When I decided I wanted to squat 180kg, I did not go and find someone who had never done it to ask how. When I decided to marry Amanda, I spoke to people whose marriages I admired and asked for wisdom. When I planted the first Tree of Life, I went and asked pastors whose churches I admired.
It amazes me how many people are so blase and foolish when it comes to choosing the people who speak into their lives. People left our church once because a single mum with three children with three different dads told them we were a bad family. Have you seen my children? How could anyone choose to listen to their counsel over mine? It’s just bizarre.
Now God wants you all to live big lives, but one of the reasons that so many people are not living big lives is they choose counselors who are small thinkers and limited. Their counselors limit God and if they listen to them they will limit God too.
I prefer to do things the Bible way, which says: FOLLOW THOSE, who by faith and patience, inherit the promises (Hebrews 6.12). If you need healing, listen to me, I received my healing and got out of hospital and have never been back. Don’t listen to someone who is still sick about what sickness is all about. Don’t listen to someone who is struggling financially to tell you about money. Don’t listen to someone who is struggling to pray and worship and hardly ever in church about whether you should go to church! Don’t listen to someone who doesn’t give – well, ever. Never listen to someone who doesn’t tithe, they don’t know hardly anything!
So many Christians miss the bigness of God because they follow the “wisdom” of people who are living it small! Who are not inheriting the promises. It’s foolishness. Don’t tell me these people are gentle, wise, kind, whatever – that’s not what the Bible says – it says follow those who are getting results in God. Through faith are inheriting the promises. Find some people who are living it.
I had my fair share of critics who criticized me for going to hear Kenneth Copeland this last week. Most of them are broke, living from month to month, and not achieving much for the kingdom of God. Yet, Kenneth Copeland is starting Bible Colleges, has a church where people are being saved and healed and transformed, is teaching the Word of God, is praying and getting answers and sharing testimonies of results. Who does the Bible say I should listen to?
The word follower in Hebrews 6.12 is mimetes in the Greek, where we get the word mimic from, it means to imitate or copy someone. When you find someone who has received their healing, do what they did. When you find someone who hasn’t, ignore their advice. It is just head knowledge and opinions, and they might be so frustrated at their lack of results they bring you down to their small world.
No – find the big dreamers, the inheritors, those doing it and learn from them. If someone does not speak in tongues, they are not qualified to speak on the baptism of the Holy Spirit. They have not received the promise and you don’t have to follow them or their ideas. People who don’t operate in the gifts often have opinions on how they should flow, but they have not inherited those promises. People who have never sowed a financial seed and received a financial harvest have nothing to say on money.
Jesus wants you to dream big. So choose your counselors carefully. Listen to people you want to be like, whose walking in the promises you want to walk in.
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