II Corinthians 6:11 - (the Message) - “I can’t tell you much I long for you to enter this wide open, spacious life. We didn’t fence you in. The smallness you feel comes from within you. Your lives aren’t small, but you’re living them in a small way. I am speaking as plainly as I can, and with great affection. Open up your lives. Live openly and expansively.”
Capacity and bigness - we are going to make this a “no small life zone”.
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John 15:1-6 - When we’re connected to the vine and growing from the vine we become round, plump, appealing and ready to pick. We should be the fruit that people want to take a big bite out of! Not the fruit that’s round, hard and stuck on the vine.
Being on the vine means that we’re put through a process in order to become the appealing, plump fruit we desire to be. Because of the different seasons of life we must go through different processes and endure various weathers before we are complete.
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When we want God to move, we have to shift our minds off of the disaster and on to God. God will move on the disaster, but he is not the disaster. When we dwell on the pain and dwell on the negative, our minds go there. Half of the battle is in our minds. When we focus on God and on the positive, it actually starts us moving and gets us on the journey towards breakthrough. When we move in faith on this journey, we open up the door for God to move in our situation and we take our situation to the place that God is. God moves on our natural situation, but we have to stand on the supernatural promises of God and bring them into play.
Proverbs 29:18 - Where there is no vision (revelation or dream) the people perish. But he that keeps the law, happy is he.
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John 20 - The story of Mary Magdelene discovering Jesus had resurrected.
There are several things about this event that are so powerful, that you have to look closely and read between the lines to find them.
The first is this: Mary Magdelene was a formerly troubled woman. Her mind had been “possessed by evil”. Once Jesus delivered her, she followed Jesus and became something of a “first responder” for his ministry. She was very close to Jesus’ mother. She was present at every significant event Jesus was involved with after their meeting - especially at the resurrection. She came to the tomb on the Sunday morning after his death with the intention to perfume and annoint Jesus’ body, only to find that it was gone. She first sees the angels and asks where her Lord is. Then she looks behind her, sees Jesus and knows him when he calls her name.
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