Break Out!: 5 Keys to Go Beyond Your Barriers and Live an Extraordinary Life (29 page)

You need to see yourself differently. You are a barrier breaker. You are uncontainable. You have so much talent in you, so much potential. There are seeds of greatness on the inside. If you will break free from your limited mind-set and enlarge your vision, you will see God take you places that you’ve never even dreamed of.

That’s what God did for our Lakewood Church. I tried to go the traditional route and buy some property and build a sanctuary on it. But God’s dream for our lives is always so much bigger than our own. God gave us a premier building in the fourth largest city in America.

We broke barriers. God helped us pave the way, to go further. Now other people can come behind us and do the same thing. That’s the way God wants it to be. Every generation should increase.

Our former church campus was on a very small side street in a rural section of town. There were great people over there, but the area had become run-down. Through the years people used to say to my parents, “What are you doing still over here in this part of town?”

Some even ridiculed them and treated them as second-class. But isn’t it interesting how God has a way of always giving you the last laugh? Today, we’re not on a side street. We’re on the second busiest freeway in the nation, sitting on a prime piece of property. God didn’t just give us a building. He increased our influence. It’s happening all over and in many different ways.

When I was growing up, you could hear Christian music only in our church services. Maybe every once in a while another radio station would play it, but not often. This is a new day; a couple of months ago I was watching a ball game, and a national commercial came on for a cell phone company. The music in the background was, “You are good all the time. You are good.” It’s the song that Lakewood’s worship leader Israel Houghton wrote, and we sing it all the time.

We can’t be contained. We are dangerous. We’re on the loose. My children were watching
American Idol
a while back. At the end of the program all of the contestants came back on and they started singing a song that our friend Darlene Zschech wrote, “Shout to the Lord, all the earth, let us sing.” This time, her worship song was heard not simply during a church program but on the number one program on television.

I want you to get this down in your spirit. God is increasing your influence. He is causing your gifts and talents to come out in greater ways. His face is shining down on you right now. Rid yourself of every limited thought about being untalented, or lacking what it takes, or being second-class.

You have exactly what you need. You have gifts, talents, ideas, inventions, books, and movies. They are just waiting to come out. When they do, it will be like an explosion. You’d better get ready. God is about to thrust you into a new level of your destiny. You cannot be contained.

It’s been said that the most famous sports facility in the world is Yankee Stadium. A while back, as the team owners were finishing building their new ballpark, someone from their organization called us. They invited us to bring one of our “Nights of Hope” to New York City and become the first nonbaseball event held in the new Yankee Stadium.

When my staff told me I thought they were joking. I said, “Why do they want to invite me?” They could invite the Rolling Stones, or Madonna. But instead they invited this minister from Texas. What was God doing? He was increasing our influence. God was opening doors that no man can shut. We were able to take new ground for the Kingdom.

But so often we think, “Oh, nothing like that would happen for me. You don’t know my circumstances, Joel. You don’t know what I’ve been through.”

God is not limited by your circumstances. God is not contained by your education, by your environment, or by how you were raised. All God has to do is breathe in your direction. All He has to do is blow the wind of His favor your way. That’s what happened to a friend of mine, Dr. Todd Price. He grew up poor in a small town in Kentucky. Some might have thought he’d never be able to contribute much to the world.

But as a young boy he saw a program on television about starving children desperately in need of food. The show said that for $15 a month you could sponsor and feed a child. Nobody asked young Todd Price to do it. His parents didn’t encourage him, but he was very moved by that program. At twelve years old he went out and started mowing lawns, and he used that money to sponsor a child. That was more than forty years ago.

Today, Dr. Price has a successful medical practice, and so far he has
given more than $250 million in medicine to needy people around the world. His donations went from $15 to a quarter of a billion dollars.

Dr. Price is a barrier breaker. He didn’t let the limitations of the past or how he was raised keep him from rising higher. In the natural, it didn’t look like he could ever go to medical school, or ever make much of his life. But he didn’t allow those strongholds to take root.

