Sunday January 16th, 2005
Series: Raising the level of Expectation part IV
Sermon: Breaking The Curse
Scripture: Num 23:19 / Mt 22:32 /II Tim 2:9 / Heb 11:16
Many people miss the pivotal opportunities in their lives every day because they’ve grown accustomed to the status quo. They expect nothing better. The door is open but they fail to go through and regrettably back away from God’s plan.
Why?
They refuse to make room in their own thinking for the new things of God and what He wants to do in their lives and so they miss out on the blessings
Rather than launching out in faith, they sit back and say “this could never happen to me or, that’s just to incredible to believe.
God is opening up a new door and it’s time to step through it.
Unfortunately what you receive is directly connected to what you believe and what you expect to happen.
If you want God to do the extraordinary, then you have to , you must start believing Him for bigger things.
Stop limiting God. some times when God tells you no, it’s for a very good reason—perhaps it’s to move you up.
God doesn’t do little things—Ephes. 3:20
God can do anything, you know—far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams! He does it not by pushing us around but by working within us, his Spirit deeply and gently within us.
We need to learn to stop limiting God.
The second key element to expectation is enlarge your vision. If God showed everything He has in store for you it would boggle your mind.
We get like the little frog who was born in the bottom of a well. As he grew, he hopped and hopped all around in the bottom of the well. In a circle he would go and would think life couldn’t get any better—then he noticed the light above—
We get to a certain level of thinking and living. It’s all we’ve ever known—then along comes the light of Christ than enters us and says—you can go further than you have ever gone before. You can dream and do bigger.
But no, we limit God. The dream is there and we say I’m not qualified, I’m not rich enough—we settle for too little too often because of our way of thinking. I’ll never have enough money to do that—
NEWS FLASH—your job is not your source—God is! And His resources are unlimited. He is not limited by your education or lack of it, not by what you have or don’t. God can do anything if you will only believe, there is only one thing that can stop you—-
Sometimes the mountains began to move when we start moving the stones—the big trees fall because of one chop at a time—God meets us not when we’ve begun to move forward, but when we finally take the step. It’s not wishbone that impresses God, it’s back bone.
Mark 11:21
Peter, remembering what had happened the previous day, said to him, "Rabbi, look—the fig tree you cursed is shriveled up!"
James 3:10
Curses and blessings out of the same mouth!
My friends, this can’t go on.
It’s time to break the curse that holds you back from expecting that supernatural promotion in every area of your life.
Break the curse of complacency. The curse of comfortable. There is no excuse to remain in mediocrity.
God is a progressive God. He wants you to go further than your parents and he wants you to break out of that mold.
Maybe your environment wasn’t all that when growing up, but whose in charge now? It’s past time of playing the blame game. Don’t pass that junk on to your children. Raise the bar, be the one to break the curse in your family and effect future generations to come.
God is only limited by our lack of faith. It’s time to believe God for more. Stop traveling the road of get by. Don’t stay on it for the next fifty years and end up at the same place you are today.
Don’t buy into the lie from hell that this is your lot in life. Buy into the truth that you can go further. You can do more, have more and be more. God didn’t give you the gift of salvation to keep you where you are.
The only shoes in life that you need to fill are your own.
The same goes for the church, He doesn’t send revival to one generation and then in the next to fade away. God wants each generation to increase.
It’s time to go from welfare to fairing well. Your journey is leading you to the King’s palace—start thinking and talking like you belong. Like you are going there to be served rather than do the dishes.
To believe for bigger, you have to break some barriers.
Roger Bannister was an Olympian. Every four years we have the games. Four minutes was the fastest record to ever run the mile. Ever since statisticians kept records, they knew that no one would could ever beat that record. But Roger Bannister didn’t listen to them—he went out and broke it and made sports history. Hundreds of years of record keeping—poof! But here is the most interesting part, after Roger broke the record, within ten years 336 runners broke that record also. What happened?
Simple. The barrier was in the athlete’s minds. They had believed what the experts said. They were convinced no on could break the record.
The point: You will never go beyond the barriers in your own mind. If you think you can’t, you won’t and never will try. If you are defeated in your mind, you’ve already lost the battle.
If you don’t think your dreams will come to pass, then they will only be dreams. If you don’t think you have what it takes to rise up and set a new standard, it won’t happen—the battle ground is in your mind.
The scripture calls it a stronghold. It’s wrong thinking patterns that keep us bound, gagged and imprisoned in defeat. That’s why it is so important that we think positive thoughts of hope, faith and victory.
2 Cor. 10:4
The tools of our trade aren’t for marketing or manipulation, but they are for demolishing that entire massively corrupt culture.
If you fail to break the barriers, you run the risk of running in circles. Remember the children of Israel? 400 years in slavery, set free on an eleven day journey to the promised land, but it took forty years to get there? The kept going around and around the mountain getting no where, never progressing. They had been beat down for so long the couldn’t conceive the promised land.
God finally has to jolt them to conciseness —He said you have dwelt on the mountain long enough. Get over your grasshopper complex and move on and into the place I have prepared for you.
The means to let go of the past hurts, pains, or failures. Believe bigger things. It’s time for increase, promotion and supernatural favor—but, if it’s going to happen, you can’t keep going in circles, doing the same thing you did last year, the same way.
The third key to developing a fresh vision for your life is to break down the barriers of your past.
Habakkuk 2:2 — Joel 2:28 / Acts 2:17
Today is a new day. Maybe some bad stuff has happened to you in the past. Today is a new day. Don’t tie the hands of God by dwelling on the pains of the past. Start creating a new, fresh, brighter future filled with the hope, love and victory, the joy you desire. The Bible promises the God will give us a twofold recompense for our former shame. That means if you’ll keep the right attitude, God will pay you back double for your trouble. Exodus 22
If you will change your thinking, God can change your life.
