You Will Not Experience the Supernatural Until You Increase Your Capacity

Sermon outline

Grace saves us and then transforms us, but to experience the supernatural we must enlarge our capacity: keep our hearts free of the offence that hardens them, obey when the Spirit says it is time to give something up, and let grace flow out of us to others.

1. Saved by grace, created for a prepared path

   Salvation is not of your own doing or striving; if a man could keep the law completely he could boast, but it is grace that saves. We are God's workmanship, created for good works He planned beforehand, on paths He prepared ahead of time, so your life already has a path laid in it.

   “Your life already has a path.”

   • Romans 1:3-7
   • Ephesians 2:7-10

2. Increase your capacity

   We will not experience the supernatural until we increase the capacity of our minds, our hearts and our relationship with Christ. Dream big, think big, speak it out, write it down and pray it into existence. Take off the limits of your experience, of where you have come from and of what others have placed on you. Stop driving the car and let God drive.

   “We will not experience the supernatural until we increase our capacity.”

3. It begins and ends with the heart

   If the heart is diseased, everything in your sphere of influence is affected. Little offences, discouragements and church disappointments that should run off a duck's back take root, harden the heart and kill compassion, until we are cynical and bitter in the very place of blessing. Even long-time Christians can have hardened, unbelieving hearts, and Israel turned away precisely when things were good. When someone set over you corrects you and you know it is right, taking offence is how you keep the deception.

   Illustration: Uncle Bobby wronged you twelve times, yet at the family braai on New Year's Day it is "Hello, Uncle Bobby, I'm praying for you". But one person at church offends you once, and you cannot come to church because you might lay five fingers on them.

   “No compassion is equal to a loss of passion for the things of God.”

   • Hebrews 3:12-15

4. Grace is transformational

   Grace first saves you and gives you the ability to live for Christ, and the blessings that follow are by-products. Grace also covers the secret things nobody else knows about, from a vape or cigarette to the thought life, and sustains you like a blanket. But one morning, with no pastor or prophet present, the Spirit says clearly, "It's time to give that up, my child." He has given you the ability; now the decision is yours.

   Illustration: Walking through a mall, a man sees an attractive woman and in a split second spends an entire lifetime with her in his mind. That too is a secret sin that grace covers until the Spirit says it is time to let it go.

   “The grace of God will still cover you like a blanket.”

5. Option A or option B

   Ignore the instruction and your walk regresses: things stop moving, the presence feels absent, the heart turns cynical and finds fault with the church, and you slide back. Choose to make the change and grace becomes power: the Spirit fills every void the habit was trying to fill. Deliverance sometimes happens in a moment at the altar, but often God requires your involvement so that you take the authority back from the devil. What He has delivered you from, you now have power to help others out of.

   “When God has delivered you from something, you now have the power to go and help other people get delivered from that very same thing.”

6. Grow a duck's feather

   The enemy will always try something, often through people close to you. Let offences run off like water off a duck's back. Never build on people's compliments or on what they say about you, but on what God and His word say about you. That puts you in a kind of perpetual deliverance, delivered before the offence even comes.

   Illustration: A colleague tells him he doesn't like his shoes. "It's okay, man. Love you." He walks away and still loves him.

   “Don't ever focus on what people say about you. Focus on what God and His word says about you.”

7. For grace to flow, there must be an outflow

   God will not ride in the passenger seat; He must drive. A constant inflow of His Spirit must meet a constant outflow of His anointing, or we become spiritually constipated. The delivered alcoholic who now crosses the road from alcoholics has become calloused. Disobedience is as witchcraft, and obedience is simply belief, like a son who obeys because he believes his father wants the best for him. Your life is ministry: invite the drunk colleague, the addict and the divorced person to sit next to you in church.

   “If we always have an inflowing, then we become constipated because there's no outflowing.”

   • 1 Samuel 15:23
   • 2 Corinthians 12:9

In this message