The beginning of a new year is an excellent time to reflect, evaluate and realign life to the things God is speaking to your heart. It is a time to relaunch with renewed passion towards the destination He is leading you. For this purpose, I set aside the first few days of each year to wait on the Lord in prayer, listen and record what He says. For 2025, the word of the Lord to my heart is Multiplication: Time to Multiply.
Multiplication is a very significant word from a biblical standpoint. We find it used in the very first chapter of Genesis when the Creator, God, speaks to His highest creation, man, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply.” Appreciate the significance of God’s first words which set in motion, for all time, His purpose for mankind. To multiply is to be like God and act like God.
The Hebrew word for multiply (raba) simply means, to increase: the opposite of decrease; the antithesis of subtraction. We are created to increase. Addition is technically increase, but we are talking about the Almighty God’s idea of increase which is multiplication; exponential; without limits. When the Lord wanted Abrm to understand how He would increase his seed, he used the stars in the night sky and the sand on the seashore which are innumerable. Now that’s increase! That is how He wants to work in and through our lives.
I imagine Abrm had a difficult time with the concept of multiplication when he had zero children at 99 years old, married to a barren woman of 90. He must have thought; how can I be a father of many nations? How does multiplication happen from a zero sum? This kind of thinking represents the greatest obstacle to increase. Doubt and unbelief limit multiplication. You have to see it and believe it by faith before you will experience it. When the Lord makes a promise, He illustrates with stars and sand. We need to enlarge are thinking from barren or stagnant, go past addition and on to multiplication.
From the time I began to understands God’s call on my life – to be a blessing to the nations – I knew it would take multiplication for it to happen. Today, after 45 years of ministry and traveling to over 100 nations, we are living what we only dreamed about back then. By utilizing modern methods of travel and communication, reaching multitudes in a moment is now common. When we started in 1980, travel options were limited: there was no internet, smart phones, social media or live streaming. Now it has become easy to multiply our influence to the uttermost parts of the world instantly.
When we think of multiplication it is easy to default to things that can be counted or measured (i.e. people, money). But multiplication includes more than numbers. The Apostle Peter tells us grace and peace may be multiplied in our life through the knowledge of God and Jesus Christ (2 Pt.1). So, moral virtues can increase in us through fellowship with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Now that’s the kind of multiplication I need, want, and can expect. Jude tells us mercy and love are added to the list of virtues that can be multiplied in us. I conclude that the manifestation of godly character can indeed be multiplied.
The book of Acts chronicles the growth of the Church over thirty years from its inception. Once again, we see a progressive increase from believers being added to the Lord (Ac.2) to disciples being multiplied (Ac.6). This speaks of both numeric growth and spiritual development. People are not born as disciples: they become mature followers of Jesus by growing up spiritually. We should plan for and expect this kind of multiplication in churches today.
Multiplication is organic. One of the laws of Genesis is that every created thing will produce its kind. Imprinted in the DNA of every seed is the blueprint to produce not only after its kind but also to multiply under the right conditions. I have never planted a tomato seed and harvested just one tomato. I can control the environment but the seed will increase naturally or organically. Multiplication is imprinted in each of us. When we eliminate the limitations to growth and provide the right conditions, multiplication will happen.
What are some optimal conditions for multiplication? First, is to believe multiplication is possible. Even if you have labored in a dormant, stagnant environment, over a long period of time, movement, growth and multiplication is possible when you add God into the equation.
Second, consider untapped opportunities for multiplication. When the Covid pandemic limited access to church services, other possibilities for growth and multiplication opened through social media. Churches that numbered less than a hundred people now were being followed by hundreds through live streaming. When one stream of growth has dried up, look around for other avenues to expand, grow and multiply.
Third, understand that multiplication is measured not only quantitively but qualitatively. We can get bigger and better at the same time. “Then the churches throughout all Judea, Galilee, and Samaria had peace and were edified. And walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, they were multiplied.” (Acts 9:31) When Saul, the chief persecutor of the church, was converted and removed, the church thrived. The qualitative conditions of peace, comfort and unity caused the church to multiply.
Finally, we must believe multiplication is what God wants and what He is working for with all who will join Him. We saw that from Genesis chapter 1 when He gave Adam and Eve a commission to multiply. Consider God’s intention and eager desire expressed in this passage:
“Now may He who supplies seed to the sower, and bread for food, supply and multiply the seed you have sown and increase the fruits of your righteousness,while you are enriched in everything for all liberality, which causes thanksgiving through us to God.”
Let’s make it personal: The Lord’s supplies seed for me to sow, multiplies the seed and increases fruit in my life which enriches me (to be more generous) and gives thanksgiving, glory and honor to Himself. What a God! He is glorified as we are multiplied. It’s time to MULTIPLY.