Deep down he knew he was uncontainable. He knew the Creator of the Universe was breathing in his direction. Today, Dr. Price is making a mark that cannot be erased.

I saw a report on television once about a young girl with severe autism. Her name was Carly. For years, she did not speak a word or communicate her feelings in any way. It looked as if she was mentally disabled.

All through the day she would just flail her arms and have uncontrollable fits. When Carly was seven years old, the authorities tried to talk her parents into putting her in a special home. They said, “She’s never going to get any better. She doesn’t even comprehend the love that you’re showing, much less what you’re constantly saying to her.”

Carly’s parents wouldn’t hear of it. They just kept loving her, training her, and speaking faith into her. When she was eleven years old, Carly sat down at the computer one day and typed these words: “I have autism, but this is not who I am. Take the time to know me before you judge me. I am smart, cute, funny and I love to have fun.”

At that point her parents realized Carly was in there. She had just never found a way to communicate. Later she typed, “Dad, thank you for believing in me. I know I’m not the easiest child in the world to love, but you are always there for me to pick me up when I fall.”

Her father said seeing Carly’s note was worth every frustration, every sleepless night. They even discovered that Carly has a sense of humor. When asked about her little brother she sat down and typed: “Matthew smells so bad even skunks run and hide.”

Today, Carly still amazes us. She has written her first novel even though she still has severe autism. She’s still confined to a body that doesn’t function normally, but she cannot be contained.

I’m asking you to get rid of your excuses. Quit thinking, “I’m not talented enough. I’ve made too many mistakes. I’ve got this handicap.” Let
these words sink deep down into your spirit: You are uncontainable. You’re a barrier breaker.

God wants to use you just as you are. He wants to use you to influence others. Get a vision for it. You can set a new standard for your family. If Carly can do it, you can do it. Unlock what’s on the inside. Your seeds of greatness are waiting to take root and flourish.

And know this: God is breathing in your direction. Your vision is increasing. Your faith is rising. Your dreams are coming back to life. You have not seen your best days. You may have had some victories in your past, but what God has in store in your future will supersede anything you could even imagine.

Take the limitations off God and off yourself. Quit looking at what you don’t have and what you can’t do and how big your obstacles are. Shake that off and have the attitude: “I am uncontainable. This sickness can’t contain me. I’m a child of the Most High God. I will fulfill my destiny. These people trying to push me down can’t contain me. If God will be for me, who dares be against me? Even prison bars, can’t contain me. I may not be able to leave but I can do like the Apostle Paul. I’ve got a pen. I can write. My gifts will still come out to the full.”

In the coming days, God will bring opportunities for you to increase your influence in amazing ways. Don’t shrink back in fear. Don’t be intimidated. You are well able. You are equipped. You are anointed.

Dare to take those steps of faith. Make up your mind: “Where I am is not where I’m staying. I’m not getting comfortable. I’m not stuck in a rut. I know I am uncontainable. So I’m pressing forward, stretching my faith, believing for bigger things, expecting God’s favor in unprecedented ways.”

I declare that you will go places you’ve never dreamed of. You will have influence in circles that you’ve never imagined. You will be a barrier breaker. You will set new limits. You will take new ground for your family. You will advance God’s Kingdom. Your gifts and talents will come out in a greater way.

What you’ve seen God do in the past will pale in comparison to what God is about to do. Get ready for God’s favor. Get ready for increase. Get ready for His blessings. You are uncontainable.

Y
ou may not have realized this, but pearls—one of the most beautiful and natural jewels—are made from irritations. Oysters feed off the bottom of the ocean, and occasionally something will become lodged on the inside of the shell and irritate the oyster. It responds by covering it with the same material used to create the shell. When fully coated, the “irritant” becomes a beautiful pearl.

Pearls are expensive. People pay thousands of dollars for pearls. Ladies wear them around their neck. But pearls are born of something uncomfortable. Oysters would prefer not to deal with irritants in their shells. If you could ask them, they would say, “We don’t like being uncomfortable. Don’t give us any more irritations. Make everything easy.”

