God Will Teach You to Profit: Water the Seed He Put Inside You
“Thus saith the LORD, thy Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel; I am the LORD thy God which teacheth thee to profit, which leadeth thee by the way that thou shouldest go.” Isaiah 48:17
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| Cultivate Your Seed |
When I read the words “I am the LORD thy God which teacheth thee to profit,” something clicked in me.
I have spent a lot of time asking God to provide.
I know the Scriptures.
“Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” — Matthew 7:7
“But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.” — Matthew 6:33
I have also held onto Deuteronomy 8:18:
“But thou shalt remember the LORD thy God: for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth…”
But somehow, in my mind, I was still separating God from the process.
I knew God could bless me. I knew He could provide for me. I knew He could open a door.
But I hadn’t fully grasped this:
God can teach me how to profit.
He can instruct me.
He can show me what to do with what He has already put inside of me.
I don’t have to figure everything out by myself.
God Is Not Only My Provider : He Is My Teacher
Isaiah 48:17 doesn’t just describe God as the One who gives. It describes Him as the One who teaches and leads.
That immediately reminded me of Psalm 23.
“The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.” — Psalm 23:1
David describes God as a Shepherd.
A shepherd doesn’t simply throw something at the sheep and disappear.
A shepherd leads.
A shepherd guides.
A shepherd protects.
David says:
“He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.”
And later:
“Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.”
God is leading.
That same theme appears in Psalm 32:8:
“I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go: I will guide thee with mine eye.”
God is saying, I will teach you.
That changes the way I pray.
Instead of only saying:
“God, give me what I need.”
My prayer is becoming:
“God, teach me how to use what You have already given me.”
“Show me what You put inside of me.”
“Teach me how to cultivate it.”
“Show me the way I should go.”
The God of More Than Enough
Jesus said:
“The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” — John 10:10
That word abundantly stood out to me.
Throughout Scripture, we repeatedly see God provide beyond the immediate need.
When Jesus multiplied the loaves and fishes, everybody ate, and there were leftovers.
When He turned the water into wine at Cana, there wasn’t merely a tiny amount to get them through the moment.
Then I thought about the widow’s oil in 2 Kings 4.
The woman was in debt and desperate. Elisha asked her:
“What hast thou in the house?”
She essentially said, I don’t have anything except a pot of oil.
That little bit mattered.
Elisha instructed her to borrow empty vessels from her neighbors and he specifically told her:
“Borrow not a few.”
Then she began pouring.
The oil continued flowing until there were no more vessels.
Afterward, Elisha told her:
“Go, sell the oil, and pay thy debt, and live thou and thy children of the rest.”
Look at that.
There was enough to deal with the debt and live on the rest.
But something else stands out to me.
God started with what she already had in her house.
She almost dismissed it because it seemed insignificant.
“I don’t have anything…except this.”
How many of us are saying the same thing?
I don’t really have anything.
I don’t have enough.
I’m not especially talented.
I don’t know what I could possibly do.
Meanwhile, there is some oil sitting in our house.
What If the Provision Is Connected to Something God Already Gave You?
Deuteronomy 8:18 says God gives us power to get wealth.
I began thinking about that word power as ability.
What abilities has God already placed inside of you?
What can you naturally do?
What comes easily to you that doesn’t come easily to somebody else?
For years, I overlooked things about myself because they didn’t seem impressive enough.
I compared myself to other people and thought, Well, they can do this. They know how to do that. What I do isn’t anything special.
But something doesn’t have to be difficult for you to be valuable to somebody else.
I have a niece who naturally knows how to organize her home. She can look at a bathroom, bedroom, or apartment and figure out how to make it orderly, functional, and livable without necessarily spending a fortune.
To her, that might simply feel like something she does.
But somebody else will gladly pay for that ability.
Why?
Because where she sees possibilities and order, somebody else sees a mess and becomes overwhelmed.
Something that feels ordinary to you may be valuable to somebody who doesn’t possess that ability.
That’s why we need one another.
We’re pieces of a puzzle.
Why Do We Struggle to Recognize What God Has Given Us?
If God teaches us to profit, gives us power to get wealth, leads us, and desires that we have abundant life, why do so many of us struggle to recognize what He has placed inside us?
I believe there are several reasons.
1. We Are Bound to Patterns From Our Past
Sometimes our imagination is limited by what we’ve always seen.
Nobody in the family owned a business.
Nobody became financially successful.
Everybody worked a regular job.
