Christianity presents many challenges to us as we walk through life. It is all about our being changed to conform to the image and purposes of Jesus Christ our Living Lord. How well we progress depends largely upon how we see ourselves. If we see ourselves as an insignificant “nobody,” then that is the level we will live at. It is likely that we will achieve only small things in life in comparison to that which God intends for us.

If we are miserly in life, then we reap accordingly: “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he”(Proverbs 23:7).

One of the main purposes why God has to take us through “wilderness” trials and testing is so that He can stretch and expand us to believe for bigger and greater things that He has planned for us.He has to change us! He has to change our heart, our attitudes, our smallness of thinking, our feeling that we are inferior to others, that we could never rise and impact thousands of others because of our relationship with Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit.  

When I look back at my life and how I was when I first started my walk with Jesus, I was locked into the beliefs and influences of a negative past. I did not think well of myself. But then the day came when the Holy Spirit challenged me from Isaiah 54:1-5 to “break forth on the right hand and on the left.” I knew that the challenge was to think much more positively about myself, to agree with what God says about me and not what I say about me. It was not easy to break the habit patterns of smallness and negative thinking about one’s self. It took a few years, but because I co-operated with God in seeking to obey what He asked of me, to my amazement I watched The GFM Ministry multiply 16 times over in the next 10 years! Prior to that I was “locked into” an environment of a personal failure concept about my life; then I became a Christian and was part of a small church for a number of years. Everything seemed to be small! But as a result of that experience I started to change and, when I started to change, I started to grow personally in my faith and then my ministry started to grow as well.

It is easy for us to blame others, circumstances, etc., for our living small and insignificant life-styles, but if we are willing to let God deal with us in the way we think and see ourselves, then we will experience growth in our life and ministry. The key to growth lies within us! What we think in our heart (about ourselves, what we can or cannot do) determines how much we will achieve in life! When I first started pastoring, whatever I did to make the church grow did not work! I had a heart for God’s will to be done, but at that stage of my Christian walk I had not learned the principles that I now know and have proven in more recent years.

We do not have to remain small. God’s purpose is to give Holy Spirit-filled Christians a world vision, and that we can play a major part in impacting that world for Jesus (Mark 16:15-20; Luke 24:44-49; Acts 1:8). To make a real difference in our lives in this generation we need thatenlarged vision of Jesus to grip our hearts in such a way that we really believe that we can accomplish all that He says we can! Yes, it is time to break out of smallness! ~ Rodney W. Francis.

Bible  Readings:   Isaiah 54; Matthew 21:21; Mark 9:23; John 11:40.