Once I was playing tennis at a certain sports club. There were weeds growing up on the court and there were holes in the backboard. The owners seemed not to care, but they were hurting themselves by not improving what they could. Maybe they thought small details didn’t matter, but they were terribly wrong. Small details are the best reflections of our whole attitude toward what we do. People will always notice in one way or another. And believe me, with that club’s kind of a sloppy attitude, you won’t succeed!
The attitude, “We only need to do enough to get by,” is just not good enough! If you only do the minimum expected of you, don’t expect much out of life. The Bible says, “…God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap” (Galatians 6:7). God gave you all the keys for success, so use them!
Nations and individuals prosper for the same reasons: they serve others with excellence, meeting their needs and desires. We must cultivate that thinking in our society again. We must find new ways to improve service or the blessing of God will pass us by.
When I was in Mexico I looked out my hotel room window and saw a vendor selling donuts on the busy street corner below. Hundreds of people were walking by him but nobody was buying any donuts, so I thought I would help. I went down to him and told him that if he gave me one donut free, I would sell all of his donuts. He refused, but I was committed.
I bought two of his donuts, cut them up into small samples and started to give them away free to the people passing by. Many stopped for a sample, and once they tasted them they wanted to buy a whole donut. I showed this vendor at my own expense how he could make money quickly, but instead of thanking me he became angry, saying that he didn’t want to work that hard! He got paid by the hour, so it didn’t matter to him whether he sold donuts or not! Friend, if that is your attitude toward your job then you should quit today because you are in the wrong job!
The Bible tells us, “And whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men” Colossians 3:23). Whatever we do we should do with all our heart. It’s not God’s will, nor is it His fault if you are poor. Poor thinking produces poor living!
God’s original dream was to start a family with the potential to walk and behave like Him. Adam failed. He disobeyed God and did not fulfill God’s dream. But God sent Jesus, whom Scripture calls the last Adam, and He did not fail. Jesus is the model for us to follow.
How do we model ourselves after Jesus? Do we wear long robes with long hair and beards? It is interesting that in the four Gospels the writers did not talk about His appearance; His nose, the color of His eyes, His muscles, his height, His posture, or His hair. This is how popular writers describe their heroes in the books written today, but the Gospels are different. They are full of His words and His wonders. He is our model in response, action, compassion, authority, wisdom, purpose and power. We duplicate Him through the power of the new birth! The new birth is the ability to become God’s children. To as many as received Him, He gave power to become the sons and daughters of God. Paul tells us to put on this new man that is renewed in knowledge after the image of Him who created him.
All the potential of Jesus as the Son of God was placed, in seed form, into you as a child of God!
Where is the place you can go to obtain “maximum increase” in your life? God designed church so that the maximum number of people could gain benefit with a minimum amount of effort.
God directs a man or woman to prepare a message and preach it with anointing, so people can sit and listen and their lives will be increased and inspired. The result is a burden-free life with God’s ideas filling your mind and faith filling your heart to do the impossible.
This is the rich soil for increase that God designed for people, but many see it as an intrusion into their lifestyle. Only when famine comes do they run to the pastor for a quick fix, a drink of water for their parched ground.
We live in Florida where bugs thrive in the moist, humid, hot weather. If you don’t place some kind of protection in and around your house, soon you’ll be sleeping with the fleas and stepping on the cockroaches.
The devil is utterly defeated and powerless, but he is an opponent looking for entrance into your home. Like the roaches, he flees when you turn on the light. Our light is the truth of God’s Word. The devil cannot exist in truth, because he is the father of lies.
We observe this truth overseas quite often. Many times we present the Gospel to people groups that have lived in false religions or atheism for a thousand years, and suddenly in a moment, they completely change when they hear truth!
The only weapon the devil has is deception, and his only entrance into a born-again believer is the mind. He is looking for you to grab hold of a lie so he can have a foothold in your life. Allow God’s Word to wash your thoughts and steer your thinking into right paths, and you won’t be tripped up by the devil!
When I began global ministry I had two part-time jobs and attended Bible school full-time in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, but the key was my passion to begin ministry. One day the school had a guest come with a list of all the opportunities available in the world. I looked at the list, then looked at the $50 in my bank account, and decided I could make it as far as the Nevada desert where the Paiute Indians were considered a mission field.
The school said I needed to have $500 and a car in three weeks, and I told them I would have them. A few nights later I was watching Christian TV with my mother. I thought I heard a voice say to give the $50 I had to the preacher on TV. I said, “NO! I need the $50 more than he does!”
I thought about it the next day and decided that if it was God Who said to give, then there would be a blessing in obeying. If it was just emotion saying to give, then if I gave my $50 in faith with joy, there would still be a blessing. So I gave.
What happened next? Nothing. Nothing happened the next day, the next week, or the next 10 days. But after two weeks I heard a knock at the door. When I opened it, standing there was a divorced, single mother who worked at the school. She handed me an envelope with $500 in it, saying she needed to sleep. For two weeks God had been waking her up every night and telling her to give $500 to Kevin McNulty. I asked her if it was a Wednesday that He first spoke and she said yes…the Wednesday I gave the $50! Well, that got me on my way to the desert and around the world, and I haven’t stopped since!
