The Sky is Your Limit
Do you know that, chances are, you are limiting God? Most of us limit God in one way or another. There are many things that can hinder—or limit—what God can do in our lives. One area in which we limit God is through our wrong beliefs. Many think that God is in total control and everything that happens is His will. We blame Him for everything while having a fatalistic theology that says that everything that happens somehow or another must be God’s plan or purpose for our lives. If our marriages fail, we think maybe it’s God’s way of breaking us or humbling us. If our businesses fail, we accept this as God’s will.When I went to India in 1980, it was a total culture shock, but I learned a lot. One thing I learned was that India is really a very rich country. In fact, it’s one of the most populous places on the face of the earth and has an abundance of natural resources. India’s lack of prosperity isn’t due to finances or resources; it’s because of their belief system.When I was in India, I noticed that people were literally starving to death, while “meat” roamed through their homes. I was actually in a house holding a Bible study when a Brahman bull walked in the door. Everyone pressed against the wall and let this big Brahman bull do whatever he wanted—all because Hindus believe the animal could be someone’s reincarnated grandmother. The Hindu people won’t eat beef, but they will eat some lower forms of meat such as dogs or goats, because they believe these animals represent the reincarnation of lower life forms.The Hindu people have resources that could end their hunger, but their religious belief system limits them. They also believe that they are born into a caste system, and if they do anything to try to get out of it and improve their well-being, they might be reincarnated as an ant or something worse. Their belief system has impoverished their nation and has limited them.Many Americans attempt to go into different cultures and simply throw money at their problems, thinking that will solve everything. Yet, money is not the problem in India, or anywhere else; the belief system of the culture is the problem. People need the gospel, as well as a set of principles and a moral code that will cause them to change their belief system. Once these things are put in place, nations will begin to prosper. A culture’s belief system will limit its people and keep them in poverty.Likewise, many people in America think the government owes them welfare, needs to increase their pay or benefits, and should give them more guaranteed health insurance. That is not our problem. Our problem is right between our ears— the way we think and believe. Proverbs 23:7 tells us that as a man thinks in his heart, so is he.Our lives go the way of our thoughts (Romans 12:2). If we want to change, we shouldn’t pray that somebody will just give us more money, nor should we take money from somebody who has it and give it to those who don’t. That’s not our answer.
Our answer is to start taking these limits off of our wrong thinking, because the way we think in our heart will direct the course of our lives.
We need to change ourselves—our thinking, our mindset—if we want to take the limits off of God.
You Have a Sphere of Influence
God is no respecter of persons (Acts 10:34). He wants to do absolutely miraculous things in everyone’s life. God has never made a piece of junk. He has never made an inferior person. We all have something that God wants to accomplish through us, but most of us are ignorant of this and have bought into the lie that there’s nothing special about us. But the truth is that we are all unique and can do something that nobody else can. For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end. (Jeremiah 29:11)God has good thoughts toward each of us. He has a perfect plan for our lives. We are fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139:14). Whether our parents saw us coming or not, God knew us from the foundation of the world and has a purpose for us.
Yet, most of us are living way below God’s standard and limiting what He wants to do in our lives.
I spend over a million dollars on television air time each month. Our ministry is increasing, and we are going to keep spending more. But even if we spend $10 million a month, there are many people who will never hear of me or my ministry no matter how much money I pour into television. You have the ability to impact people I will never reach.We all have a sphere of influence, or people we can reach. These are people who know us and are watching us—family members, neighbors, friends, and co-workers—who will die and go to hell if we just sit around and wait for our pastor or another minister to talk to them. We need to rise up and let God use us to touch these people and help us reach our full potential!Whenever I ask how many people are called to be leaders, there are always those who don’t raise their hands. They do not see themselves as leaders. But all of us are leaders. Leadership is defined as influence, and all of us have influence over someone—whether it’s our kids, neighbors, or friends. Some of us have more influence than others, but all of us are called to influence someone. If we don’t see ourselves as leaders having influence over others, and rather think, Oh, poor me, whatever will be will be, then we are going through life like a pinball. We are just bouncing from problem to problem and whatever else we happen to bump into, without any course for our lives. If we don’t take our God-given authority and command mountains to move, we are limiting God.God made everyone to be a leader. This can vary according to your specific call. But if you have God Almighty living inside of you, He has a purpose for your life that will cause you to accomplish things and influence people in a way that will satisfy you. There are many of you who aren’t influencing people in a positive way, and your life is not accomplishing anything. If you are born again, then God is living on the inside of you, and He has something important for you to do. God doesn’t just sovereignly make everything work. If you don't have enthusiasm about your life or where you’re going or what God is doing—you have missed God.
If your life is not an absolute joy and you aren’t excited about it, you are limiting what God wants to do in your life.
