129 So Jesus answered and said, “Assuredly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands, for My sake and the gospel’s,
30 who shall not receive a hundredfold now in this time — houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions — and in the age to come, eternal life.”

Mark 10:29-30

Those who trust in God can be guaranteed of a hundredfold return. This is an awesome promise that a lot of us have tried to spiritualize or logicalize and either way we miss God and miss the essence of this promise.

The “hundredfold return” is not about doing an accurate mathematical multiplication calculation on your seed, for it doesn’t always add up that way. Neither is it a good feeling you have when you enter into the presence of God. It is about a guaranteed, multiplied and abundant harvest on your sown seed. I am glad it is more than a good feeling in the presence of God because after you must have experienced this good feeling, if you have nowhere to live or no food to eat, that feeling will dissipate quicker than you could imagine! We invited a minister to preach at our church once. We didn’t tell him what to preach, but he preached on the evil of poverty and what it means to give and to receive and he mentioned almost verbatim some of the things we had talked about the previous Sunday. The next day, on my way home, bulldozers came pulling down the shanties of some people because the government said it planned to rebuild the area.

It was a pitiful sight that exemplified the evil of poverty. From heavy rain, to intense sunshine, the now homeless people were not spared. Why? Poverty. That’s why God said when you lay up treasure in heaven you will have houses, physical things, material things, in hundredfold. Why? Well, simply because you trust in God and not in gold. Those who trust in gold just walk by trial and error, like someone walking through a mine field.

I’ve seen men who were multimillionaires reduced to penury. Why? The answer is simple: when the time of multiplication came, there was nothing to multiply because their trust was in gold and therefore they didn’t have treasures in heaven.

Confession:
Father, I thank You for the promise of the hundredfold return on my giving. I receive the hundredfold return on all my giving, in Jesus’ Name.