What You Focus On You Move Towards - Message 2 - Think Your Way To The Harvest
In this episode, we emphasize the paramount principle of maintaining one's focus on divine promises rather than present difficulties, encapsulated in the exhortation: "Don't look at the famine. Look at the promise." We explore the narrative of Isaac, who, amidst a devastating famine, chose to sow rather than retreat, thereby reaping an astonishing hundredfold return due to his unwavering faith and focus on God's covenant. The discourse draws upon Proverbs 4:25-27, presenting a strategic framework for navigating life's challenges with steadfast attention and deliberate action. We challenge listeners to identify areas in their lives where they may be allowing circumstances to dictate their choices, urging them instead to fix their eyes on the promises of God and act in obedience. Ultimately, we affirm that true prosperity is not contingent upon external conditions but rather upon the covenantal focus that guides our actions, even in the face of adversity. The episode delves into the profound narrative of Isaac during a period of famine, emphasizing the unwavering focus on divine promises rather than the dire circumstances surrounding him. Drawing from Proverbs 4:25-27 and Genesis 26:12, the hosts articulate a central thesis: one must not succumb to the reality of famine but should instead ‘fix your eyes on the promise’. Isaac’s decision to sow in a time when all indicators suggested retreat exemplifies a faith that transcends the immediate challenges. The discussion highlights the necessity of deliberate focus, wherein true prosperity is not defined by the absence of difficulties but rather by the ability to maintain one’s gaze on the covenantal assurances of God, thereby cultivating resilience and obedience in the face of adversity. The episode serves as a call to action for listeners to identify their own 'famine' and to actively engage in sowing seeds of faith, reinforcing the message that God’s blessings are not contingent upon favorable conditions but upon the steadfastness of one’s faith and actions.
Takeaways:
- In the midst of famine, Isaac chose to sow, demonstrating that true faith looks beyond immediate circumstances to God's promises.
- Our focus determines our actions; when we fix our eyes on the promise, we are empowered to obey despite challenging conditions.
- Faith acknowledges reality without being defined by it; Isaac's focus on God's word enabled him to thrive in adverse conditions.
- The principle of sowing in famine illustrates that obedience to God's command can yield extraordinary returns, even when conditions appear bleak.
Transcript
Proverbs 4, verse 25.
Speaker A:Let your eyes look straight ahead.
Speaker A:Fix your gaze directly before you.
Speaker A:Welcome back to the series.
Speaker A:What you focus on, you move towards.
Speaker A:And in the last episode, we established the foundation.
Speaker A:What you focus on, you move towards.
Speaker A:We went into Joshua 1, verse 8, God's original prosperity blueprint, and we found that meditation on the Word is not a spiritual habit.
Speaker A:It's a prosperity engine.
Speaker A:If you missed that episode, go back and listen to it.
Speaker A:Today we go in the field, literally.
Speaker A:We follow a man named Isaac into the middle of one of the worst famines in the ancient world.
Speaker A:And we watch what he does with his eyes when everything around him is dying.
Speaker A:In today's message, fix your eyes on the promise.
Speaker A:Imagine you are standing in a field.
Speaker A:The soil is cracked.
Speaker A:The wells are dry.
Speaker A:Your neighbors have packed up and left.
Speaker A:The regional economy has collapsed.
Speaker A:Every sensible person in your circle is telling you this is not the time to plant.
Speaker A:Cut your losses, wait for better conditions, move on.
Speaker A:And in that moment, God shows up and he says, so now, that is not a hypothetical.
Speaker A:That is Genesis 26.
Speaker A:Eisen was.
Speaker A:Isaac was in Gerar.
Speaker A:The famine was real and regional.
Speaker A:It had already driven people toward Egypt.
Speaker A:Every economic signal said retreat, and God said, plant.
Speaker A:Isaac had a choice.
Speaker A:Focus on the famine and don't plant, or focus on the promise and plant anyway.
Speaker A:Isaac planted and the record says he reaped a hundredfold.
Speaker A:A hundredfold in the middle of a famine.
Speaker A:Not because the famine was fake, but because Isaac's focus was fixed on a God who is bigger than any famine that has ever existed.
