Gregory Dickow - Go Big, Stop Living in a Small Way
Welcome to episode 58 of Think Like a Champion, a podcast dedicated to helping you win in every way and enjoy every day. Now, first things first. We need to start our day. We need to start our life. We need to start our podcast with gratitude. So I want to thank everyone who's written a review or shared this podcast on social media. Thank you so much. I appreciate you partnering with me, helping expand our community of champions. We are building a community of champions and creating a culture of champions and champion thinking. That's why it's called Think Like a Champion, because not all of us are going to be in sports. Not all of us are trying to win contests or win events, but we're created to win in life. And it starts with how we think.
As a man thinks, the Bible says, as a man thinks, so is he. Every expert on success knows and admits and acknowledges that how we think determines how we act, how we think determines how far we go in life. And that was God's idea before it was anybody else's idea. Everybody else has ripped this idea off from God, and that's okay. God doesn't mind for people to borrow his ideas, but when it comes to winning in life, it all starts with our thinking. And so I want to encourage you that today's topic we're gonna get right into on going big and thinking big. And we're going to stop living our life in a small way. And you might not think this is actually in the Bible, but it actually is in 2 Corinthians six, verse 12, it says, We did not fence you in. The smallness you feel.
I want to address the smallness that people feel, that feeling of inferiority, that feeling of FOMO, fear of missing out, that feeling of something's missing in my life. I can't be as successful as anybody else or as everybody else. There's something wrong with me. I'm limited. I'm meant to be more small. Nobody is meant to be small-minded. Nobody is meant to make a small impact. Everybody's created to make a maximum impact and to be big inside-minded. Because, you know, the more that you succeed, the more you inspire others to, the more success or abundance that you have in your life, the more you can share with others.
Somebody said the only people that have a problem with, with having a lot of money are people that have never had enough to be generous with or have been generous enough, because the more generous you are and the more you've experienced the blessing and the benefit of generosity, the more you want to have so that you can continue to bless and help more people and to be more generous with what you have. I think when we just think about what I need for myself, it can cause us to be somewhat self-centered and self-absorbed and self-focused. But when we see that God created us to be rivers of blessing, rivers of life, rivers of healing, rivers of impact, like a river has an inlet coming from a direction and then an outlet going out.
So we're like a river. We have God as our inlet, bringing in all the blessing, bringing in gifts and favor and success in every way, every shape and form as well. And then it leaves our life a healthy body of water, I should say. Not just a river, but a healthy body of water. There has to be a way in it and a way out of it for it to remain healthy. We have to continue to receive what God has for us, and we have to give and let life flow out of us. Because if God can get something through you, He can get it to you. We the goal shouldn't be God, get it to me, the goal should be God, get it through me. That's when your life really matters the most. That's when you're making the biggest impact.
When you are helping other people in one way or another with one or an abundance of gifts that you have in your life, whether they're spiritual gifts, emotional gifts, financial gifts, relationship gifts. We all have gifts. And, when we let God use us and cause those gifts to go through us to others, God can get it to us, to others as well. So he says in this verse is a powerful concept and a powerful verse, we didn't fence you in, the writer here says, We didn't put a fence around you. You put a fence around yourself. We only limit ourselves. He said, The smallness that you feel comes from within you. You're not feeling small because of what somebody else has or what somebody else does or somebody else has done to you. You feel small because something is broken inside and God wants to heal it and expand it and free you up so that you can start seeing something greater inside of you.
I love what the Bible says when it says greater is He that is in you than he is in the world. Like there's something great in you and there's a big enough inside of you to carry the presence of God Almighty, the Holy Spirit, the love of God, the power of God, the goodness of God. You're carrying that you're a carrier of so much good in your life. You know, we all know what it's like to be carriers of a disease, carriers of a virus. We all got it or we all carried it. We all passed it on to somebody. But the reality is we should learn from the fact that we are contagious sometimes. We should learn from the fact that in the same way that we can be a carrier of something bad to somebody else, how much greater is it that we can be a carrier of something good to somebody else and that what we have inside of us can be contagious. The joy can be contagious, peace can be contagious, generosity can be contagious, kindness can be contagious, patience can be contagious. He said, Your lives aren't small, your lives aren't small. This verse goes on to say in verse 12 Your lives aren't small, but you're living them in a small way.
So small thinking, small way. Small thinking, small living. Big thinking, big living. It's not rocket science. Small thinking, small mindedness, small impact. Big mindedness, big impact. He said, your lives aren't small. You are not small. Let me make a couple facts about you here and state a couple facts about you. The smallness you feel, people feel small sometimes they feel smallness inside. That is not what you're made of. You feel that inside nobody's making you feel that way. So don't feel like somebody is in control of you remaining small in your impact. Champions think bigger. Champions think about championships. Champions think about not just playing in a game, but winning championships. Champion business people think about winning in business so that they can do more good for other people and serve more people and serve more clients.
