Prison Break – jettisoning limitations

Limitations. I’ve been dealing lately with the issue of limitations, challenging people to break out of the prison of their own mind and the straitjacket that others have put on them. Truly when we become followers of Christ we must undergo a mental transformation. We need drilled into our psyche the understanding that we can and must think, dream and expect big, be unlimited in our expectations. How can it be otherwise since we are supernatural beings serving a supernatural God.

It means attuning yourself to the way He functions, expecting anything to happen that He says will happen irrespective of appearances to the contrary. It means throwing away the shackles of convention, conformism, human timing and going for gold all the time. It is easy to stop expecting good because convention says certain things don’t just happen, or don’t happen at or before a particular stage, and you have passed or not reached that stage.

Conventional wisdom says sixty year olds don’t step out into ministry you should have done this thirty years ago, forty five year olds don’t have babies, twenty year olds don’t lead churches, wait until you’re older, your time will come; women don’t preach; another variant, women may preach but cannot be senior pastors; you should have bought that house ten years ago, now it’s too late, prices have gone up; the crisis is on; you’re too young, too old, too female, too male, too foreign, too native, it’s too soon, too late; the list is endless. Limits, limits, limits. And we fall for them, you try to tell yourself God is able but that niggling sense of inadequacy keeps hounding you saying it cannot be done.

Well it can, all things are possible. For most people the problem is not that they believe for too much and got too little. What ails most of us is that we settle for too little, whittle down our expectations as the years go by and decide not to bother God with unreasonable demands, let’s hunker down and settle into a life of mediocrity, of quiet desperation. Not so. Every person carries a God given dream, passion, ambition waiting to come forth. Because we belong to One who is not limited by natural circumstances, every second that we live must be devoted to a grand thought, a grand concept, a grand action, something worthy of a great God. We must jack ourselves out of the prevailing notion of bare survival into thoughts of transformation, change, increase; why?

Because it pleases God to see people who are bold, who believe and who pick up the gauntlet and decide to disagree with limitations and break through. The Bible says that the people who know their God shall be strong and do exploits. I like that, the potential to be a champion We frustrate His omnipotence when all we’re about is, Oh God, hide me in a corner till I go to heaven. Can one claim to serve a powerful, great, mighty God and be so distinctly uncontaminated by His greatness? Surely some of it is bound to rub off on us, surely those who do not know Him must see some boldness, some audacity, some water walking in those who claim to belong to Him, rather than insipid, spineless escapism.

With a flourish He opened up the red sea, with panache He hemmed them in with a pillar of cloud and a pillar of fire, with dexterity He manoeuvred through the chequered history of His chosen people to bring fulfilment of His plans, with inconceivable wisdom, to the chagrin of the unsuspecting powers, He inserted His own Son into the human story, with alacrity raised Him from the dead forever rewriting the drama that is man’s story. Surely, such a One can still be expected to exhibit great might in our times, and surely such a One deserves a people who will throw caution to the wind and step out of the boat and say Yes Lord.

It is our privilege to be such a people.

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