When You Can’t See the Harvest
What can God do with what you’re willing to place in His hands? Through the widow’s two coins and Paul’s picture of sowing and reaping, we discover that generosity is ultimately an expression of faith—trusting God with what we have even when we cannot yet see the harvest. Pasted text
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The Cheerful Giver
6 The point is this: whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully[a] will also reap bountifully. 7 Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. 8 And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency[b] in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work. 9 As it is written,
“He has distributed freely, he has given to the poor;
his righteousness endures forever.”10 He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness. 11 You will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God.
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The Widow's Offering
41 And he sat down opposite the treasury and watched the people putting money into the offering box. Many rich people put in large sums. 42 And a poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which make a penny.[a] 43 And he called his disciples to him and said to them, “Truly, I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the offering box. 44 For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”
Sowing in Faith
Jesus sat down near the treasury in the temple and watched people give.
That detail is worth slowing down for. The all-knowing God, incarnate, observed the offerings being placed in the box—and what He noticed wasn't the large sums from the wealthy. He noticed a poor widow who put in two small copper coins, less than a penny, and called His disciples together to say something remarkable: she has put in more than all of them.
If you had been sitting there that day, you might have quietly wondered whether Jesus had miscounted. By any conventional measure, she gave less. Much less. But Jesus wasn't measuring the size of her gift. He was measuring the size of her faith, her trust, her loving relationship with God, and her belief that He is exactly who He says He is.
Two passages—the widow in Mark 12 and the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 9—are teaching the same thing. God is not primarily interested in what we give. He is far more interested in what our giving reveals about our trust in Him, our love for Him, our belief that His promises are real and that He is faithful to keep them. Generosity isn't ultimately about money. It's about the condition of the heart.
Faith Trusts God Enough to Release What Is in Our Hands
Earlier in Mark's gospel, Jesus said it plainly: "Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." (Matthew 6:21) Our money and how we manage it have a remarkable ability to narrate a story about what we actually believe—not what we say we believe, but what we've actually put our weight on. We can sing "Great Is Thy Faithfulness" on Sunday and live the rest of the week as though everything depends entirely on us. We can say God is our provider while our anxiety tells a completely different story.
The widow had almost nothing. Jesus says she gave out of her poverty—and then says something that stopped everyone cold: she put in everything she had, all she had to live on.
That kind of giving doesn't come from willpower or emotional momentum. It comes from faith. And faith, the biblical kind, is not what some people imagine. It isn't getting amped up and stepping into the unknown with eyes closed. It isn't blind. Faith is informed. Romans 10:17 says faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of God. Faith grows in a person whose spirit has been nourished by God's revelation. This is why Jesus says that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God (Matthew 4:4)—because the word of God, when we feed on it, is what builds the kind of trust the widow was walking in. She knew God would meet her needs. She knew He would be faithful. And so she released what was in her hands into His.
This is the invitation at the heart of Christian generosity: to trust God enough to do what the widow did.
Faith Doesn't Ask "How Much Do I Have?"—It Asks "What Can God Do with What I Have?"
This theme runs through Scripture, and it never gets old. Moses had a staff. David had five stones. A boy had five loaves and two fish. A widow had two copper coins. God delights in taking small things and using them for purposes that dwarf what anyone could have imagined.
God doesn't ask us to give what we don't have. He asks us to surrender and faithfully steward what we do have. You don't have to be wealthy to be generous. You simply have to be willing to put what God has entrusted to you back into His hands.
That shift—from "how much do I have?" to "what could God do with what I have?"—is not just a perspective adjustment. It's a fundamentally different kind of question. It's a faith question, a trust question, a question rooted in the promises of God's Word. And when we ask it seriously, giving becomes something other than a transaction. It becomes an act of surrender.
Sowing Requires Faith Because You Don't See the Harvest Immediately
Paul uses the language of farming deliberately in 2 Corinthians 9: "Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully." (2 Corinthians 9:6) Every farmer knows something the rest of us sometimes forget—you have to put seed in the ground before you ever see the harvest. The farmer takes something valuable and buries it. For a while, nothing appears to be happening. He can't see the seed. He has to trust the process and believe that something is happening beneath the surface. That is a picture of faith: resting in a truth not yet visibly confirmed.
This applies far beyond finances. You pray for your children for years without visible fruit. You invest in someone's life through mentorship or discipleship and see no immediate change. You give generously and wonder if it's making any difference. You serve faithfully, and nobody notices. You share the gospel, and the person walks away unchanged.
But faith and trust in the character of God, in His nature and His faithfulness, says: I may not see the harvest yet, but the seed matters. I'm sowing into what matters to God, and in due time, there will be fruit. That's why Paul says we sow—not throw away, but sow. You put seed somewhere because you believe it has a future.
And God is not just promising to use the seed. Paul says in verse 10 that God will "supply and multiply your seed for sowing." Even the seed we're holding came from Him. He provides it, we release it, and He multiplies its impact in ways that exceed what our arithmetic can predict. One dollar can feed someone. One conversation can change a life. One Bible placed in a hotel room has brought people to Christ in thousands of hotel rooms worldwide. One Sunday school class can shape a child's trajectory for decades.
