You Were Made for MoreSample

You Can Do Greater Things

Message

The Bible is full of stories that tell us smart people look up. Like David, looking up past the hills to the God who made heaven and earth for help. Or Gideon who looked to God to help choose the 300 mighty men that would win a victory they never should’ve won. God told Gideon to look for the men who had their eyes lifted up, even while they were drinking water from a brook.

The problem is, we generally like looking down. We like looking at negative, not the positive. As we pointed out in prior days, humans tend to talk about problems more than they do solutions. We tend to take some pleasure in seeing other people doing worse than we do. On the whole, we don’t do a very good job of looking up.

The early theologian Augustine said that sin was when our love was turned in on itself like a spiral pointing inward, and that proper love was directed upward and outward in a straight line toward God. He went on to say that part of being made in God‘s image is the way we are the only animal that tends to stand up straight and look up rather than be hunched over looking down at the earth on all fours. It’s almost as if tapping into our potential, hinges on how we set our eyes.

Let me encourage you to set your eyes higher today. Jesus promised that we would do greater things that he has ever done. And even just a quick glance at the New Testament shows how literal Jesus was when he said greater things.

A woman reached out, touched Jesus’ garment and was healed. After Jesus left this earth, people touched by Peter’s shadow were healed. Jesus read the scriptures about jubilee and started a ministry. But when Peter preached on the second pentecost, 3,000 were saved we're told in the book of Acts (which is, by the way, the same number of people who died on the first pentecost, when Moses gave the law in the aftermath of a golden calf). Jesus healed a paralytic and he walked. Peter did the same and healed even more completely, reattaching even ligaments.

Steps

When Jesus said we were made for greater things, he was being literal. And he was talking about you. So we finish this devotional on how to stand out and be a unicorn, let me encourage you to take one last action step, and lift up your eyes higher. Ask God for such a great vision for your life that it is doomed to failure without His involvement. You were made for more.

Prayer

God give me the eyes to see that you’re doing more and more and greater and greater things in this world now than ever before. Help me to understand that you want me to be a part of that plan. And help me to work on these habits so that I can stand out more as your representative in this world. I’m ready to do greater things and my eyes are lifted up. In Jesus’ name. Amen.