Speaker A:Don't look at the famine, look at the promise.
Speaker A:Proverbs 4:25, 27 tells us, Let your eyes look straight ahead.
Speaker A:Fix your gaze directly before you.
Speaker A:Give careful thought to the paths of your feet and be steadfast in all your ways.
Speaker A:Do not turn to the right or the left.
Speaker A:Keep your foot from evil.
Speaker A:Now Solomon is giving us a walking strategy for life.
Speaker A:Eyes straight ahead.
Speaker A:Gaze fixed.
Speaker A:Feet deliberate.
Speaker A:No swerving right, no swerving left.
Speaker A:The imagery is of a man walking through a battlefield, through a market full of distractions, through a world full of competing voices and staying locked on the path.
Speaker A:This is not passive.
Speaker A:This is aggressive, intentional discipline, focus.
Speaker A:And Solomon, the wealthiest man in human history, understood that this focus was inseparable from prosperity.
Speaker A:When Isaac sowed in famine, his eyes were not on the cracked ground.
Speaker A:They were on the covenant.
Speaker A:God had told him, stay in this land.
Speaker A:I will be with you and bless you.
Speaker A:I will fulfill the oath I swore to your Father Abraham.
Speaker A:Now, Isaac fixed his gaze on that word, and his hands followed his eyes into the soil.
Speaker A:Now, here is a simple test.
Speaker A:Close your eyes right now, wherever you are listening to this, and tell us, what was the first thing you thought about when you woke up this morning?
Speaker A:Your bills?
Speaker A:A problem?
Speaker A:A person who wronged you?
Speaker A:Or did you wake up with a scripture, a promise, a declaration on your lips?
Speaker A:What you led with in the morning tells you everything about where your focus lives.
Speaker A:Biblical prosperity is not immune to famine.
Speaker A:It is demonstrated through famine.
Speaker A:The test of your focus is not how well you believe when conditions are comfortable.
Speaker A:It is how deliberately you fix your eyes on the promise when the evidence around you contradicts it.
Speaker A:But shouldn't I be realistic about my situation?
Speaker A:Ignoring my problems isn't faith.
Speaker A:That's delusion.
Speaker A:Now, faith is not denial of reality.
Speaker A:Faith is the acknowledgement of a higher reality.
Speaker A:Isaac did not pretend that famine wasn't happening.
Speaker A:He lived in it.
Speaker A:He felt it.
Speaker A:The ground he planted into was the same dry ground everyone was fleeing.
Speaker A:The difference was not his circumstance.
Speaker A:The difference was his reference point.
Speaker A:Hebrews 11:1 says, faith is the substance of things hoped for, not the substance of things seen.
Speaker A:Isaac saw the famine.
Speaker A:He simply refused to let the famine set his agenda.
Speaker A:His agenda was set by the word of God.
Speaker A:That that is not delusion.
Speaker A:That is covenant intelligence.
Speaker A:Now, this week, this month, this year, identify one area where you've been letting the famine set your agenda.
Speaker A:Now, famine could mean financial pressure, relational droughts, career stagnation, health challenges.
Speaker A:Now find the promise that speaks to that area.
Speaker A:Write it down, fix your eyes there, and take one step of obedience, even if the ground looks dry.
Speaker A:Here's our first point for the message.
Speaker A:The famine is not your forecast.
Speaker A:Every generation has a famine.
Speaker A:A global recession, a pandemic, a regional drought, a personal crisis.
Speaker A:The famine is always real.
Speaker A:The question is never.
Speaker A:Is the famine real?
Speaker A:The real question is, is the famine your final word?
Speaker A:When God appeared to Isaac, he did not promise the famine would end before Isaac showed.
Speaker A:He promised he would bless Isaac in the land where the famine was happening.
Speaker A:The blessing was not conditional on the famine ending.
Speaker A:The blessing was conditional on Isaac's obedience.
Speaker A:And Isaac's obedience was conditional to Isaac's focus.
Speaker A:Genesis 26:2,3 tells us, the Lord appeared to Isaac and said, do not go down to Egypt.
