Subject: Thought-17/07/2002
Don't Limit God - Pas.Joel Osteen
===============
In the book of Psalms, chapter 37, verse 4 it says, "If you
delight
yourself in the Lord, God would give you the desires of your
heart." The
Amplified version says, "the secret petitions of your heart."
But just because God says He'd give them to us doesn't mean
that we're
not going to face obstacles and we're not going to face situations
that we
have to overcome in life. And what I want to talk to you about a
little
while today is how we ought not to limit God's power and limit
His
blessings
in our lives. The way we limit God is through doubt and
unbelief.
There's going to be a time
in all of our lives where when we look up it's going to look like
by all
natural, ordinary, human reasoning that our dreams can't come to
pass. Some
of you face that right now. It just looks like there's no way in
the
natural
and if you don't watch it, you'll get filled with doubt and
unbelief,
and you'll stop the flow of God's blessings in your life.
See I like to think of it like this: between me and God and
between
you
and God there's this pipeline. I like to think of it maybe an
8-inch
pipeline. And on that pipeline there's some valves on it, some
different
valves that you can either open of close. And when you start
looking at
only
the present-day situation and you're looking at all the obstacles
and the
challenges that you to face today, if you don't watch it
you'll get
filled with doubt and unbelief. And you've just got to reach up
there like
a
faucet. You're reaching up there and you're cutting back the
faucet. You're
cutting back the flow of God's power in your life.
You see, I wash my car a lot of times out in my driveway and
when I
start I open the faucet wide open and that water flows forth
freely. But
when I get another portion I cut the faucet back and I start to
restrict
the water and it comes less and less and less. And if we don't
watch
it--God
is a good God. He wants to bless us. He wants to give us the
desires of our
heart. But if we don't watch it, it's through our own doubt
and unbelief that we're reaching up there and we're cutting back
the flow
of
God's blessings and His supernatural power in our lives.
And what I want to challenge you with today is don't limit
God through
your doubt and unbelief and go back and open that valve up
completely so we
can receive the power and the blessings of God in our lives. God
gave us
the
dreams; He wants to bring them to pass.
The Bible is full of promises from God. Somebody said
there's over
20,000 promises in this Bible. If we would just get them into our
heart and
get them into our lives, we would see God begin to work and we
wouldn't
limit God.
And you know what I want us to see today is that God's done
something
in all of our lives. How many of you believe God has touched your
life one
time or another? Well you know what? This made God angry when they
began to
question His mightand His power and His ability.
Have a Nice day!
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