God Called You to Do Something Beyond Yourself
When God spoke to me on January 31, 2002, out of Psalm 78, it revolutionized my life. This psalm was written so that the younger generation could see what the older generation did, so they could learn to not limit God and not grieve God like their parents did. This is powerful! The Lord used this psalm to completely change my life. Yea, they turned back and tempted God, and limited the Holy One of Israel. (Psalm 78:41)God spoke this very simple passage to me in 2002, and I pray that He speaks this to you, too. Not one of us has exhausted God’s ability, resources, and power for our lives. God is infinite. God is huge. Our lives ought to be a reflection of that. If you can look at your life and say, “Well, I went to school, I did this and that, and I earned the things I have,” you have missed God. Your life should be such a testimony that when people ask how you’re doing what you’re doing and why you’re so blessed, you should be able to say that there’s no explanation outside of God. If you can point to your great education, your charisma, or your ability, then you have missed God. If your life isn’t supernatural, it’s superficial.God will call you to do something that is beyond yourself. He will call you to do something that is bigger than yourself. If it’s something you can do on your own, I doubt you have heard from God. For instance, God called me to preach the Word while I was an introvert. I couldn’t look someone in the face and talk to him or her when I was in high school, and now I speak to millions and millions of people. God called me to do something that is absolutely beyond me!God had me do things for which there’s no human explanation. I don’t have an answer to why God’s blessings are so big on my ministry. It’s beyond my natural ability. I’m not doing anything except loving Jesus and holding onto Him. I can’t point to my ministry and tell you that it’s blessed because of my great talent or ability. As a matter of fact, if I were God, I wouldn’t have chosen me.
You Aren’t Smart Enough to Do It on Your Own!
For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called. (1 Corinthians 1:26)That’s me—I qualify. You cannot point to me and say it’s because of my great talents or abilities. I am not doing anything that I can do on my own. Everything that’s being accomplished is because of God working through me.My mother died in 2009 when she was ninety-six years old. Right before she died, she asked me how the ministry was doing. I told her about all of the awesome things God was doing in America and overseas. She looked at me and, pointing her bony little finger at me, said, “Andy, you know that’s God.”I said, “Yes ma’am, I know it’s God.”She said, “You aren’t smart enough to do that.” I said, “Guilty! Amen. It’s true.”If you can say that you’ve achieved everything by your own ability, strength, or power, then you have not yet tapped into God’s will for your life. God will ask you to do something bigger than yourself that requires more than your own ability.I believe all of us have missed God at some point in our lives. I don’t think any of us are hitting on every single cylinder. None of us are believing God and doing everything that we are supposed to be doing. God is big, limitless, and infinite; He wants us to believe for big things. Yet most of us only believe for small things.When God spoke to me in 2002, He told me that I was limiting Him just like the Israelites who turned back in their hearts and limited the Holy One of Israel. I honestly had no idea I was limiting God. Prior to Him speaking to me, I had been in ministry for thirty-four years and had seen many incredible things happen. I’d seen miracles, including people being raised from the dead. I had even seen my own son raised from the dead. He had been dead for five hours, yet he had no brain damage—well, at least no more than before!If you believe that God is sovereign and can do whatever He wants, then you might just have to tear Psalm 78 from your Bible. This scripture says that the Israelites limited God. God wanted to do more than they would let Him do. God wanted to bring them into the Promised Land—and He wanted to do it in one year, not forty! But the Israelites sent spies out who said there were giants in the land. They refused to go and therefore delayed God’s will for that nation for forty years. They limited God!We don’t have to go beyond the children of Israel to see that we can limit God. He did not want them to spend forty years in the wilderness, yet they limited Him because of their fear of man. We can apply this same principle to other areas of our lives, such as healing. According to 3 John 2, God does not want us sick, yet we often limit God in how He can heal us. And Moses was an hundred and twenty years old when he died: his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated. (Deuteronomy 34:7)Moses was strong and had perfect eyesight when he was 120 years old. If God will do that for a person in the Old Covenant, just imagine how much more He will do for us who are under the New Covenant. We limit God when we think, I’m over 40, so this is just normal. Things are supposed to start going wrong in my body, and my eyesight is supposed to start going dim. We compare ourselves with others (2 Corinthians 10:12) and say, “This is the way it’s supposed to go.” But we need to look at the Word of God and believe that we can be strong like Moses and have good eyesight. We limit God by thinking that things have to be a certain way simply because that’s what others are experiencing. If thou shalt say in thine heart, These nations are more than I; how can I dispossess them? (Deuteronomy 7:17)This verse is exactly what I was saying when God told me I was limiting Him. The Israelites limited God by saying that the other nations were mightier than they were. God promised them absolute victory, but they wavered and began to doubt His promise. When they did that, they limited God and He couldn’t drive them out (Hebrews 4:2)….
