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Become more in order to have more

Opinion & Analysis
It is common cause that you want this year to be better than the previous years. It doesn’t take a prophet to suggest that you want to have more this year...

It is common cause that you want this year to be better than the previous years. It doesn’t take a prophet to suggest that you want to have more this year. Some want to acquire more houses, cars, land, clothes and household appliances. Business people are expecting more clients, orders, contracts and higher returns and profits. In ministry your desire would be more souls to Christ, more members in your church, better public address system and much more. Politicians want to win more hearts.

Sermon of the week with Pastor Erasmus Makarimayi

Desiring better prospects is normal and it is the right thing. You are not wrong to wish for progress, development and advancement. God has prepared great and unimaginable things for you and your heart should beat towards that. God puts it this way in Isaiah 64:4, “For since the beginning of the world men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen, O God, beside thee, what he hath prepared for him that waiteth for him.” You are right to wish for what your Father has prepared for you.

While the children of Israel were in Egypt and the wilderness, there was a promised land already ready. For Jesus, while He was in agony in the garden of Gethsemane and on the cross, there was a place reserved for Him in paradise. Your aim towards the Promised Land is valid.

You have made your resolutions to attain that higher level of existence and you are right. The issue goes beyond writing down the resolutions, praying, fasting, declaring and decreeing. You cannot have more than you’ve got unless and until you become more than you are. If you remain at the same level of wisdom as the previous years, you cannot have more things this year. Those in school or pursuing studies cannot attain higher grades if their knowledge remains stagnant unless the examiners set lower exams.

If you add more studies to the experience you are getting at work, chances are that you will get promotion and salary increment. The challenge is that many Christians don’t want to work hard. They want God’s favour outside their qualifications and never pray to God to give them grace to study more and work harder.

Dear reader if you remain lazy, you will be crying at the end of the year. Four days have gone by in the year. Have you used them wisely or wasted them? I know they have given you a colourful theme at your church and you are convinced that this year is your year.

They have done right to give you that theme; now match the theme by becoming more. God gave birth to Israel in the womb of Egypt and took them through an experience that they became more. This was in the form of the ten plagues. Because they were slow learners, stubborn and rebellious, they had to spend 40 years in the wilderness.

Here are hints on how to become more. Some of you have to go back to school, college or university. You can study while you go to work. Be more faithful, punctual and work harder. Be the first one to get to the office and the last one to leave. As you fast, put more prayer to it. Read, study and meditate more on the Word of God, the Bible, because therein is the wisdom of God which you need so much. Put more commitment to what you do and improve on your discipline. Chase procrastination out of your mind. Pluck yourself out of the bad company that has been the reason for your failure all these years.

The list is endless, I cannot exhaust it. You know where you are lacking, work on those areas. Tony Robbins suggests, “If you do what you have always done, you will get what you have always gotten.”

I know that you have high hopes, great zeal and ambition. Through your confession, I am persuaded to assume that your faith is high, but what stops me to conclude that your faith is really that high is that I am yet to see the results. Put simpler, just show me at the end of the year what you would have achieved and you won’t have to prove that you have faith. Let James 2:14 and 17 continue to echo in you. The passage reads, “What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? can faith save him? Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.” God rewards work. Become more in order to have more. You are going somewhere.

All Scripture quotations are from the King James Version of the Bible

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