Speaker A:Live in the land where I tell you to live.
Speaker A:Stay in this land for a while, and I will be with you and I will bless you.
Speaker A:Now, whether you are in an economic contradiction, contraction in Argentina opposed to conflict recovery in Rwanda or navigating a cost of living crisis in the uk.
Speaker A:The famine is not your forecast.
Speaker A:The famine is not your forecast.
Speaker A:The famine is not your forecast.
Speaker A:God's word is your forecast.
Speaker A:And his word says, I will bless you in the land where I tell you to live.
Speaker A:The famine, brothers and sisters, is real.
Speaker A:But so is the promise.
Speaker A:And the promise is louder.
Speaker A:Point two of the message.
Speaker A:Sowing in famine requires fixed eyes.
Speaker A:Sowing in famine is one of the most counter intuitive acts a human can perform.
Speaker A:Every instinct says, protect what you have.
Speaker A:Hold on, conserve, wait.
Speaker A:But the kingdom of God runs on a different os, a different operating system.
Speaker A:In the kingdom, you release to receive, you give, to gain.
Speaker A:You sow in the famine to reap in the harvest.
Speaker A:But there is the thing you cannot sow in famine.
Speaker A:If your eyes are on the famine, you will never put seed in ground that you are convinced is dead.
Speaker A:Fixed focus on the promise is what makes obedient action possible.
Speaker A:Now, Isaac planted crops that land and the same year reaped a hundredfold because the Lord blessed him.
Speaker A:Now, a person who tithes during financial pressure is not being reckless.
Speaker A:They are being focused.
Speaker A:They have fixed their eyes on Malachi 310 bring the whole tithe and see if I will not pour out a blessing you cannot contain.
Speaker A:That focus makes the obedience possible.
Speaker A:And the obedience activates the promise.
Speaker A:Point three.
Speaker A:Before we move to point three, I need an amen where you are.
Speaker A:Don't look at the famine, look at the promise.
Speaker A:Don't look at the famine, look at the promise now.
Speaker A:Point 3.
Speaker A:The reward of fixed focus is disproportionate return a hundredfold in a famine.
Speaker A:This is not a typo, this is not hyperbole.
Speaker A:This is the documented historical biblical record of what happens when a person fixes their eyes on God's word and moves in obedience while everybody else is retreating.
Speaker A:The return was not proportional to the conditions.
Speaker A:It was proportional to the covenant.
Speaker A:The covenant promises override the conditions, but only for those whose eyes are fixed on the covenant.
Speaker A: Genesis: Speaker A:The biblical prosperity principle is not a western wealth gospel.
Speaker A:It is a covenant principle that has operated in every culture, in every century, in every economic system.
Speaker A:The variable is not the economy.
Speaker A:The variable is the focus.
Speaker A:Those who fix their eyes on God's word and sow in obedience in Lagos, Manila, Detroit, in Warsaw receive disproportionate return because God's covenant is not currency.
Speaker A:Specific a hundredfold in a famine.
Speaker A:Is God basically saying, the economy doesn't set my exchange rate?
Speaker A:I do.
Speaker A:If you bring me obedience, I'll give you a return that the market cannot explain.
Speaker A:The economists can't model it.
Speaker A:The analysts can't forecast it, because it doesn't come from the market.
Speaker A:It comes from the maker.
Speaker A:Some of you have been in your famine so long you've started to decorate it.
Speaker A:You've made peace with less because less has been your normal for so long.
Speaker A:Some of you stopped sowing because the last harvest didn't come when you expected it.
Speaker A:Some of you are looking at the cracked ground and telling yourself, this is just my season.
Speaker A:This is just my reality.
Speaker A:No, no, no.
Speaker A:But Isaac's ground was cracked too.
Speaker A:Isaac's season was dry as yours.
Speaker A:The difference between Isaac and the people who left for Egypt is not circumstance.
Speaker A:It is covenant.
Speaker A:Focus.
Speaker A:Isaac knew something his neighbors didn't know.
Speaker A:The famine is temporary.
Speaker A:The promise is permanent.