Life Is Not a Dress Rehearsal
God wants to move and bring you into your Promised Land. God wants to do things in your life that will cause you to wake up every day saying, “God, this is absolutely awesome. You are awesome! What a privilege to be a part of what You are doing.” God wants us all to live this way, yet most of us just wake up and say, “Oh, great. It’s morning. I wish I could go back to bed. It’s Monday, and I have to go to work.” Or we’ll come into work and say, “TGIF!”One day I walked through our break room and heard one of our employees say, “TGIF,” so I asked him what that meant.He said, “Thank God It’s Friday!”I asked him what was so good about Fridays. He said, “It’s the last day of the work week, and I’m off tomorrow. I don’t have to go to work.”I asked him, “Do you not like working here? I could fix it so you don’t have to work here.”He said, “Oh, no I like working here. I just really enjoy my weekend.”I said, “Well, you know what, there’s a hundred people who would like your job. If you don’t like working here, I could just fix it so every day could be Friday for you.”Boy, did he ever start back pedaling! Of course, I was just kidding him, but you know what, if you’re not excited about getting up on Monday and going to work, or if you get excited on Friday because you don’t have to work the next two days, you haven’t found God’s will for your life. This is one of the ways we limit God in our lives. If you’re working some dead-end job because you need a pension or job security, then you are missing God.
Life is not a dress rehearsal—this is the real thing!
If you aren’t doing something with your life that winds you up and fulfills you, and makes you feel like, What a blessing of God this is in my life, then you have wasted a day of your life. God has a purpose for you and when you find it, you will be fulfilled. God didn’t call every one of us to be on television or to stand in front of people like He did me, but He did make everyone special and call us to do something that will fill our lives with joy and peace. If you aren’t there, you are wasting time.Some of you are praying for your life to be different, and you have no joy. You’re depressed because you aren’t doing what God called you to do. God is pulling you in one direction, but you are going another way because that’s what everyone in your family has done for generations. You’re afraid that if you turn your life over to God He might send you to Africa, so you follow logic instead of following God. But you won’t find joy and fulfillment because you’re not doing what God called you to do.
You’re Not Average
…There should be a difference between Christians and those who don’t know God. We’re alive, and they’re dead. There’s a difference between a corpse and someone who’s alive. Some of you are as sick as your neighbors, as poor as your neighbors, as depressed as your neighbors, and as negative as your neighbors—and they don’t even know God. If some of us were arrested for being Christians, there wouldn’t even be enough evidence to convict us. There ought to be a difference. God made us more than what we are experiencing in our lives. God made us for more than average. If we are average that means we aren’t good or bad; we are lukewarm (Revelation 3:16). God made us all special. If we aren’t feeling that way, we need to take the limits off Him.This is not only true in our health, our finances, and in the things that are happening in this world, but it’s also true in the spiritual realm. Most people aren’t truly seeking God and listening to Him. They do not have a close relationship with Him, so they start thinking, Well, most people don’t see things come to pass, so it’s okay for me not to see total victory either. They limit God by the way they think….God is no respecter of persons (Romans 2:11). Believers should be doing better than the average person. After all, Jesus died to deliver us from this present evil world (Galatians 1:4). But sadly, that is not every believer’s experience.Are you limiting what God wants to do for you or through you by comparing yourself with others? Do you really want to just be like everyone else with the same diseases and the same financial and emotional problems? We need to go to the Word and find out what it says. God’s Word will make us far, far, far above, and not beneath.And the Lord shall make thee the head, and not the tail; and thou shalt be above only, and thou shalt not be beneath; if that thou hearken unto the commandments of the Lord thy God, which I command thee this day, to observe and to do them.Deuteronomy 28:13If we ask people how they’re doing, they might say, “Well, pretty good under the circumstances.” We need to tell them to get out from under there! We are supposed to be above only and not beneath. We’re the head and not the tail. We’re supposed to be rejoicing in the midst of problems. There are no excuses, but there are reasons we have problems. I’m not condemning anyone, and I’m not saying we live in a perfect world where everything is going to always be rosy, but I am saying that God did not create anyone for failure. If you are experiencing failure, He doesn’t want you to live that way.
God loves you. He wants you to win. He created you to be a winner.
You are a winner!
You Can Do It
…You take the limits off God! You can start to see God multiply and increase your effectiveness and transform your life. And it doesn’t have to take ten years. It could start within a week or two if you get your thinking straight. It might take longer for the manifestation to come. A lot of things God began to do in my life were still taking place five or ten years later. But once you make this adjustment in your heart, it’s just a matter of time until you see the results in your life.I haven’t arrived, but I have left. I’m on my way. Some of you haven’t left. Some of you are stuck. Some of you want things to be different, but if you don’t change some of the ways you are thinking, you will be back next year in the exact same spot praying and asking God to do the same things. It’s not God who is limiting Himself—it’s you! You are limiting Him by your stinking thinking, and you are going to have to change the way you think. You’re going to have to quit comparing yourself against others. You’re going to have to get in the Word and find people who did the extraordinary and say that God’s no respecter of persons, so if He did it for them, He will do it for you (Acts 10:34). Let the Word of God challenge you. Let the Holy Spirit speak through you and paint a picture of what you’re supposed to be and what you’re supposed to be doing. Start taking the limits off God!