Increasing Your Future

The Master’s Design

Every single one of us started off in God’s design room. None of us is a mistake. It doesn’t matter who our father or mother is. We might think we were a mistake, but none of us is a mistake! God had each of us planned from the foundation of the world. We were in His design room and God looked at our future and what’s best for us, and He planned it out, step by step. That is why the Bible says God created us in His image. He’s the master designer, the master architect and we were made in His image.

Each of us still has a whole lot inside of us yet to be developed. Let me tell you what causes us to have vibrancy: It’s not what we’ve done; it’s what we still can do. That’s our potential. Potential is never what we’ve done; potential is what we can still do. Potential is untapped energy. It is like unwrapped gifts. Our potential is everything that we can become, but haven’t become yet, but it’s in us. It’s everywhere that we can go, but we haven’t gone yet, and it is imprinted in us.

Now God prepared all of that, and He helps us to move toward increasing our future so that we become what He created us to be. How does God increase our future?

1. He Puts God-Glorifying Dreams in Our Hearts

In every single one of our hearts is a dream of what we can be for God. It’s a dream inside of us. God breathed it inside of us. He designed and crushed it into potential form, in latent energy and He breathed it into our hearts. Now, it is in the form of a promise. It’s in the form of a dream.

“… eye has not seen and ear has not heard, and which have not entered the heart of man, all that God has prepared for those who love Him. For to us God revealed them through the Spirit …” (1 Cor. 2:9-10).

God has already prepared good things. He’s laid them out and extended them to us. God placed that dream in our hearts. Now, even though He’s prepared it for us and laid it out for us, we still have a choice in the matter. We can reject it. We can ignore it. We can squander it. Or we can partner with God in what He’s doing inside us.

2. Prune and Shape Your Life to His Best!

We are to prune and shape our life to His best. Prune, not discipline. We are to start taking away things that have been impeding us. In fact, that’s exactly what Hebrews says.

“… let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us” (Heb. 12:1).

God has a race set before us. He has a certain race. Run our race and not somebody else’s. First, we need to lay aside every encumbrance of sin that so easily entangles us.

What are we committed to? What are we willing to do without in order to get there? What are the prices we’re willing to pay? What things are we willing to prune?

3. Now — Take Steps of Action

We are wonderful at procrastination. That’s one of the things I have to put aside. I need to plan and prepare in advance and learn to do it now and take action.

“… Run in such a way that you may win. Therefore I run in such a way, as not without aim; I box in such a way, as not beating the air” (1 Cor. 9:24, 26)

We need to plan and make room for what God is telling us to do and become. God’s Spirit is living within us to change us from glory to glory into His image. One of the best ways can cooperate with the Spirit of God is to plan and make room for that in our life.

The Lord has an image for us with His hands outstretched, and sometimes, we don’t match up. But as we constantly press into His image, and we prune, plan and make room for it, we will become what we were designed to be. As we continually reach forward and press toward the mark of the high calling of God and Christ Jesus, then one day, we will reach that prize. When we reach it, there is no greater prize in the world that matches it.