But God designed the irritation to become something beautiful, to make it more valuable. In the same way, every irritation in our lives is designed to become a pearl. The Scripture talks about how God is the Potter and we are the clay. God forms and molds us by allowing us to be in uncomfortable situations: We’re not getting our way. We’re not being treated right. It’s not happening as fast as we would like.

This pressure brings to light impurities in our character, things like pride, selfishness, being critical, or easily offended. These are traits we need to get rid of. We may not like it, but God uses every situation, including every traffic jam and every difficult person, for a purpose. Every time
we could get our feelings hurt we need to remind ourselves, “This is only a test. This is an opportunity to come up higher.”

The irritation was never designed to frustrate you. It was designed to help you grow, to help you develop the pearl. I’ve learned you can’t pray away every uncomfortable situation. You can’t rebuke every trial. God allows difficulties to help us grow. He uses people who are hard to get along with like sandpaper to rub the rough edges off us. If we don’t understand how God operates and the process He uses, then we’ll go through life frustrated, wondering why God is not answering our prayers, and running from every difficulty.

You may say: “My supervisor gets on my nerves. He is inconsiderate. He is grouchy. I don’t have to put up with this. I’m leaving this job.”

It may be that God put that supervisor in your life to help develop your pearl, so you could learn to love those who are not lovely, to be good to people who are not being good, to develop patience, kindness, and long-suffering. Do you know what long-suffering is? It’s when you have to suffer a long time putting up with something you don’t like.

I often tease that I learned long-suffering growing up with my brother Paul. If every irritation can become a pearl, he helped me to have a whole strand. Between him and my sister Lisa I could open up a jewelry store!

But if you don’t let God do the work in you and you leave a job because the boss is hard to deal with, God will send two more people just like him to your next job! Understand that the irritation, just like the oyster, is not God trying to make our lives miserable. It’s just that God knows there is a pearl in each of us waiting to be formed. The only way we can develop them is by passing these tests, by being kind to a coworker who is not kind to us, biting our tongues when we feel like telling somebody off, or by keeping a good attitude even when stuck in traffic.

Those are opportunities to develop our pearls. Our attitude should be: “If this is where God has me, I must need it. I’m not fighting against it. I’m not trying to pray it away. I’m embracing the place where I am. I know God has given me the grace to be here. He has put me on the potter’s wheel, so I’m keeping a good attitude because I know right beyond this irritation is a beautiful pearl.”

To grow, you may have to suffer through irritations and be uncomfortable for a while as God refines you. But if you stay on the wheel—if you’ll be willing to change and not try to pray away every traffic jam or difficult person—you will pass those tests and step into a new level of your destiny.

The Apostle Paul said in Romans 8:18, “These present sufferings are nothing compared to the glory that is coming.” Paul was mistreated, lied about, and persecuted. He had to put up with all kinds of unfairness, but he didn’t complain. He didn’t try to run from every difficult situation. He said in effect, “These hard times, these irritations, are no big deal. They’re helping to develop my pearl. I know God is using them to do a work in me.”

The Scripture says if we’re to share in Christ’s glory, we must be willing to share in His sufferings. This suffering doesn’t mean accidents, tragedy, cancer, injustice, or abuse. The suffering the Scripture refers to occurs when we have to say no to our flesh, when we remain calm after we don’t get our way, and when we stay in faith even when life seems unfair. When we pass those tests, our flesh—the human or natural part of us—will not like it. We will be uncomfortable. We will want to do what we feel like doing. But if we stay on the high road and suffer through the discomfort, it allows God to refine us. Our character is being developed in this way. Our pearls are being polished. The Scripture talks about how vessels of clay and wood are used for ordinary purposes, but a vessel of gold is used for God’s highest purpose. If we let God refine us so we treat people well and handle disappointments without complaining, then we won’t be vessels used for ordinary purposes like clay, wood, and silver. Instead, we can go for the gold and be used for God’s highest purposes.