When in ministry we want to reach more people. We want to better equip people to reach more people. We want to spread the love of God and spread the goodness of God and spread the grace of God to everyone we can. And we got to start thinking bigger and but God knows that sometimes we got pain inside that is keeping us limited. We've got small thinking inside. We have an inferiority complex. It's keeping us small minded and it's time we break out of that. So I'll take you to a place in the Bible that will help you break out of that. And it will really help when you realize that you're made for more. There's more inside of you. You're not small, your life isn't small, but you're living it in a small way. I'm not accusing you, but I'm just saying in general, people need to realize their life isn't small, but they're often just choosing to live it in a small way.
1 Chronicles chapter four, verse nine. This is an amazing verse. I've prayed this verse, taught my kids to pray this verse. I pray this verse every day, just about. In verse nine, it says, Jabez was more honorable than his brothers and his mother named him Jabez, saying because I bore him with pain. Then that's his name. So she called him, the name she gave this kid is Jabez, which means you are a pain to me. You are a pain in my... Ask me something else and we'll continue. But listen, this is what he's saying here that because I bore him in pain, she said the mother. And that's why I named him Jabez. And the very next thing, it says Jabez cried out to the God of Israel. "Oh, that you would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory. Let your hand be with me and keep me from harm so that I will be free from pain". And I want you to see something. "And God granted His request". And God granted his request.
Now, there's a lot of things here in this passage that I've learned from and drawn from and I draw from regularly, because this is a verse where you can live in this place and you can be constantly experiencing a different dimension of this passage. First of all, that he had pain associated with his name. Like he had pain. His mother had pain. She named him pain. He feels the pain. And another word for pain in the Bible is limitation. So what limits us causes us pain. And the pain that happens in our lives limits us. So we have to break open this pain. We have to break open the limitations by turning in the right direction. And in this case, he turned in the direction of God.
The first thing I want to say about this, though, if we can break this down into bite sized steps to going big in your life and stop living in a small way, going to a higher place, going to a more successful place, truly being a champion in your health and in your finances and in your relationships in every area of your life. Where does it start? It says, first of all, in verse nine, he was more honorable than his brothers. They had the same parents, but they behaved differently and they thought differently. I want you to see that this is a really powerful truth that him and his brothers had the same parents. So just because you had the same upbringing doesn't mean you have to be limited by that upbringing. They had the same parents, but Jabez was more honorable than his brothers.
Well, where does honor come from? The Bible says that God gives honor where there's humility, God gives honor, where there's humility. He was elevated when it says he was more honorable than his brothers. It means he was elevated. He rose above his natural limitations. It means he rose above his pain. It means he didn't let his pain limit him. His life counted for something bigger and greater than what he was experiencing at that point. His life counted for something greater than the ground he came from, essentially. That's honor. They all came from the same parents. But what made him more honorable than his brothers is the choices that he made that distinguished him from his brothers. And what choice did he make? What choice can we make in life that will bring honor into our lives and will make us honorable people? The perfect answer to that is humility.
All honor starts with humility. Going big doesn't start with having a big head. Big mindedness is not big headedness. Having a big head is an ego and it's arrogant, it's self-righteous, it's puffed up. Big thinking is believing that you are capable of more, but not thinking you're better than anybody else or better than somebody else. Okay? So all honor, all elevation in life starts with humility. It goes against our natural mind. We think what goes up must come down, gravity says. But when it comes to the things of success in our lives, in our souls, what goes down always comes up. It's the opposite of gravity. When you plant a seed in the ground, it goes down, but then it comes up.
When you humble yourself, when you take the last seat, when you go to the bottom and be the servant, that humility always ends up honoring you and raising you up and elevating you, which is something you don't have to do. It's something that happens simply because you're tapping into the power of humility. And we talked a little bit about this last time, and this is a great topic that we'll talk more about, humility. But I want you to see that, as it says in Proverbs 18:12, before honor comes humility. Before honor comes humility. So if you ever want to surpass where you've been in your life. If you ever want to elevate and be more honorable than the people that you grew up with, the same people with the same background is you humble yourself. The way up is down. The way up is down. The way up is down. You think the way up is up. But the way up is down.
And the more you serve and the more you not think that you're less than people, but not think that you're better than people either, but that you truly work on yourself. That you're grounded. Humility comes from the word that means earth. It means that we're like Earth. We're something that, we're not we're not bigger than or better than the creator that made us. And we're made in his image. But we're also made out of dust. Were made out of dirt. To embrace your humanity, to accept your humanity. To realize there is a God and I'm not him. There is an element of humility in acknowledging that and an element of humility when we go low, not go low in the quality of our character towards others, but go low in our attitude about not thinking that we're better than somebody else. Be better than you were before. You don't have to be better than somebody else.
