Deuteronomy 8:2-3 “You shall remember all the way which the LORD your God has led you in the wilderness these forty years, that He might humble you, testing you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not. He humbled you and let you be hungry, and fed you with manna which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that He might make you understand that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the LORD.”
Luke 8:15 “But the seed in the good soil, these are the ones who have heard the word in an honest and good heart, and hold it fast, and bear fruit with perseverance.”
The Scripture makes it very clear, in both the Old and New Testament, that the people of God are to live by faith. Believers are supposed to be, well, believers! It’s important to note that The Lord doesn’t say we are to live by emotions or by experience, but by everything that proceeds out of His mouth. It doesn’t matter how you feel or what your experience has been; it only matters what He says is true.
As a matter of fact, He will allow us to go through testing wilderness times to discover if real faith is in our hearts. He also uses these times to establish faith in us by removing every other sense-realm thing we might be depending on. To harvest a word from God isn’t just about hearing the word, it’s about believing the word UNTIL.
Of the four soils in the parable of the Sower and the Seed, the only one that produced a mature harvest was the fourth one. Notice in verse 15 of Luke 8 what harvest-producing faith looks like. The good soil hears a word; Mark 4:20 says they hear the word and accept it. Now many Believers think that is all there is to it, but the process of faith goes beyond hearing a word and accepting it by faith as a true word from God. Often The Lord will allow that word to test you, to see how far you are will to go in faith to get the harvest.
Verse 15 says you have to “hold fast,” to the word so that you can “bear fruit with perseverance.” Real faith has an element of FIGHT to it. That’s why The Holy Spirit tells us to “fight the good fight of faith.” Don’t quit believing the promises of God until you see the harvest, and still don’t quit at a thirty or sixty fold harvest. Keep restfully fighting in faith until you have a hundred fold harvest. Hold out and hold on until you see the fullest measure of that word comes to pass.