We didn’t fence you in. The smallness you feel comes from within you. Your lives aren’t small but you’re living them in a small way…Open up your lives. Live openly and expansively!” (2 Corinthians 6:12,13 The Message Bible)“The smallness you feel comes from within you”. Ooh, what an indictment. So we have no one else to blame. Before we blamed it on what side of the tracks we were born on or whether anyone in our family tree ever went to college, Mommy or Daddy, alcoholism or drugs,a broken heart. Our pain and disappointment fenced us in. Here, Paul, paraphrased by Eugene Peterson, says the constriction is internal, not external. “Your lives aren’t small but you’re living them in a small way” What a waste of good potential. God who is big enough to fill the universe is also small enough to live within our hearts. So faith capacity shouldn’t be at issue. No need to stay in "Smallville" forever.
Here we are living in Smallville, the town "Plano" Illinois. Not living within the limits we sometimes place on the Living God, You've done it, I've done it. We limit God at times based on our own personal inventory of disappointment, When plan "A" failed and plan "B" fell short we went to Plan "o" Plano. Disappointment may be divine re-appointment. Where is God is calling out to you to trust him? To live expansively and open? Believe me, Life has become anything but plain in Plano.
You have to SEE it to BE it. Maybe you can't fit a new house into your faith because of a bankruptcy, divorce or your not making enough money but if you can see it,visualize the impossible, call something out of nothing,it can happen. Can you fit whatever you desire into your inner man? Once your spirit-man has caught the vision the rest will be history,Then God and you can make history.
What can you fit into your inner man? Will a new house fit in there? Is it wide enough to accommodate opening up a business, taking that vacation to Europe, or drawing up blueprints for a ten-thousand seat sanctuary instead of five-hundred seat? I’m stretching the elastic to accommodate my life for a few faith "things" like a new lawn mower. Well, you have to start somewhere. Seldom does a man sit in the cockpit of the plane until he has first visualized it. That is called a flight simulator. No red cape under the suit? The Bible is a faith simulator (and stimulator). When you see what Paul could do, what Peter could do, what Jesus did, your own faith is stirred with that motivation that voices, “I can do that!” Capacity stretches and moves you on to the Big "Metropolis" of "I can do "...
What can you fit into your inner man? Will a new house fit in there? Is it wide enough to accommodate opening up a business, taking that vacation to Europe, or drawing up blueprints for a ten-thousand seat sanctuary instead of five-hundred seat? I’m stretching the elastic to accommodate my life for a few faith "things" like a new lawn mower. Well, you have to start somewhere. Seldom does a man sit in the cockpit of the plane until he has first visualized it. That is called a flight simulator. No red cape under the suit? The Bible is a faith simulator (and stimulator). When you see what Paul could do, what Peter could do, what Jesus did, your own faith is stirred with that motivation that voices, “I can do that!” Capacity stretches and moves you on to the Big "Metropolis" of "I can do "...
Time to leave "Smallville"
What you couldn’t do at sixteen doesn’t determine what you can or cannot do at thirty-five, forty five even seventy five. Paul said, “We didn’t fence you in”. We are our own worst enemies. We dig our own post holes, pour in the sack of Quick-crete to secure the base then string the wires of our own defeat. We build our own walls of doubt, fear and insecurity. Blame it on a lack of collateral, lack of mother’s affection when we were small, lack of education or lack of whatever, but usually it is more a lack of spine, lack of vision or lack of temper.“Winners are just ex-losers that got mad”. Our spiritual “insides” will stretch or shrink just like the spare tire under the ribcage, according to what we feed it. Faith has to be fed a strong diet of God's Word, the promises of God. Once you can see yourself at the wheel of that new car or holding the keys to your new house, then you can free yourself to believe enough to SOAR…or whatever else you think God desires for you.
Leave
"Smallville" the smallville of your doubt and God may lead you where you never could have imagined he would.
What you couldn’t do at sixteen doesn’t determine what you can or cannot do at thirty-five, forty five even seventy five. Paul said, “We didn’t fence you in”. We are our own worst enemies. We dig our own post holes, pour in the sack of Quick-crete to secure the base then string the wires of our own defeat. We build our own walls of doubt, fear and insecurity. Blame it on a lack of collateral, lack of mother’s affection when we were small, lack of education or lack of whatever, but usually it is more a lack of spine, lack of vision or lack of temper.“Winners are just ex-losers that got mad”. Our spiritual “insides” will stretch or shrink just like the spare tire under the ribcage, according to what we feed it. Faith has to be fed a strong diet of God's Word, the promises of God. Once you can see yourself at the wheel of that new car or holding the keys to your new house, then you can free yourself to believe enough to SOAR…or whatever else you think God desires for you.
Leave
"Smallville" the smallville of your doubt and God may lead you where you never could have imagined he would.
Nuff Said,
