Break Out!: 5 Keys to Go Beyond Your Barriers and Live an Extraordinary Life (8 page)

Others may have a bucket instead of a cup. They’ve done okay. They’re surviving, but they’re not planning on going any further. Still others have traded in the bucket. They’ve stretched their faith. They have a barrel. They believe they will go higher.

Yet there’s one other group; this group is very unusual. They believe in far-and-beyond favor. They believe God will prosper them even in a recession. They believe their children will be mighty in the land. They’re expecting explosive blessings. They know they’ve come into a shift and a supernatural increase is coming.

They don’t have a cup. They don’t have a bucket. They don’t have a barrel. Their faith is so strong they have a barn. They have a whole warehouse. They’re expecting God to open up the windows of Heaven and pour out unprecedented favor, supernatural opportunities, and exponential increase.

The Scripture says, “Open your mouth wide and I will fill it.” My question is this: “Do you have your mouth opened wide? What are you expecting? What are you saying about your future?”

“Oh, man, it’s going to be a tough year. I don’t think I’ll ever meet my sales goals.”

“I don’t think I’ll ever be promoted.”

“I don’t think I’ll ever get well.”

If those are your thoughts, then your mouth is barely open. You’re not expecting increase. You’re not expecting good breaks. You’re not expecting God to turn it around.

Jesus said, “According to your faith, it will be done unto you.” He was saying in effect, “If you have a cup I’ll fill you with a cupful of blessings. If you have a barrel then I’ll fill you with a barrelful of blessings. But if you have a barn, then I will give you a barnful of blessings.”

If you’ll take the limits off God—if you’ll get up every morning expecting far-and-beyond favor—then He won’t disappoint you. When you have your mouth opened wide, you’re not complaining about the economy. Instead, you are expecting to have a blessed year.

Your child may be off course, but you’re not praying: “God, just keep him from driving me crazy.” Instead you’re saying: “God, You said my children would be mighty in the land, so I want to thank You that You will turn him around and use him to do great things for You.”

When your mouth is open wide, you’re not just believing you will make the monthly mortgage payments; you’re believing you will pay off your whole house, to live totally debt free. That’s barn level.

The question is this: “Do you have your mouth opened wide? Do you believe in increase? Do you go out each day knowing that favor is in your future, or are you stuck in a rut? Have you decided you’ve reached your limits, so you’ve just settled where you are?”

That’s what happened to the children of Israel. They were headed toward the Promised Land. They had big dreams and big goals, but along the way they faced adversities. They had some disappointments.

They were like many modern-day people who lost money when the stock market dropped, or lost their homes when the recession hit. The children of Israel had their own adversities. They became so discouraged they gave up on their dreams and just settled where they were.

One day God said to them, “You have dwelt long enough on this mountain.” I believe God is saying that to each one of us. You have been where you are long enough. You may have been carrying that cup year after year. Maybe that is how you were raised and that’s all you’ve ever known. You may have had your sights on the barn at one time, and dreamed big, but after some setbacks you just settled for the bucket.

God is saying to you, “This is a new day. Get your fire back. Where you are is not where you’re supposed to stay.”

I’m asking you to increase your capacity to receive. Stretch your faith and dream bigger. Go beyond the barriers that have held you back. Make room for God to do something new. Give Him permission to increase you. You have to give God permission to prosper you.

God brought things across my path years ago, but I turned them down. I thought they were too big. I didn’t think I was qualified. It was so far beyond what I thought I could handle, I didn’t release my faith for it.

I wasn’t giving God permission to increase me. I missed that opportunity to go farther. God will not force us to live His abundant life. It starts in our own thinking. Jesus said, “No one pours new wine into old wineskins.” He meant that you can’t go to a new level with an old way of thinking. You may be ready for God to do something new. When you hear that God has more in store this excites you. Something on the inside says, “Yes this is for me.”

But many times your mind will try to talk you out of it. It will come up with reasons why it’s not going to happen:

“You know what the economy is like. You will not have a blessed year.”

“You know the doctor said you will not recover.”

“You’ve been single for a long time. You will never be married.”

No, get rid of the old wineskins. Trade in those containers for something bigger. This is a new season. What’s happened in the past is over and done. You may have been through disappointments. Maybe you tried and failed. It didn’t work out. That’s okay. God is still in control.

Have a bigger vision for your life. Our attitudes should be: “This is my year to go to a new level. This is my year to see a supernatural increase. This is my year to become totally healthy. This is my year to meet the person of my dreams.”

God promises that if you’ll open your mouth wide, then He will fill it. But it all starts with your capacity to receive. You can’t go around thinking thoughts of mediocrity and expect to excel. You can’t think thoughts of lack and expect to have abundance. The two don’t go together. Take the limitations off God. Trade in that cup. Throw away that bucket. Get rid of that barrel and come over to the barn-sized level. God is a God of abundance.

In 2 Kings there’s a story of a widow whose husband died. She doesn’t have money to pay her bills. The creditors are coming to take her sons as payment. All she has of any value is a small pot of oil. Elisha the Prophet stops by her house and tells her to do something strange—to go to her neighbors and borrow as many big empty pots as you can find. These pots normally hold very expensive cooking oil.

He told her specifically, “Borrow not a few.” He was saying, “Don’t short-change yourself. Make room for abundance.” She went out and gathered up five or six empty pots. When she returned Elisha told her to pour the little oil that she had into one of those empty containers. It looked as if she was just transferring it from one to another, but the Scripture says the oil never ran out. She kept pouring and pouring. God supernaturally multiplied that oil until every one of those containers was completely full.

Here’s my point: She determined how much oil she would have. If she had borrowed only one container, then just one container would have been filled. If she had borrowed ten, she would have had ten full. If she’d borrowed fifty, then fifty would have been full.

