The Mindset of Increase
Livestream: youtu.be/bgqMTLuGo_o
Invocation and Prayer for God’s Touch
Prayer for God’s Glory
Father, be glorified in Your church, in our city, and in our land. You alone are worthy to receive all gratitude and all praise.
Holy Spirit, we thank You for worship. Please be seated.
Expectant Hearts and Healing
Father, thank You that You honor faith in people’s hearts. You see everyone who has come with expectancy. I ask that You would fulfill this expectancy. All who came to expect a touch in any area of life – based on Your word and by its power – touch in the name of Jesus. Heal wounds and pain and exhaustion; heal bodies that need restoration.
Restoration and the Shepherd’s Care
Walk among us and touch with Your hand. Touch so that everything broken be restored and everything that hurts be healed in the name of Jesus Christ. Thank You for a real touch. Soften hearts. Destroy and cancel the plans of the enemy so that Your perfect will is fulfilled in the name of Jesus Christ. Thank You that You are our good shepherd and we will lack nothing. All needs are fulfilled. Amen.
Living From Brokenness and Dependence
Partnership With God
God has a plan, and He has a timing to fulfill this plan. He is not limited in ability. When we say God cannot do something, it is because He has bound Himself by His own promise and has chosen to work in partnership with people. He entrusts certain things to us. If we do not hear Him or we do not heed what He is saying, we can grieve Him. But when we receive revelation from His word and act on it, we please Him – and when we please God, we ourselves are filled with His joy.
Dependence Rather Than Independence
The life God wants us to live cannot be lived in our own strength. It is His life, hidden within us, that He wants to express through us. That life will not be expressed through independence. He wants our mindset, lifestyle, and actions – from morning to evening – to reflect dependence on Him. We will not see or enjoy the life hidden in us unless we are broken before Him.
Brokenness, Humility, and Obedience
One of the greatest prayers we must pray is: “Lord, help me to live in brokenness before You.” We do not even know the level of pride in a human heart. A proud person is not a broken person. God looks to the broken; that is whom He works through. When we say, “I can’t,” God says, “Well done. I can.” Paul said he could do all things in the strength of the One who makes him strong. Are we broken? Do we hear the call to live in humility, in the fear of God, denying our own will, surrendering to God’s word, and being obedient?
Colossians 3:2-4 2 Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. 3 For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. (NIV)
A Life Hidden in Christ
God looks at us this way: you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When He appears, your life will appear with Him in glory. Our destiny is glory, but that life is hidden. If something is hidden, we do not see it. We cannot even imagine what life God has prepared for us in Christ. Sometimes we accept a substitute for the life God intends – but His intended life is wonderful, full of influence and power, life in abundance. Without Christ expressing His life through us, we will not see it.
The Seed Must Die for Life to Appear
Consider a seed. Life is hidden within a seed. That life can remain unseen for years, but when the seed is sown and dies, the life appears. Many believers are disappointed and oppressed, yet life is within them, hidden. That is not our destiny. Our destiny is hidden in Christ, and He will appear as we die to self so that He may rise within us.
1 Corinthians 15:31 31 I face death every day – yes, just as surely as I boast about you in Christ Jesus our Lord. (NIV)
2 Corinthians 4:10 10 We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. (NIV)
Daily Surrender of Will and Wisdom
Dying daily means putting aside our own will – “not my will, but Yours be done” – so that Christ’s life, not our own, is expressed. Wisdom, too, is part of this surrender. As long as we are wise in our own eyes, we live our own life. When we lay aside our wisdom and receive God’s wisdom to lead us in all areas, His glory appears in us.
God’s Hidden Wisdom Prepared for Our Glory
Wisdom Revealed by the Spirit
1 Corinthians 2:6-10 6 We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. 7 No, we declare God’s wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. 8 None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 9 However, as it is written: “What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived” – the things God has prepared for those who love him – 10 these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. (NIV)
Loving God and Receiving His Wisdom
All God’s treasures are hidden. The kingdom is a secret revealed by God to those who love Him. Such wisdom is not found in universities or books; it is revealed by the Holy Spirit to hearts that love God, deny their own wisdom, and follow wherever He leads. My prayer is that we would truly love God, open our hearts, and enter what He has prepared so that His glory would appear over us. God wants a church full of glory, joy, and life, a light that attracts people.
A Church Whose Life Attracts Others
Who wants people, when they look at your life, to say, “I want your God”?
And who believes that is possible?
Is it the plan of God that people would want Him as we allow His life to be expressed?
The Mindset of Increase
The Law of Increase
Two weeks ago in a prayer evening, I began sharing a word for us: the mindset of increase. Our God is a God of increase. Multiplication is His idea, built into creation.
Genesis 1:22 22 God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth.” (NIV)
From the beginning He blessed living things with the command to “be fruitful and increase.” He did not create everything in vast numbers; He set a law of increase in the seed. Humanity filled the world by this law. Any living thing that refuses this law ceases in time. This applies especially to the church. A church that does not grow will die.
John 15:16 16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit – fruit that will last – and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. (NIV)
Sowing as an Act of Obedience
Increase is not something we passively wait for God to do while we remain idle. It is a command we obey: be fruitful and multiply. When we obey, God acts. How do we obey? By sowing seed. Everything God created to grow contains seed. There is no increase without a seed.
