“IF what you have in your hands is too little to live on, then you are staring at seed, not a harvest”, I couldn’t agree more!
If you give a poor man US $100, he will use it to buy food and groceries for the day and soon be back to looking for more. However, if you give that same amount to a wise man (rich in his mind), he will invest it, make a profit from it and use the profit to live on – retaining the capital ($100) for re-investing.
Logically, one could come up with a thousand reasons why they should just spend their money on food and getting by (rent, transport, etc.) but the truth is that for many, the above poor man’s decision is why they still remain where they have been for a long time – in abject poverty.
The definition of insanity is to keep doing the same things in the same way and expect different results. If you are happy with your results, then keep doing what you are doing, but if you are not, then there is a serious need for revision so that you may instead start doing the right thing.
So, what is the wrong thing? In this case, it is simply to keep on eating your seed! The poor man stares at his seed and eats all of it instead of keeping back a portion for planting on the ground! What ground? The ground of his life!
Suppose you had a $100 between you and poverty. There are usually two options, spend it and try and look for another $100, or you could invest it by buying some merchandise you know would be very much in demand where you are. Work out a profitable margin that makes sense (all costs inclusive) and then resell the goods in your possession for a profit.
You may be surprised how much profit one could realise simply by taking groceries into the rural areas and exchanging them for maize, then bringing that maize back for sale to FRA or millers.
You could gain great profits also by supplying airtime vouchers or, better still, the low-cost cell handsets to the same and adding a 20 per cent margin on the price to the furthest outskirts of the country.
Your greatest challenge would be how to make this process as low-cost as possible! The wise man would look at all factors, shorten the turnover period and maximise their returns.
The principle of re-investing teaches that when you make a profit (after removing all costs) you take 50 per cent of that and add to your capital.
If you practice this habit diligently, you can multiply your capital base by seven times within 12 re-investments!
Truly the above scenario exemplifies the heading of this article. This also agrees with the sowing and reaping theory from the Bible. Every sown seed comes back multiplied! If you use this standard correctly, you can create great wealth within a lifetime. If you apply this principle and utilise chance and time, you may create that great wealth within five to seven years instead!
Here’s a killer statement from the word of God that defines the very core the ministry God has assigned me to accomplish in my lifetime and leave as a legacy for future generations.
Much food abounds in the fallow ground of the poor, but for lack of justice, there is waste (Prov_13:23).
This statement is very powerful in that there is abundance in the environment that can create and generate so much wealth for the poor.
However, injustice causes them to remain in poverty. Without wisdom, it is easy for the poor to be downtrodden, mistreated, exploited and taken advantage of.
If one is simple-minded and does not have the insight to utilise the opportunities that God has placed upon the ground of their lives, they will “waste away” so many chances for great wealth and prosperity.
In the 80s in Zambia, many of our nationals did not want to be entrepreneurs because most had good jobs at parastatal companies.
This meant that there was a gaping hole for entrepreneurial exploitation of opportunities in the country.
Since Zambians chose to remain in white and blue collar jobs, foreigners (Senegalese, Nigerians) took full advantage by coming through and utilising the opportunity and created companies (shops, factories, etc). Only when the new MMD government abolished privatisation most of the parastatals did they “see” what they had been missing all along.
The irony of life is that even now, many of my countrymen and women are still fixing their eyes on jobs and employment instead of taking advantage of the opportunities available for great prosperity in entrepreneurship today.
It is said that those who do not learn from history are bound to repeat it. I think we are seeing a repeat of the same.
The above scenario states clearly that we need to look twice at the ground we are on. That ground has so many opportunities but yet we choose to be blind and foolish, there by letting them pass us by.
Where we have seed, we squander it through consumption instead of investing it in production or trading opportunities all around us.
Surely the ground of the poor is rich and full of gems of every imaginable kind, but due to lack of wisdom, justice and insight, there is waste.
What then?
We need to learn how to give/plant into the ground of our lives. The ground is our life and its day to day existence.
That is our ground because we reap what we sow daily. What you may not realise is that we are sowing everyday, whether we know it or not.
Our actions are the seeds and the consequences of those actions are the returns or harvest. We are where we are today because of what we did yesterday. Decisions we made, actions we took and plans we executed. – lordsoracle@gmail.com