Laws are designed for good. They are intended to protect us. When an offender breaks the law, we want him in jail. There are laws in every area of creation, both seen and unseen. For example, there are laws that govern nature, such as the law of gravity. We build our science on laws that work. In physics, for instance, there are laws that dictate how electricity works. These laws have always existed. When men understood them, they could harness the power of electricity for good to bless mankind. But if these laws are broken, then what was meant for good can do evil to you. The same heat generated by electricity to cook eggs on your stove, will also cook you if you sit on it—even though you own the stove. The laws that govern electricity are not respecters of persons.
In the same way, the law of faith is a dynamic given for the good of mankind to bring the blessings of heaven to earth. It is the currency of heaven. It is the evidence of things not seen. It is the victory that overcomes the world. It is the answer to all things desired. It is what makes possible the things that look impossible. We can value it for our benefit, or it can easily be used for our destruction. Let us operate in the light of the faith revelation.
What is our future? If we really believed that what we plant today is what we will see tomorrow, then we would start planting what we want to see. What are the seeds that we have to plant? The law of sowing and reaping shows us that good and bad are the result of what we sow.
If we want good in our life, Jesus told us very clearly what the seeds are when He revealed the law of faith. Faith is designed to bring to pass good desires, or what you want. If you are not admiring your life right now, then change the seeds you are sowing!
There are laws that govern God’s “moral universe” just as we recognize the laws that govern the physical universe. Cause and effect is used to defend the creation of earth by God. Is there a cause and effect in the realm of faith where actions can predict results? If we have an unchangeable Christ, can we discover principles of His kingdom that are unchangeable?
In Galatians 6:7 Paul said, “Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap.” God declared that seedtime and harvest would continue as long as the earth remained (Genesis 8:22). He sowed the seed of His Son to reap the harvest of billions of sons and daughters. There are two overriding truths here: Seed produces after its own kind. And seed always produces more than the amount of seed sown.
These truths will work in every area of life. At my home I have terrible bushes that try to overpower my property, and they flourish. If these principles work for bad, corruptible seed like those undesirable bushes, just think how well they will work for an incorruptible seed like the words, thoughts, and actions motivated by your relationship with your Lord!
We are seed planters. Everything in my life; my world, my body, my ministry, my job, and my family begins with a seed.
How much do you want out of life? How high do you want to climb? How long do you want to live? How much power will you exercise? What goals do you want to reach?
You could say this: whatever you give yourself to will increase. Whatever you put your focus on will multiply. In your life, whatever you pay attention to will grow, and whatever you ignore will diminish. Seeds give back what you plant, and more.
Do you know the parts of a seed? There are three. First is an outer husk—a hard, permanent shell. Second is the inner meat. And third is the germ or life spark. Science has been able to duplicate the outer shell and the inner meat but not the germ.
It’s important to comprehend how the seed works in order to comprehend how faith works. The outer shell is for protection and permanence. In the realm of faith, it represents the permanent parameter of truth. It is the known will of God. Apart from the known will of God there is no Bible faith. This is like the boundary on a basketball court. The game will continue until the ball goes out of bounds and the referee blows the whistle. When the whistle is blown, all play stops. Like the game on the court, Bible faith cannot operate outside the bounds or the known will of God. And His will is revealed in the words, example, and finished redemptive work of Jesus Christ.
The inner matter, or meat, of the seed is what the germ feeds on. You could say that your spiritual life is feeding on the ideas, inspirations, concepts, and wisdom of Scripture that daily nurtures you or builds you up.
The third part of the seed, the germ, has the life force that is the creative power making it all happen. In science we would call this a dynamo, or self-starting and self-sustaining energy. In the spiritual realm, this is the same life that resurrected Jesus in the tomb. It is the new source of life not limited to the earthly realm. When we say yes to God’s plan, our ”yes” acts as a catalyst that sets in motion all the unmerited favor of the Creator for His creation. Our positive expectation mixes with truth and creates the desired result!
God has given us who are created in His image the ability to transform others. How? By the creative power of the words we speak. We have seen multitudes of people change from sad to glad, from depressed to joyful, from sick to healthy, from lost to saved, from fearful to faithful, from worried to peaceful, and from every other negative state to a positive one. These changes occurred after they heard and believed the words and thoughts of God.
On the border of Romania in the Carpathian Mountains, we were holding tent meetings that were transforming every strata of society. The associate major was so touched that He gave the unused sports center to the church for their new building so youth could find Christ.
A gang of boys came in one day to break up our benches and disrupt the meetings. The leader was going to give the signal when to start the disruption, so they all sat, waiting in anticipation. Sitting there in the presence of the Word, they felt a strong pull to give their lives to Jesus. When the gang leader stood up to give the signal to start trouble, he instead came forward to be born again. The gang all came forward and three weeks later at the baptism service on the river, they all jumped into the river together to be baptized, then began sharing amazing stories of transformation with us!