2 Corinthians 9:10 10 Now he who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness. (NIV)
Seed for the Sower and Bread for Food
He gives seed to the sower and bread for food. There are two kinds of people: those who sow and those who only eat. God will care for those who need bread so they do not starve, but there is nothing in that to multiply. Increase comes when we sow. He supplies seed, grows what we sow, and enlarges the harvest of our righteousness.
1 Corinthians 3:6 6 I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. (NIV)
God Makes What We Sow Grow
This is partnership. Someone plants, someone waters, and God makes it grow. The mindset of increase rejects passivity and embraces the law of sowing.
Consider the garden. Tomatoes or cucumbers do not appear by declaration or fasting alone. You prepare the soil, plant the seed, tend it, and wait. For a time, nothing seems to happen, but you do not give up. In due season, there is a harvest – often more than you can use, enough to bless others. So it is spiritually. Prayer is vital, but without sowing, there is nothing for God to grow.
God is challenging us: “I want to multiply you so that you will not diminish. I want to glorify you.” He has already put seed in our hands. Say, “Thank You, Lord, for the seed You have given me.”
Fruit First, Then Multiplication
Christlikeness Is the Fruit to Multiply
Before multiplication, there must be fruit. The fruit God wants to multiply is the likeness of Christ in us. Some fruits should not multiply; weeds spread aggressively and choke life. Part of cultivating a mindset of increase is pulling the weeds – habits and relationships that quench what God wants to produce. If the wrong things multiply, they become hard to correct.
John 15:2 2 He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. (NIV)
Abiding in the Vine
Jesus speaks strongly about increase. Branches that bear no fruit are cut off. This is sobering. What does it look like to be cut off? A branch can still look attached, but the life no longer flows. One can attend church and yet lack His life. The sign of abiding in the Vine is His life flowing in us – conviction, warmth, passion that does not grow cold. Where His blood flows, we do not become cold.
John 15:8 8 This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples. (NIV)
Gratitude Expressed in Fruitful Action
God expects much fruit. He has put so much in us. Gratitude is not words alone; gratitude acts and produces fruit. Jesus has loved and changed us, and then says, “Go.” We cannot make anyone grow or force anyone to follow God, but that can never be our argument for inaction. Our part is to sow regularly, systematically, constantly. This is God’s vision: many disciples, a large church, increase.
Who believes it is God’s will for our church to grow?
Who believes God wants to multiply us?
Putting God First Releases Increase
The Kingdom Comes First
Matthew 6:33 33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. (NIV)
The Futility of Putting Ourselves First
A kingdom mindset always begins with God first. If we exchange the church’s main mission for other pursuits and focus only on our own house, we will find futility.
Haggai 1:6 6 You have planted much, but harvested little. You eat, but never have enough. You drink, but never have your fill. You put on clothes, but are not warm. You earn wages, only to put them in a purse with holes in it. (NIV)
The Widow’s Provision Through Obedience
There was a widow with a last handful of flour and a little oil, preparing to die. Then God sent His word through Elijah.
1 Kings 17:13-16 13 Elijah said to her, “Don’t be afraid. Go home and do as you have said. But first make a small loaf of bread for me from what you have and bring it to me, and then make something for yourself and your son. 14 For this is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘The jar of flour will not be used up and the jug of oil will not run dry until the day the Lord sends rain on the land.'” 15 She went away and did as Elijah had told her. So there was food every day for Elijah and for the woman and her family. 16 For the jar of flour was not used up and the jug of oil did not run dry, in keeping with the word of the Lord spoken by Elijah. (NIV)
“Give me first” was not Elijah’s ego. It was God’s word: put God first, and provision will not fail. God is a God of increase, and increase comes as we sow and as we put Him first – spiritually, materially, financially. Those who have tested this know God is faithful. He invites us to take on the mindset of increase.
The King’s Glory Is a Growing People
A Growing People Glorifies the King
Proverbs 14:28 28 A large population is a king’s glory, but without subjects a prince is ruined. (NIV)
One thing that brings glory to our King is a people who increase. The kingdom must multiply more and more. His church should not diminish; it should grow. An increasing nation is the King’s glory. Therefore we declare: We will not die out. We will not become less. We are intended for glory. We will grow.
Jeremiah 30:19-20 19 From them will come songs of thanksgiving and the sound of rejoicing. I will add to their numbers, and they will not be decreased; I will bring them honor, and they will not be disdained. 20 Their children will be as in days of old, and their community will be established before me; I will punish all who oppress them. (NIV)
Thanksgiving and Worship in Seasons of Increase
God promises increase, not decrease. When He increases His people, thanksgiving, rejoicing, and worship rise. There may be seasons of decrease, but they are not the final word. God’s heart is for increase, and partnering with Him requires dying to self and diligent effort.
Responding to the Call
Prayer, Planning, and God’s Vision
Hold the vision of God’s heart before you: He wants many. Let this mindset affect your prayers and help you set goals aligned with increase.
Receiving the Word Personally
Who understands what this means for how we pray and plan?
Have you received this word?
Closing Prayer
Lord, thank You. You are the God of increase. You have put in us the principle of increase. Thank You for Your desire to multiply us. You will multiply us. We will not be less. We will not minimize. We embrace the mindset of increase and partner with You for Your glory. Amen.