Speaker A:Not a God who blesses comfortable ground only, but a God who blesses obedient sowing in any ground.
Speaker A:Not a prosperity that comes when the market recovers, but a prosperity that comes when you fix your eyes on the one who holds the market.
Speaker A:Not wealth that the economy explains, but wealth that only the covenant can account for.
Speaker A:Now here are some applicable lessons.
Speaker A:Find the famine in your life right now.
Speaker A:The area of lack or pressure.
Speaker A:Find the specific biblical promise that addresses it.
Speaker A:Write it down, tape it to your wall.
Speaker A:Identify one act of obedience, of sowing.
Speaker A:This week, financial giving a step of faith in your business, a courageous action in your or career, and take it eyes fixed on the promise.
Speaker A:Read Proverbs 4:25, 27 every single day this week.
Speaker A:Ask God to show you what you looking straight ahead looks like in your specific context.
Speaker A:Stop rehearsing the famine to yourself and others.
Speaker A:Every time you find yourself narrating the problem interrupted with a promise out loud.
Speaker A:Study Isaac's story, Genesis 26:1 14.
Speaker A:Sit with it.
Speaker A:Journal what his focus required of him.
Speaker A:Let his obedience speak to your season.
Speaker A:What famine are you currently living in?
Speaker A:Is it a financial, relational, vocational, or physical famine?
Speaker A:What has your focus been fixed on in the famine?
Speaker A:The problem or the promise?
Speaker A:Is there an area where you have stopped sowing because the conditions looked wrong?
Speaker A:What would it look like to take one step of obedient action this week, regardless of how the ground looks?
Speaker A:Do you actually believe that God can produce a hundredfold return in your situation right now?
Speaker A:Or is that just a nice story about Isaac.
Speaker A:This week this year this decade, century, this moment that you're in, do what Isaac did.
Speaker A:Find the place where God is telling you to sow.
Speaker A:Not where it is comfortable, but where he is directing.
Speaker A:Fix your eyes on the promise, not the conditions.
Speaker A:Take one step of obedience.
Speaker A:It might be financial, it might be relational, it might be stepping into a calling you have been avoiding, whatever it is.
Speaker A:So your eyes up, come back in the next episode because next week we close the series with the harvest.
Speaker A:We go to Philippians 4:8 and we discover the thought life of a prosperous person and why.
Speaker A:Thinking right is a final key that unlocks everything we have been building.
Speaker A:Now let us pray.
Speaker A:Father, we come to you as people living in famines of different kinds.
Speaker A:And today we make a choice.
Speaker A:The same choice Isaac made.
Speaker A:We choose not to go into Egypt.
Speaker A:We choose to stay in the land you have assigned us.
Speaker A:We choose to sow, not hoard.
Speaker A:We choose to fix our eyes on your promise, not on the problem.
Speaker A:Like Isaac, we plant in faith and we trust you for a hundredfold return that only you can produce.
Speaker A:Let our focus be fixed, let our hands be faithful and let the harvest you have promised come in a volume that silences every voice that told us to quit.
Speaker A:In Jesus name, Amen.
Speaker A:Some of you need to hear this.
Speaker A:The fact that you are still here, still listening, still believing, still sowing is itself a miracle.
Speaker A:Most people quit in the famine.
Speaker A:You are still in the field.
Speaker A:That is not weakness.
Speaker A:That is Isaac level focus.
Speaker A:So keep going.
Speaker A:I love what that the Bible says.
Speaker A:Isaac became rich and his wealth continued to grow until he became very wealthy.
Speaker A:This is not a one season story.
Speaker A:This is a compounding story.
Speaker A:Fixed focus produces compounding return.
Speaker A:The same principle applies to compound interest.
Speaker A:But with God as the banker, the interest rate is supernatural.
Speaker A:Now Egypt represents comfort and compromise.
Speaker A:It represents the place you run to when you don't trust God's word for the land you're in.
Speaker A:A lot of us have been living in Egypt, so please get out.
Speaker A:Not geographically, but mentally.
Speaker A:We've compromised our covenant position because the famine look took so long.
Speaker A:Today, brothers and sisters, go.
