a tank in that big old ship. I wasn't doing it for money, I was doing it for my future. Oh, you all missed it. I wasn't doing it for accolades. I was doing it 'cause it was my assignment. I was sowing and I knew it was seed time, but sometimes I like to deconstruct the word, 'cause it helps me get it better. So seed time is one word, but God said, read it slower, Michael, and so I was like, seed time, harvest. He's like, slower. Seed, time, harvest. I was like, huh? He says, read it even slower. Seed. Time. Harvest. I don't want you all to miss this. Come on, just say it slow with me. Seed. Time. Harvest.