Mensa Otabil - Growing Big
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Isaiah 60, verse 22: A little one shall become a thousand, and a small one a strong nation. I, the Lord, will hasten it in its time. What a fabulous promise from God to His people! He talks about the time when something that is small in number will grow to become a thousand, and something that is small in size will become a nation. So God is talking about His people growing in size and in number to be able to do great things, and it’s a promise that we have to claim for ourselves, that God will cause us constantly to grow and mature, to be able to do great things.
I don’t know whether it’s ever happened to you in life, and it has happened to me before, where, as you grow up, you don’t really know that you’re growing up. Sometimes in life, you meet somebody, maybe an old schoolmate or someone in the neighborhood — somebody who was a senior-and they looked very big when they were your senior. They probably bullied you; you were scared of them, you were afraid of them. Then you meet them, probably 30 years down the line, 20 years down the line, and you get surprised that this person who seemed so big now looks so small and sometimes even weak before you. You ask yourself, what happened? Because you’re assuming that as you have been growing, he’s also been growing from where he was, so probably he should be looking way bigger than how you saw him, but he is where he is. Sometimes you realize you’ve grown bigger than him, you’ve grown stronger than him. The question is, what happened?
What happened is you grew. Growth has a lot of advantages. Something that seems perplexing to you and seems intimidating to you later in life becomes very easy to solve. That’s one of the reasons why we don’t give up in life. When you confront a situation now, and the situation seems so big that it perplexes you and you think, «Oh, I can never solve this problem,» just give yourself some time. It may be a year, it may be two years, it may be three years, or sometimes it could even be months. Then you grow; you mature, you become better skilled, better at doing what you do. You go and confront the same problem, and it’s nothing to you.
That is what God wants to do with us. That’s what He wants to do with each one of us. He wants us to grow! Today, when you look around you, you may find so many situations that you think are impossible. Probably you’re looking at your finances, and it looks like, «Man, this is so bad; I don’t think I can ever come out of it.» We’ve all been there. Or you look at your marriage problem and you say, «Oh, this is impossible; I don’t think this marriage can work.» Or you look at some other problem, maybe in your career, in your professional life, and it looks like an impossible situation.
But you know, you give yourself a little time, pray a little bit more, study the Word of God, associate with people who will help you to grow and mature. Let your perspectives be challenged; let your ideas encounter new ideas. Then come back and face the same problem, and you realize what seemed impossible is actually very, very possible for you. That’s what God was saying to Israel: For now, you may look small, but there will be a time when you will be a thousand. Now you are a small group of people, but you will become a nation. When you do that, you can fight the battles of nations. When you are one and become a thousand, you can also face the thousands.
So allow God to grow you; allow God to mature you; allow God to build you up; allow God to expand you. Come back and face the same problems, and you will see that they are very easy to solve. May the Lord be your strength as you move on. Let us pray. Say with me: «Heavenly Father, You are my strength. Raise me up above every limitation facing me today, in Jesus' name. Amen and amen.»