According to experts there are six steps to growing macadamia nuts (although technically macadamia nuts are called fruit).
First, find the right spot for a tree that can grow for more than 100 years to a height of 60 feet and a width of 40 feet.
Second, plant the tree.
Third, keep the tree happy. Needless to say, that doesn’t mean telling the tree jokes.
It means that a happy macadamia tree needs a tropical climate, lots of sunlight, adequate rainfall and protection from high winds, because it has a shallow root system.
Fourth, be willing to wait for six years. It takes 6-7 years before the tree will ever produce its first nuts. However, it will often have four or five harvests in the first year it does produce.
Fifth, look at the nut. When it’s ready there will be a fleshy husk over a hard shell.
Sixth, crack the shell.
Now I fully realize this is probably a lot more information than you wanted to know about macadamia nuts and trees; however, there is a parallel to the seeds you plant.
First, pick the right spot for your seed ... good ground.
Second, sow the exact amount God tells you to sow, where He says sow it and when He tells you to do it. Just wishing, hoping or thinking about sowing is not the same as putting the seed into the ground. Nothing happens until the seed is planted.
Third, keep the seed happy by maintaining the proper atmosphere of expectancy.
Maintain confidence that your obedience in sowing will return a harvest 30, 60 and 100 fold.
Fourth, know your harvest will come in your own due season ... the right time.
Fifth, recognize the manifestation of your harvest. There are times when harvests come in progressively ... there are times when you receive windfall harvests.
Sixth, when you receive any harvest … progressive or otherwise ... make sure you don’t eat all of your harvest ... you must use some of it to sow again for more harvests.
Sowing should become as much a habit as taking a shower or brushing your teeth.
When you sow ... according to His divine instructions, you have His absolute scriptural guarantee that you will receive a harvest.
Galatians 6:7 in the Amplified Bible says:
“Do not be deceived and deluded and misled; God will not allow Himself to be sneered at (scorned, disdained, or mocked by mere pretensions or professions, or by His precepts being set aside). [He inevitably deludes himself who attempts to delude God.] For whatever a man sows, that and that only is what he will reap.”
From RichThoughts for Breakfast, Volume 2, by Harold Herring, pp 19-22