The amount of increase she received wasn’t up to God. He has unlimited supplies. It was up to her. That was why the Prophet said, “Borrow
not a few.” My question is this: How many containers are you borrowing? What kind of vision do you have for your life? If you think, “The economy is so bad and my business is slow, and I’m just hoping to make it through this year,” God says, “All right, I’ll fill that barely-get-by container.”

Or maybe you have five or six containers. You believe you can pay your bills, feed your family, and have a little left over. That’s good. God will fill those containers. But I believe you are different. You have radical faith. You are dangerous. You don’t have one. You don’t have five. Instead, you’re calling Home Depot to say: “I need a couple thousand empty containers.”

You know God can do exceedingly abundantly above and beyond. You know He is El Shaddai, the God Who is more than enough. You’re making room for this far-and-beyond favor. You’re positioned under the open windows of Heaven.

God is saying, “You need to get ready. I’m going to fill your containers.” It may not have happened yet, but God has favor in your future. He has good breaks, opportunities, and blessings that will chase you down. You may not see how it can happen, but God has ways to increase you that you’ve never thought of.

He has explosive blessings that can thrust you to a new level. Like the widow woman and the pots of cooking oil, God wants to bless you beyond your normal income, beyond your salary, and beyond your retirement. God can give you one good break; one promotion, one inheritance, and all those containers will be filled to overflowing.

Make sure you don’t shortchange yourself. God is saying to you what He said to this lady: “Borrow not a few.” Don’t limit your vision. You may not see how it could happen. That’s okay; that’s not your job. Your job is to believe. God has a thousand ways to fill your containers that you’ve never thought of.

Don’t go around year after year expecting the same thing the same way. God is a God of increase. He has greater levels. Where you are is not where you’re supposed to stay. You’re supposed to rise higher. Have a bigger vision. Not, “God if you’ll just give me this small raise, then I’ll be happy. God, if you’ll just help my car to not break down. God, if you’ll just help me to scrape by, you know how bad the economy is.”

Don’t borrow tiny little containers. They limit what God can do. A fisherman was on a riverbank one day when he saw another man fishing
nearby. Every time the other man caught a big fish, he threw it back, but he kept every small fish he hooked.

This went on all day, and the more the first fisherman watched the more curious he became. Finally he went over and said, “Sir I’ve watched you all day and I just can’t understand. Why do you throw the big fish back, but you keep the small fish?”

“Oh, that’s simple,” said the other man. “All I have is a ten-inch frying pan.”

It’s sad to say, but there are a lot of people like that. Instead of making room for increase, instead of believing for great things, they go around with that ten-inch frying-pan mentality. It’s been in their family for generations. Mama used it. Granddaddy used it. It’s an attitude that says, “I could never live in that neighborhood. I could never afford that college. I’ll never be that successful. Our family always struggles. We’ve always been this way. We’re just ten-inch frying-pan people.”

That’s the way my father was raised. He was exposed to poverty, lack, and defeat. In high school, he was given the Christmas basket donated for the poorest family. All they could afford to drink was something called “Blue John” milk. It was milk with the cream drained off, which gave it a blue tint. On farms it was usually fed only to the hogs. It wasn’t meant for people to drink. My father couldn’t stand it.

To make matters worse, my father’s name was John. He thought: “Why did they have to call it Blue John? Why couldn’t they call it Blue Mark, Blue Bill, or Blue Leroy?”

My father was tempted to think: “This is just my lot in life.” Every circumstance said, “You’ve got a ten-inch frying pan.” But at seventeen years old he gave his life to Christ and something rose up inside of him—a faith, a boldness, that said, “My children will never be raised in the poverty and defeat I was raised in.”

He rejected the ten-inch frying-pan mentality. He took the limits off God and went on to live a blessed, abundant life.

No matter how you were raised or what has pushed you down or held you back, God is saying, “I created you as the head and not the tail. I made you to lend and not borrow.”

God has some big fish in your future. Do yourself a favor and get rid of that ten-inch frying-pan mentality. Who says you can’t rise out of poverty?
Who says you’ll never own a nice home? Who says you’ll never take a mission trip? Who says you’ll never start a charity? Who says you’ll never send your children to college? Who says you’ll never meet the right person?

All it takes is one touch of God’s favor. Get in agreement with Him. God has explosive blessings in your future, blessings that can thrust you years ahead. Second Peter 3:8 says, “To the Lord a thousand years is like one day and one day is like a thousand years.”

If you’ll stay in faith, God can take a thousand years of blessings and release them in one day. Dare to say, “God, I’m asking You to give me the blessings that my ancestors missed out on.”

That may seem far out, but we serve a far-out God. What He has planned for your future is more than you can imagine.

I read about a twenty-nine-year-old baseball player who was on a minor league team but dreamed of making it to the Major League. Several years ago he bought a fifty-acre plot of land from his great-aunt so she could afford to move into a senior’s home. He paid $1,000 an acre—$50,000 for the land.

The land really wasn’t worth that much. It was out in the country, in a small town. He did it just to help out his family member. He thought about building a home there, but discovered that the ground was too hard. But that turned out to be a very good thing. A surveyor discovered that right under the surface of the property was solid stone, a type of rock called Goshen stone.

It’s some of the most beautiful and sought-after landscaping stone around. Geologists estimated there were twenty-four million tons of this stone on his property. It sells for about $100 a ton, which means the stone on his land was worth more than $2 billion!

If you open your mouth wide God will fill it. I’m asking you to get rid of the cup, get rid of the bucket, and get rid of the barrel. God has a barnload of blessings stored up for you. Don’t let a limited mind-set hold you back. You may not see how it can happen, but God has a way. If you’ll take off the limits and make room for Him to do something new, you’ll go beyond the barriers of the past and step into the abundance God has in store.