I've seen it. A fifteen-year-old girl heard a missionary speak in a church service. Something ignited in her heart that day. Years later, she is married with children, living in Indonesia, sharing Christ with an unreached Muslim community—thriving, fruitful, joyful. One act of faithfulness opened a door. One afternoon. One ordinary sowing moment.
And I think about a young woman in a student ministry I once led—someone the staff privately wondered about, someone who tested every boundary, someone we weren't sure would ever turn around. My first year at Christ Church Memphis, I received an email from her. She told me she had come home to Christ. She was enrolled in seminary, preparing for full-time ministry. She wanted to thank me for not giving up and for continuing to pray.
I wrote back and told her: I didn't just pray for you. I fasted for you.
Don't give up on anyone. Keep sowing. Keep praying. Keep exposing people to the word of God. A teenager sitting in a worship service today may surrender their life to ministry in ten years. A couple learning to build a Christ-centered marriage now may bless generations. A neighbor who receives a meal during a dark season may encounter the love of God through that act of care and never forget it. You plant today, and you may not personally see the harvest—not in your life, maybe not in your lifetime. That requires faith.
God Loves a Cheerful Giver, and Here's Why That Matters
"Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver." 2 Corinthians 9:7
This is one of the most important verses on Christian giving in all of Scripture. God doesn't want you to give because you feel pressured, embarrassed, or manipulated. He wants your heart. Cheerful giving is evidence of something real happening inside—a person who genuinely trusts God as provider, doesn't need to cling to their possessions for security, and whose identity is rooted in something more permanent than their bank account. When we give cheerfully, we're saying: God, you are my provider. You are my everything. I don't need to hold on so tightly. I trust you.
That is worship. It's the posture of a heart that has placed Jesus on the throne of its life.
Paul takes it further in verse 11: "You will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God." This is the deepest point of the whole passage. The ultimate purpose of generosity isn't budget-balancing. It isn't institutional sustainability. It's this: as people give in faith, needs are met, the gospel advances, lives are changed, the kingdom moves—and people begin to say, look at what God has done. It produces a rising tide of thanksgiving. Giving becomes worship, and the fruit of giving becomes more worship.
The Church Is the One Eternal Thing on Earth
No U-Hauls follow funeral processions. We take nothing with us. But the one thing on earth that is eternal is the church—not the building, but the people of God, the body of Christ, His betrothed, His bride. When we sow into the church—through our giving, our prayers, our time, our love for one another—we are sowing into the only thing here that lasts.
The church is where children are taught, and students are discipled, where people encounter Jesus. Where missionaries are sent. Where the lonely are welcomed, the broken are cared for, and the gospel is proclaimed to the lost. As has been observed, it is the entity on earth that serves people experiencing poverty more than any other. And every gift, every act of service, every prayer sown into that work has an eternal dimension to it that we may never fully comprehend this side of heaven.
The Ultimate Sower
The widow is a beautiful picture of faith. But she isn't our ultimate example. Jesus is.
Jesus didn't give a percentage. He gave Himself. Philippians 2 tells us He humbled Himself and became obedient, even to the point of death on a cross (Philippians 2:8)—because He knew there would be a harvest beyond the cross. He was coming for us. White-hot love, freely given. Hebrews 12:2 says He endured the cross "for the joy that was set before him." Jesus was the ultimate cheerful giver—sowing His life in faith for a harvest He couldn't yet see in visible terms, trusting the Father that Sunday was coming.
The cross looked like defeat. Resurrection was coming. The grave looked like the end. The disciples saw death. God saw redemption. The world saw a crucified man. Jesus was accomplishing salvation so that you could be birthed into new life and into eternity.
And the promise that undergirds all of this sowing—every widow's coin, every discipleship investment, every gift, every prayer, every act of obedient generosity—is this: "God can make all grace abound to you." (2 Corinthians 9:8) Not you. Not your resources. Not your ingenuity or strength. God is able. He provides the seed. He multiplies the harvest. He takes what looks small and insignificant and produces from it something for His glory.
The world measures the size of the gift. God measures the size of the faith. The world asks, "How much did you give?" God asks, "Did you trust me?"
The widow trusted God with two coins. Jesus trusted the Father with His life. And now He invites us to trust Him with ours.
So let's sow—our resources, our gifts, our prayers, our time, our lives. Let's put what God has placed in our hands back into His hands. And let's believe that the God who supplies the seed is also the God who brings the harvest.
TL;DR
The widow’s two coins revealed something bigger than her gift: her trust in God. Generosity is ultimately an expression of what we believe about God’s faithfulness.
Biblical faith isn’t blind optimism. It grows as God’s Word shapes our hearts and teaches us to trust His character and promises.
Faith asks, “What can God do with what I have?” God can use even seemingly small things when we faithfully place them in His hands.
Sowing means trusting God before we can see the harvest. Whether we’re giving, praying, serving, or discipling others, we plant faithfully and leave the results with Him.
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