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8. STEP OUT OF THE ORDINARY.

“But Jesus immediately said to them: “Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.” “Lord, if it’s you,” Peter replied, “tell me to come to you on the water.” “Come,” he said. Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus.”(Matt 14:27-29). Too few people these days are doing anything unusual for Christ. All I hear is how people are "just making it". I hear so many friends sharing the same fears and frets that my unsaved relatives share in. Are you bogged down in the usual, in the mundane, in the same quiet desperation of the world-people? In your mind...in your life...are you in a rut? Can God surprise you? Can he say, 'sell all you have'; 'set apart for me..'; 'go to the house on Straight Street"...? I sense the thrill. GK Chesterton said it best when he wrote of the "sanctified sensational".

9. DON'T MAKE ROOM FOR SELF-SINS.

How much of your thought life is about you and your issues? You need deliverance! Self-sins so easily masquerade as pathologies and hangovers of past events. They even hide amongst the baggage by convincing their host that 'it was because of the sins of others'. i find no place in scripture to validate and indemnify sin. But it is true that we cannot just evict these squatters with the broom of self-determination. We need to come under the law of displacement - lesser things need to be displace by greater things. A vacuum always sucks. Get sucked into God's vacuum, and He will get sucked into yours: “Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.” (Col 3:1-3) 

10. CELEBRATE BIGGER PEOPLE AND GIFTS.

What happens if a Spurgeon joins your church? What happens if your next employee is a modern Bill Gates? What happens to your wife's gifts where they exceed yours? What if your assistant is a prophet of God? Can you learn from a beggar, and sit at the feet of a younger man? Eccl. 4:4 says, "And I saw that all labor and all achievement spring from man’s envy of his neighbor. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind." Are you free of the truth of this verse? have you been delivered from small-minded comparison and competition? Get over it, there is always someone better and bigger and more beautiful than you. the point of Christian ministry is enlarging others, not diminishing them to your level. in celebrating others, there is great reward, both in the here and now and in the hereafter.

11. STOP BEING CAUTIOUS IN YOUR LANGUAGE.

Many are too careful. They are "precise, polite but never profound". Many still cut down tall poppies. If you are never celebrated, do you celebrate others? A church that has a well developed culture of celebration is a church in revival. yes, i believe in honest and forthright speech, but so much of this these days is a cover for a sly comment. Release the power of the gospel through your tongue! know that God knows your every hidden sin, but has not exposed you. learn the lifeskill of seeing the good, and commending it, rather than hunting for the bad to expose it. There is no glory in store for the witch-hunter saint. it is not even saintly.

12. ASK GOD WHAT HAS ROBBED YOU OF YOUR ZEAL AND DEMAND IT BACK.

By scripture! The word exhorts us to "never be lacking in zeal". We are called to keep our fervour, serving the Lord. what happened to yours? after having begun in the Spirit, how now have you drifted axle deep into the sands? petition for God's tow-truck! get hooked up and winched out. do whatever it takes! without zeal, the boxer has lost the match. "It is not the size of the dog in the fight; it is the size of the fight in the dog". This is a worthy saying. No church or life will be built on the 'reasonable man' principle. not only because it is a fight and a race, but because the devil fights dirty. Stop being so reasonable, and get radical again. Lukewarmness makes Jesus sick. I believe this is true - God loves heating up cold hearts. He rejoices at the penitent sinner coming home. But once home, don't fall into the starchy sin of the older brother, whose love grew cold in the very house of his father.  

13. BE VIOLENT AGAINST TEMPTATION.

If you want to grow bigger, than direct part of your new-found zeal towards beating your body and making it your slave. Please. Don't believe your feelings first. "Feelings come, feelings go, feelings are deceiving; my faith is in the Word of God, nought else is worth believing". For so many of us, it is the one little rusty stake through our foot that keeps us going round in circles for years. Ecclesiastes 10:1 "As dead flies give perfume a bad smell, so a little folly outweighs wisdom and honor." 

14. OVERCOME THE 'YUCK FACTOR'.

I borrow this from my friend RT Kendall. Everyone has one - at least one - trait or quirk that offends us. We have one or two in ourselves. We used to call it the "chipboard under the veneer'. these days, most just hit it and then bounce away. With one offence, the relationship is terminated. this attitude will keep you very small, and keep you in a bunch of friends who are obsequeously clever, swampy, mawkish yes-people . Learn the secret to this scripture from Proverbs 19:11, "A man’s wisdom gives him patience; it is to his glory to overlook an offense."

15. DON'T BE YOKED TO LITTLE PEOPLE.

Bad company corrupts good character. "Show me your friends and I will show you your future" is a little harsh but carries some weight nonetheless. By this header I do not mean be elitist and aloof, but choose your friends wisely. And if you are small-minded, then be humble and learn and embrace the bigness in others. Many years ago, I drifted to the edge of my fellowship. Within a year, my circle of friends had changed totally. I woke up with such a fright one morning. I realized I was on the edge of a precipice, but had been nudged there so subtley by the devil. That same week, an elder came to me saying God had given him a dream – in it he saw me walking on the very edge of a cliff, wobbling as a I went. He said God had asked him to tell me that I was about to throw away a glorious inheritance, and He did not want that. Yikes!

16. READ MORE DEPTH, TAKE IN LESS SLUSH.

Your gift can bring you before kings, yes, but without some investment you can end up more as the court jester than the wise counselor. Don't get stale dated in your knowledge; don’t fall for the entertainment monkey. “The heights by great men reached and kept were not attained by sudden flight, but they while their companions slept were toiling upwards in the night”