Recently my wife and I gave someone a gift. The nature of the gift is unimportant, but the goal and reasoning behind it is significant, and I believe holds a key to the breakthrough that some people need in areas of their lives.
The Bible shows us multiple places where gifts were used to release honor, peace, favor, and blessing:
Genesis 30:20: Then Leah said, “God has presented me with a precious gift. This time my husband will treat me with honor, because I have borne him six sons.” So she named him Zebulun.
Genesis 32:20: And be sure to say, ‘Your servant Jacob is coming behind us.’” For he thought, “I will pacify him with these gifts I am sending on ahead; later, when I see him, perhaps he will receive me.”
Psalm 45:12: The city of Tyre will come with a gift, people of wealth will seek your favor.
Psalm 112:9: They have freely scattered their gifts to the poor, their righteousness endures forever; their horn will be lifted high in honor.
Proverbs 18:16: A gift opens the way and ushers the giver into the presence of the great.
Proverbs 21:14a: A gift given in secret soothes anger . . .
Gifts, especially well-timed gifts, are a tangible way to demonstrate that someone has value to you. When someone is angry with you, a gift can help them feel like you care about the things that upset them and help usher them into a place of peace. When someone receives a gift, it can be a means of honoring them, and honor has a way of releasing favor in return to the gift-giver. It was customary in the Old Testament to bring a gift any time one met with a king or ruler, partially for those reasons.
In our situation, we wanted to resolve underlying tension in a relationship and make room for a blessing in our lives. In order to accomplish this, we felt the best way to do it was to give the other person a gift. This gift-giving was an intentional act of honoring and blessing them, and we did this with full awareness that the law of sowing and reaping goes in effect.
Every action we make in our lives has ripple effects because each of our choices are part of a cycle of sowing and reaping. We wanted a different outcome in the relationship and in the things that relationship touched upon, so we intentionally sowed honor and blessing into that person’s life. This individual felt blessed, we enjoyed giving the gift, and a couple of hours after we did this, I actually felt a subtle but specific shift in the spirit. It is difficult to describe exactly what that felt like, but it isn’t a feeling I tend to experience. While it was very subtle, it was uncommon and thus noticeable to me. While the shift in the spirit felt faint, it showed me that our gift-giving had influenced the kind of change we were looking for.
In reading this, some may find this action of ours to be highly self-serving. The truth is that sowing and reaping is designed in such a way that it is impossible to be entirely self-serving. If we wanted to sow and reap in that relationship arena, we had to actually expend time and energy to sow into the relationship in some way. While yes, part of our motivation was to influence something in our own lives, we did it through a demonstration of love, and as the Bible says, “against such things there is no law” (Galatians 5:23). The issue here isn’t really about being self-serving because in order to obtain the result we had to give something to someone else and bless them. It’s actually a scenario where everyone wins, and that’s the kind of situation God likes.
Many individuals are struggling in relationships, jobs, with finances, in the business arena, or in other areas of life. I firmly believe that a key to freedom and breakthrough in some of these situations is intentional sowing of a gift. It is time to purposefully engage the law of sowing and reaping and choose to honor and bless someone who we feel holds the key to our breakthrough. In some cases it may be that a relationship needs resolution. In other situations it could be that a gift will open the way for favor in a situation. A gift doesn’t have to be money either. It could be an object of value or something that demonstrates meaningful thought. It could be an act of service or a gift of time. A gift doesn’t have to be money to be effective—it just has to be intentional and well-chosen for the desired purpose. It isn’t a bribe, as we aren’t relying on the gift to manipulate someone into doing something. It is a means of blessing an individual in such a way that it shifts the spiritual climate through the law of sowing and reaping to release a similar blessing into our own lives. I encourage you to give it a try, and if you do, please leave feedback on the results!
