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Sermon Outline Prepared by Dr. Joseph P. Metoyer, Jr., Pastor/Teacher June 3, 2001 Text: I Chronicles 4:10b Subject: Stretch
Me Lord! Introduction: God is looking for a few good people who want to live at a larger level of blessing and influence. For most of us, our reluctance comes from getting our numbers right, but our arithmetic completely wrong. Our success is predicated upon the formula we use to decide what size territory God has in mind for us. I.
“Man’s Formula”: My abilities + experience + training + my personality and appearance + my past + the expectations of others = my assigned territory. This formula leaves out “the God factor”! Without consideration of God’s will and supernatural power our equation will never equal expanded territory. A. Forget the formula, some people don’t think it is right to ask God to increase their territory. If you are successful in business and the business world or your practice, or your professional service is doing exceptionally well, you may feel that it is not right to ask God to expand your business. As a matter of fact you may feel that it is selfish to ask God for such a thing. “If you are doing your business God’s way, it’s not only right to ask for more, but He is waiting for you to ask. Your business is the territory God has entrusted to you. He wants you to accept it as a significant opportunity to touch individual lives, the business community, and a larger world for His glory. Asking Him to enlarge that opportunity brings Him only delight.” B. The Apostle Paul talks about man’s formula and its limitations (2 Cor. 12-18)…
“No matter how many sermons we have heard about God’s power to work through us, we simply gloss over the meaning of that one little word through. Sure, we say we want God to work through us, but what we really mean is by or in association with. Yet God’s reminder to us is the same one He gave the Jews when they returned from captivity to a decimated homeland: ‘Not by might nor by power but by My Spirit, says the Lord of hosts’ (Zechariah 4:6).”[1]
Our God specializes in working through normal people who
believe in a supernormal God who will do His work through them.
What He is waiting for is an invitation.
II.
“God’s Formula”: My willingness + God’s will and supernatural power = my expanding territory. When Jabez prayed, “Oh that You
would enlarge my territory”, he was looking at his present service to the
Lord. He said, “Surely I was born
for more than this”! “As a farmer or a herdsman, he looked over the spread
his family had passed down to him, ran his eye down the fence lines, visited the
boundary markers, calculated the potential – and made a decision:
Everything you’ve put under my care, O Lord – take it, and enlarge
it. Jabez believed that if he added
his willingness + God’s will and supernatural power it would equal an
expanded territory. A. It is all right to “Live Large” for God. When you pray and ask God to enlarge your boundaries things become very exciting. God wants you to move out of your boundary lines to take more territory for Him. B.
Whatever our gifts, education, or vocation might be, our calling is to do
God’s work on earth. If you want,
you can call it living out your faith for others.
You can call it ministry. You
can call it every Christian’s day job. But
whatever you call it, God is looking for people who want to do more of it,
because sadly, most believers seem to shrink from living at this level of
blessing and influence. Application: Start asking God, start today by begging God for more influence and responsibility that you can use to honor Him. God will bring opportunities and people into your path. “You can trust Him that He will never send someone to you whom you cannot help by His leading and strength. A. You will nearly always feel fear when you begin to take the territory for Him. B. But you will also feel a tremendous sense of security as God caries you along as you do it. C. You will be like John and Peter; God will put the right words in your mouth at the right time. Our Lord cried out through the mouth of His Prophet (Jeremiah 10:20) “My tent is plundered, and all my cords are broken; My children have gone from Me, and they are no more. There is no one to stretch my tent anymore, or set my curtains.” God wants to stretch us; He wants to give us more influence
and responsibility. Will you
accept this challenge? Will you
pray that God will enlarge your borders? Our Lord spoke of woes through Amos: (6:1) “Woe to you who are at ease in Zion…” (6:4) “Woe to you who… stretch out on your couches… To pray for larger borders is to ask for a miracle – it’s that simple. A miracle is an intervention by God to make something happen that wouldn’t normally happen. That and nothing less, was what Jabez had to have to transcend his name and transform his circumstances. Plead with Him; Lord use me –
give me more ministry for You? At
that moment, heaven sends angles, resources, strength, and the people you need. God always intervenes when you
put His agenda before yours and go for it!
Amazingly, if you have prayed
to the Lord to expand your border, you will recognize His divine answer.
You’ll have a front-row seat in a life of miracles. |
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