It’s easy to get stuck in life and think that we’ve gone as far as we can, or that we can’t break an addiction or get well. What’s holding us back many times is our own thinking. Jesus says, “No one puts new wine into old wineskins” (Mark 2:22). When a wineskin gets old, the leather hardens. If you put new wine in it, the wine expands and bursts it. Jesus is saying, “You can’t have a new life with old thinking.” If you think you’ve reached your limits, then you have. If you think the problem is too big, then it is. It’s not that God doesn’t have blessings, favor, and increase. It’s that you have to get a new mindset.
You’re not limited by your circumstances, by your boss, by how you were raised. One touch of God’s favor will catapult you ahead. God turned David, a shepherd boy, into a king. He gave Abraham and Sarah a baby when they were almost a hundred years old. He gave us the Compaq Center when all the odds were against us. He has things in your future that will amaze you. The apostle Paul says, “That in the ages to come He might show the surpassing greatness of God’s favor” (Ephesians 2:7). God has “far-and-beyond favor” for you. But is limited thinking keeping God from pouring out the fullness of what He has for you?
In Acts 3, a man who had been crippled since birth was begging for money every day at the temple gate. Occasionally someone would throw a few coins into his outstretched cup, which was how he survived. He was stuck in a negative mindset because of his circumstances, not expecting anything to change, until Peter and John stopped and looked at him. The man expected some coins, but Peter said, “Silver and gold have I none, but…in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk” (Acts 3:6). He was saying, “Put down your cup because what God is about to do is not going to fit in that cup.” No one had ever spoken faith over him and told him that he could walk. Then Peter pulled him up, and instantly he was healed.
It’s significant that he had to put down his cup before he could receive his miracle. His mindset was hoping for a few coins, but God had a new set of legs for him that meant he’d never have to use that cup again. Do you see how God wants to show you His far-and-beyond favor? God is saying, “Get rid of your cup. Have a new mindset. Start believing bigger, dreaming bigger, expecting bigger. The blessings I have for you cannot be contained in a cup.”