Everybody struggled.
Everybody lived paycheck to paycheck.
So eventually we begin thinking:
This is just how life works for people like us.
We repeat familiar patterns because familiar feels normal—even when familiar is dysfunctional.
God may be trying to show us something different, but we keep interpreting our future through our past.
2. Adult Responsibilities Buried Our Creativity
Think about yourself as a child.
Children create effortlessly.
We color.
Draw.
Sing.
Act.
Write.
Build things.
Play imaginary games.
Invent characters.
Take things apart.
Put things together.
We weren’t thinking about whether our creativity could pay the rent.
Then adulthood happened.
Bills came.
Responsibilities came.
Survival came.
And for many of us, the things we naturally loved doing were pushed further and further into the background.
Eventually, you can become so disconnected from yourself that you start asking:
“What am I even good at?”
You see other people building careers, businesses, ministries, platforms and creative projects and wonder why you can’t figure yourself out.
But perhaps the question isn’t always:
“What am I supposed to become?”
Maybe sometimes the question is:
“God, what did You already put inside of me that I stopped cultivating?”
3. We Passed Over Something God Already Told Us to Do
Sometimes we’re waiting for another instruction when God already gave us one.
God told me to start a blog around 2010.
At the time, I barely even knew what a blog was.
I attempted it, but I didn’t cultivate it. It seemed difficult, I didn’t understand what I was doing, and eventually life moved on.
How many ideas has God given us that ended up in what I call our junk pile because they didn’t produce immediate results?
We tried something.
Nothing happened quickly.
Bills were due.
Life got busy.
So we went back to survival.
Meanwhile, the seed remained uncultivated.
4. We Don’t Recognize Our Own Talents
The ability may be so natural to you that you don’t recognize it as an ability.
You say:
“Everybody can do that.”
No, everybody cannot.
Somebody can organize.
Somebody can cook.
Somebody can explain complicated information in a way people understand.
Somebody can encourage.
Somebody can write.
Somebody can design.
Somebody can fix things.
Somebody naturally generates ideas.
Somebody knows how to make people feel comfortable.
Somebody can take chaos and create a system.
The fact that nobody had to teach you every part of it doesn’t make it insignificant.
It may actually be a clue.
5. Fear of Failure Keeps Us From Moving
Think about Moses.
God met him at the burning bush and told him what He was calling him to do.
God gave him signs.
God told him He would be with him.
And Moses still looked at his limitations.
He worried about his speech.
He questioned whether people would believe him.
Finally, he essentially asked God to send somebody else.
God responded:
“Who hath made man’s mouth?” — Exodus 4:11
Moses was focused on what he thought disqualified him.
God was focused on the fact that He was the One sending him.
Sometimes we keep telling God why we can’t do the very thing He’s telling us to do.
Fear can bury a gift just as effectively as laziness.
At some point, we have to move even while we’re afraid.
6. Unbelief Makes Us Think It Couldn’t Possibly Be Us
Sometimes you believe God can bless people.
You just struggle to believe He can do it through you.
You’ve been beaten down.
You’ve experienced disappointment.
Maybe your confidence has suffered.
Maybe you’ve never seen anybody around you do what you’re dreaming about doing.
So when something big begins stirring inside you, your first response is:
Who am I to do that?
That’s when our prayer needs to become:
“Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.” — Mark 9:24
God can work with us while our faith is growing.
7. We Give Away What We Should Be Cultivating
Some of us have spent years pouring into everybody else.
People call you.
They talk for hours.
You counsel them.
Encourage them.
Solve problems.
Generate ideas.
Help them get unstuck.
They leave the conversation energized—and you’re drained.
There is nothing wrong with being a friend.
There is nothing wrong with giving.
But there must be boundaries.
Your time has value.
Your energy has value.
And you need time to cultivate what God placed inside you.
Even if your free time is spent praying, journaling, practicing, studying, creating or simply thinking, you need room to develop.
You cannot continually pour everything out and never cultivate your own field.
Survival Mode Can Keep You From Seeing the Future
I understand survival mode because I lived there.
I became a mother young. I became pregnant at 16 and had my first child at 17.
At that age, I wasn’t thinking ten years into the future.
I didn’t have a clear vision for my life.
In many ways, I grew up alongside my children.
There were years when I didn’t understand planning, investing, saving or preparing for the future. When money came, sometimes I spent it trying to compensate for what we didn’t have before.