And when you're in a competition, you do need to be better than somebody else to win the championship, so to speak. But you can be your own champion. You can beat your last year's version of yourself, your last week's version of yourself. You can be the champion over yourself. And that's really, until you champion over yourself, you won't be able to champion anything else in life. It starts with self-mastery, right? It starts with self work that causes you to grow and causes you to be a person of more substance defined by the hard work you're willing to do in your mind, on your thoughts, on your life, on your attitude, on the way you treat people, on your relationships, on your health. These are things that you can do and champion over who you used to be.
Now it goes on to say...So first there's humility. He goes on to say his mother gave birth to him in pain in verse nine, but he didn't allow his pain to make him bitter and to become a victim of his pain. He did not stay in his current condition. Listen, when things happen in a way that you didn't want. When things happen in a way that you don't go your way, you wish it wouldn't have happened like that... You have to make sure that you don't allow your upbringing to limit you or what somebody else calls you to limit you. He didn't allow his pain to make him a victim. Now we all know what it's like to experience pain, to be hurt by somebody else. The pain of betrayal. The pain of mistrust, the pain of being misunderstood, the pain of being walked on, the pain of being abused, the pain of being taken advantage of the pain of failure, the pain of disappointment, the pain of feeling useless or underappreciated.
As long as you blame your pain or you blame people that caused it, you'll never rise. You have to. Make sure not to allow. Your pain to make you a victim. Then it says in verse nine, he refused to be defined by what his mother called him. So she said, You are pain, you are limited. The word pain is the same as limited, like I mentioned earlier. He refused to be defined by what his mother called him. His mother called him pain. His mother said, You're limited, but he refused to be defined by his pain, by his past, by his fears. So what did he do about it? It says he cried out to God. He cried out to God to break out of his limitations. He knew who to go to. Boy, this is really what I want to get at on this point. He knew who to go to. His mother limited him, his relatives limited him, his brothers limited him, his pain limited him.
So who did he turn to? What did he turn to? He knew who to go to. You know, every one of us has a go-to person in our life. Like when something goes wrong, we have a go-to person. Maybe it's a parent, maybe it's a sibling. Maybe it's a coworker at your place of business. Maybe it's a client, maybe it's just a good friend. And we all think of that person as a go-to. That's my go-to guy. That's my wingman. That's my go-to girl. That's my go-to person. We have that in our lives. But our ultimate go-to person is got to be God. Like, if you want to break out of what has limited you up to this point, if you truly want to go big... God is able. Ephesians 3:20 says God is able to do exceeding abundantly above and beyond all that we can ask or think. And what Jabez does after his mother tries to limit him with his name, shaming him with the name pain, which limits, which means limited as well. Jabez knew who to turn to.
Listen, for you to fulfill your God-given purpose, you got to go to God. You gotta go to God. Jabez prayed, O God that you would bless me indeed. Think about it. Why do people have a hard time asking God for this kind of blessing? Religion tries to make us feel guilty for asking God for more, as if by asking God for more, we're limiting somebody else from having more. God is not in the "one pizza business" where everybody just has to have their slice of the pizza. God is the pizza factory owner. God is the, He created the fields where you get the wheat for the bread or whatever you use for the crust of pizza. He created the pigs to get the pepperoni. Created them for the sausage too, right? My apologies to any vegetarians out there, but we're not trying to hurt anybody here. We're just using the illustration on how God is not limited by what we think should limit him.
So we have to stop being afraid or have a hard time asking God for more. It's God who will bless us. It's God who will take care of us. It's God who will do above and beyond all that we can ask or think. Religion tells you No God's not like that. And the devil tells you No God's not like that. Or the devil tells you you're being selfish. But if you only want enough for yourself, that's really being selfish. But if you want to have more, do more and achieve more and make more of an impact, go to God. It's not like God is the person who we have to like live a life apart from God because we really want to be successful and to serve God would mean I got to give up success. Serving God actually creates the real definition of success. Walking with God is the true definition of success.
So God is not wanting to put a limit on what you ask him, He said, ask and you shall receive, knock and the door will be open, seek and you will find, he said keep on asking, keep on seeking, use persistence. Don't give up. Persevere, don't limit God. Don't limit what God can do in your life. Plant a seed and get 100 fold. God is the big God. He's a big thinking God. He created the universe with words. Everything you see that is bigger than life, bigger than anything you could ever imagined... God created all that with just a few words. "Let there be light" and the universe was spun into existence. You see what causes pain in our lives is when we put limits on ourselves. Because I'm a certain color, because I'm a certain ethnicity, because I'm a certain gender, because I'm from a certain country. God is not American.
