And the LORD said unto Abram, after that Lot was separated from him, Lift up now thine eyes, and look from the place where thou art northward, and southward, and eastward, and westward: For all the land which thou seest, to thee I will give it, and to thy seed forever.
—Genesis 13: 14 – 17

The Bible is a great source of wisdom and eternal truth about abundance and prosperity, because it shows God’s power and faithfulness in distributing His blessings, without hiding the shortcomings of the people He chose to work through and bless. If God could see beyond their flaws and failures, then He can see beyond yours, to bless and use you for His purposes as well! Abram is an example of one of those people, and through his story we begin to learn God’s abundance principles of Seed Time and Harvest.

Principle #1: Leave and Cleave In the passage above, it says God spoke these words to Abram. Abram is Abraham’s pre-covenant name, and later it’s revealed that Abram served strange gods. So God was giving this promise to a man with a heathen background! This tells us God didn’t look at Abram’s past to determine his future.

But God did wait until Abram was separated from his nephew Lot to give him the promise. This is significant, because if you go back and read the Bible, you see in Genesis 12:1, God had already told Abram to leave his past behind. But Abram allowed Lot to come with him, and live with him; like many of us, Abram allowed his past to clutter up his present. Lot represented a past attachment to Abram’s ungodly ways – and he ended up creating a ‘Lot’ of drama in Abram’s life.

Sometimes you need to forget those things that are behind you, in order to move into what God has in store for you. You have to separate yourself from things that are incompatible with God’s promise, in order to get to that promise.

So the first principle you have to understand and commit to, if you are going to possess your promise, is leave and cleave. You have to leave behind the past – leave behind all doubts about God’s goodness, all self-centered thoughts about your worthiness or unworthiness, all negative, defeatist thinking, all fear of the future – leave it all behind you. And cleave to your tomorrow: cleave to the Word of God, and to what God has promised you.

It’s like a when a man or woman leave their parents and marry, and ‘cleave to’ their husband or wife, becoming one flesh with their mate. In the same way, we have to leave everything else behind -- and we have to cleave to God’s words of promise, forsaking all the negative thoughts, actions, words – and sometimes people -- of our past. There are some things God cannot talk to you about until you are willing to remove your ‘Lot’ – your past negatives and any disobedience – from your life.

And in order to begin to realize our goals and dreams, in the career/financial area, or anywhere else, we need to be able to assess our current situation with a clean slate – and leave behind some of the people, associations, and situations, that are clouding our vision, and our focus. Which leads us to our second principle of Seed Time and Harvest -- Changing Your Focus.