I wasn’t thinking:
What decision can I make today that will help us five or ten years from now?
I was thinking about today.
And looking back, I recognize that I also wasn’t cultivating my relationship with God the way I could have. I wasn’t consistently spending quality time in His Word and prayer, allowing Him to teach me.
There were years when I expected my rescue to come from somewhere outside of me.
I imagined somebody would eventually come along and change everything.
I always believed I would have more one day. I even imagined what I would do for other people when I had it. I’ve always had a heart for feeding people and helping people who don’t have enough.
But I didn’t understand how I would get there.
And because I thought so little of myself at times, I didn’t imagine that God could produce something through me.
That realization hit me deeply.
I was waiting for somebody to bring the provision.
Meanwhile, God had put seed inside of me.
A Word to Young Parents: Invest in the Gift
If I could go back and change some things, I would think much more intentionally about investment.
Yes, children need clothes and shoes.
Yes, we want them to have nice things.
But they grow out of those things.
I would spend more time asking:
What can I invest in now that could develop who this child is becoming?
If your child loves gaming and shows real interest in becoming a creator, maybe you gradually invest in equipment and teach them how to develop the skill responsibly.
If they love making videos, help them learn video production.
If they’re constantly flipping, tumbling and moving, maybe there’s an athletic ability that needs development.
If they draw constantly, don’t dismiss those drawings.
Pay attention.
You don’t have to know exactly what your child will become.
Just notice the seed and help water it.
Write the Vision and Then Work It
Habakkuk 2:2 says:
“Write the vision, and make it plain…”
We need vision for our lives.
We need goals.
We need plans.
But after we write the vision, we have to work toward it.
We cannot live haphazardly while hoping our dreams somehow materialize.
If you want to sing, sing.
Practice.
Study your craft.
If you want to write, write.
If you want to play basketball, pick up the basketball.
Practice when nobody is watching.
If you want a business, start learning how businesses operate.
If you want to create, create.
If God gave you something, cultivate it.
The Seed Is Already Inside You
This is the picture that came to me.
Imagine holding a bag of seeds.
Maybe they’re watermelon seeds.
Maybe they’re seeds for a fruit tree.
You can hold those seeds for twenty years.
You can pray over them.
You can tell everybody how beautiful the fruit is going to be.
You can put the seeds on your vision board.
You can prophesy over those seeds.
But if you never plant them, they remain seeds.
Once they’re planted, you still have work to do.
You water them.
You protect them.
You cultivate the soil.
You wait.
You keep tending them when you can’t see anything happening above the ground.
Then eventually, what was hidden begins to grow.
I believe many of us are asking God for fruit while we’re still holding the seed in our hands.
And perhaps God is saying:
Plant what I gave you.
Change the Question You’re Asking God
Isaiah 48:17 changed something about the way I think about provision.
I’m no longer only asking:
“God, when are You going to give it to me?”
I’m learning to ask:
“God, what have You already given me?”
“What is in my house?”
“What is in my hands?”
“What is inside of me?”
“What have I overlooked because it seemed too small?”
“What did You tell me to do years ago that I abandoned?”
“What needs to be cultivated?”
“Teach me to profit.”
“Lead me in the way I should go.”
That’s a different prayer.
Because now I’m not trying to figure everything out without Him.
I have a Teacher.
I have a Shepherd.
I have a Redeemer.
Water Your Seed
The Lord is my Shepherd.
I shall not want.
That doesn’t mean we will never experience difficult seasons. It doesn’t mean everything comes instantly. It doesn’t mean we never have to work.
It means I don’t have to believe that lack is my permanent identity.
Jesus said He came that we might have life and have it more abundantly.
God said He would teach us to profit.
He said He gives us power to get wealth.
He said He would instruct us and teach us in the way we should go.
So maybe today you don’t need another seed.
Maybe you need to water the one you already have.
Go back through your life.
Look at what comes naturally to you.
Look at what people repeatedly ask you for help with.
Look at what you loved before survival convinced you it wasn’t important.
Look at the idea you abandoned because it didn’t make money immediately.
Look at what God told you to do that you buried because you were afraid.
And then ask Him:
“Lord, teach me what to do with what You put inside of me.”
Don’t despise your seed because it doesn’t look like somebody else’s harvest.
Plant it.
Water it.
Cultivate it.
Practice.
Prepare.
Learn.
And above all, allow God to teach you.
Because the same God who gave you the seed knows exactly what He intended for it to become.
Water your seed.
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