I know that many people watching they live in America, but I know people watch from all over the world as well. God is not an American. He's not a Brit. He's not Chinese. He's the creator of all the beauty and all the diversity and all the different cultures and all the different ethnicities and all the different nationalities. He's not limited to one. So sometimes we kind of think God's an American, and he's so much bigger than that. And America only represents 5% of the world's population. Think about that. God is so much bigger than just one country, and he's so much bigger than the whole world needs. This is just one of his dimensions. We have no idea what limitless time that he has created, what limitless galaxies that he's created that we haven't seen yet.
We got to realize that the thing that causes pain in our lives is when we limit ourselves. What happened to you is not the most painful thing in your life that you'll face. It's you allowing that thing to limit you. That is the most painful thing that will happen in your life, not what happened to you, but the definition you give that thing and the way in which you allow that thing to limit you. That's what will cause more pain than the actual thing that happened. Let's go to God and let's ask big for God. And then he says, Bless me, indeed. So we got to be willing to ask bigger than where we're at. Ask for the blessing. The blessing is not limited to money. God's blessing is his presence. God's blessing is answered prayer. God's blessing is His favor. God's blessing is His gifts of righteousness and his abundance of grace. God's blessings are being a part of His family. God's blessings are love and the peace of God and the joy of the Lord, which is our strength.
These are God's blessings, and we need to be asking God for more of those blessings to manifest Him in our lives. Jabez said, Lord bless me. He couldn't pray for the whole world. Start with you. When you have the blessing flowing in your life, you can be a blessing to others. And then it says, he said, Oh, God blessed me indeed. And then he said, And enlarge my territory, Enlarge my impact. In other words, he asks bigger and then he asks bigger again. He just keeps asking bigger with each stage of his prayer here. And he's like, Lord, enlarge my territory. I know I'm not meant for just a limited amount of territory, a limited amount of impact. There's so much more God that you have for me, and I'm going to ask for it to enlarge my territory, to enlarge the earth at which I have dominion over.
Man, if we would just see that God is so much bigger than what we can think and start asking big like this, like, what do we have to lose? If you ask small, you probably will get your prayer answered and you'll receive small. So if you ask big, what do you have to lose since you were already going to get small anyway? Since that's what you're thinking you were limited by. Why not just take the chance and ask big? If you end up with small, you already were there and you already had that and you're already willing to keep that. So might as well just be bold and take a chance and take a risk and say, God, I want to make a bigger impact. God, I want to have a greater success with relationships, greater success in my health, greater success in my finances, greater success in my business, greater success in my family. Why not?
Whatever your family has been up to this point, why can't you say, God? You know, our family's always been dysfunctional. We always kind of fight at each other and chip away at each other. I want to ask you, Lord, even though our families 20 years old, 30 year olds, 40 year olds, 50 year old, God give our family more love. God help our family to love each other better. God help our gatherings to be full of laughter and love and joy and excitement and interest in each other's success. Like, why are you, we confine ourselves to how we define ourselves. We define our family as we're like this. And why not just say, you know what, we were like this, but I'm asking God to make us a better group of people. I'm asking God to give us more ideas, to have more fun, to have more joy, to have more love, to have more peace, to have more impact in each other's lives. Like you do that with your family. You can do that with anything you can.
Instead of saying, Well, this is the amount of money that I'm used to making and that's what I can expect. Ask God to give you new ideas. You don't have to leave one job to get a better one, but you could spend some time on something on the side and be blessed by both of those experiences, be blessed by both of those streams of income and multiple streams. In other words, nothing needs to have a ceiling put on it. Boy, if we would just ask bigger and then ask bigger still, we'll see great, great impact. Well, for time's sake, I'm going to stop here. And we've got so much more to talk about. And there's so many more things that I think we can draw from this story, from this prayer, from this moment. And so I'll do that on our next podcast.
But thank you for joining me on things like a champion. Please share this. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. And I want to thank those of you who give. You know, there's something about generosity. The greatest characteristic of God is his generosity, because God so loved the world that he gave. Love always is on the giving side. Let's get on the giving side. Let's pay it forward. Let's help others hear this message. Let's help others come into this community of champions. You can take a moment and give your offering and you can plant your seed and expect a great harvest. Go to lifechangerschurch.com/give. And I thank you so much. Thanks for joining me today. Let me pray for you:
Father I thank you, Heavenly Father, you're bigger than we imagine. You're more generous than we can think. You have more dreams than what we could live entire lifetimes to fulfill those dreams. There's so much more that you have for us. I'm asking you to help us remove the limitations, remove the barriers, remove the ceilings so that we can truly go big in this life and make a greater impact. In Jesus' name. Amen.