You are called to honor God above all else, knowing that what you honor multiplies in your life. Embrace a holy dissatisfaction with your current limitations and pray for an enlarged capacity to do greater works. Stand in faith today and allow God to break the boundaries imposed on your destiny.
Oh, wow. You guys honor well. Let's give Jesus a big old hand for what he's done. What he's doing.
Thank you, Lord.
You may be seated. *Honor is a principle of the kingdom, and I'm so thankful to be at a church that has learned how to honor and is learning how to "honor well"*. Amen? It's a big deal. I have the honor of getting to do a couple of things that are very important.
1 of my mentors, and he's a spiritual father in my life, doctor Leon Benroyen is here. And excited about that, he he did yesterday for us, we had a healing school or healing conference, healing workshop. I really wasn't sure what to call it. But he's got a he's got a healing school manual that's coming out that I would encourage you guys to to purchase when it does when he when he does the the rewrite. I think it's maybe coming out in December.
But it's just a powerful thing. You know, Hebrews-13:7 says, consider your leaders. Consider the outcome of their way of life. Now, is something that a lot of the church doesn't understand. So listen.
Consider your leaders. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith. God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. So if if Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and today, and forever, and God puts a leader in your life that the outcome of their life is producing fruit that you don't have in your life, consider that and imitate their faith the way they hear God, the way they believe, and the way that they obey. And you'll experience the same or similar fruit you'll grow to over time in your life.
Amen? Well, is a man that I've considered the outcome of his way of life. And I thought, I I wanna be like him when I grow up. Amen? And so your pastor's saying that.
I would encourage you today when he does come out to lean on the edge of your seat. Write things down. What you honor multiplies in your life. And what you dishonor will dwindle. Okay?
So honor means giving weight and value to what's being said. Dishonor is saying, I don't know if that agrees with what I think, so I'm just gonna Doesn't that sound like a lot of people in the American church? Yeah. Let's honor well, so we can have it multiplied. As a matter of fact, in honoring well, he's written some books.
I've read all of these. They're a part of the SLT program. He wrote SLT. He wrote a whole university of material and 11,000,000,000 books. I'm not joking.
Well, kind of. 11,000,000,000 is not a number. But So I got capture here is 1. It's the heart of God for the nations. If you have a call to the nations or that's stirring in you, if that's you, would you raise your hand?
Okay. Let's give it to you. Yes, ma'am. Absolutely. Well done.
Now, this 1 is his best seller. We preached a series on this a year ago. It's already sold out at the table. Who wants to learn how to have the attitude of a servant? We're a position of a son, but the attitude of a servant.
Yeah. Come on. Come here. Come back over here. My buddy.
Love you, man. Mountain moving faith. Who wants mountain moving faith? All right. Come here.
I would read these giving value and weight to them, but also let it push you back to the word. He's going quote a lot of the word in it. It'll open up the Bible to you. You'll see it in a new way, in many ways. Bold.
Come here. I'm really just trying to peripheral vision, see the first hand that goes up, just so you know. And then, how beautiful are the Okay. Timothy. Come here, bro.
How beautiful are the feet? Oh, he's already bought it. So, alright. Angie. Amen.
We have we have more of those books. I would encourage you, they're worth the investment. Right? And if they're already sold out, you can find them online at gmrinc.com, I think is the the website. Now, I wanna get him out here to preach as fast as possible.
It's a great joy to be with you today at real church with real pastors, real leaders, real believers, and as we are worshiping a real tangible presence of our thrice holy God. What a great time to be gathered together in this place in this way. What an honor to be with you today to share the word, and I wanna get straight into it because I've got a lot of ground to cover in a short period of time. But I wanna start with a question someone posed to me, and that was, Leon, aren't you concerned that people will get ahead of God? And and I said, I'm more concerned that people will not live to the potential of their calling.
That they will live their life lower than what God intended for them. There are very few people that can get ahead because he's before, he's behind, he's all around, he's in you, and if you are yielded and sensitive to his voice, you will never take steps outside of the boundaries that have fallen for you in pleasant places, but what I am concerned is that so many people are held up held back by their fear, by their insecurity, by their smallness of mind, and their lack of faith, and so I'm believing for something tangible to take place in your life today that there will be an expansion of your God given potential, that you'll be greatly enlarged in the *capacity* of your faith, of your vision, of your passion, and of your calling. When I'm home, which is not often, in my study, I have a cabinet and under there is a scale, a bathroom scale, but it's not in the bathroom, it's in my study. And when I wake up in the morning, the first thing I wanna do is get on the scale, but I have a confession and that is "less of me" and "more of God".
Confession mostly works. Mostly works, but just not not on your scale. The other day, I got on my scale and I heard my scale speaking to me. He said, dude, less donuts. If you want **more of God** and less of you, less donuts.
I said, I bind you. He said, you can bind as much as you want. I love you, and I care about you. There are 3 things, and I use the word things, that do not lie. Number 1 is my bathroom scale that's in the study.
Number 2 is your genes. Not your genes, but your genes. It's not the dryer. When you put them on and they're tight, it is not the dryer. They are speaking the truth in love.
And of course, the third is God and his word. He's not a man that he should lie. He will always tell you the truth because he is the total embodiment of truth. He is the way, the truth, and the life, and so he will always tell you the truth. I was in a church, yeah, actually 2 weeks ago, but a year Maybe 5 months before that, I was in that church.
And the pastor's Egyptian. And when you understand the Egyptian or the Muslim people, 1 of the things that they're really good at is hospitality. When they feed you, I mean, they feed you. Yesterday in the healing school, someone said, what is the most unusual meal that you have eaten? I said, monkey brains.
But when you're on the mission field, you have to eat what is set before you. It's kind of like a tradition. Although, I have 1 exception, and that was I was in Malawi. I was walking towards the kitchen and I could smell the meat was rotten. I said to my friend, we are going on a fast right now because we will not eat what is set before us.
He said, brother, I'm gonna give thanks. All I can say is that when he left that mission trip, he left as a much smaller man than what he arrived. There was certainly less of him. I was whole. When I got to the church, he said to me, would you mind staying in my house?
I said, I'd be honored. He said, What would you like to eat? I said, I love Mediterranean food. I love Just do the local things. So he got his mom to fly in to cater for me.
I walked in from the airport and the table was laden. When it says, eat what is set before you, what I'd forgotten was that just before I got to him, I had made this commitment to go into 120 day A 90 day fast, a 90 day fast, which I would just eat salad. I'd be like a hippo or an elephant. I'd just eat the green stuff because I wanted less of me. So I had forgotten I'd asked him to prepare all this food, and I wasn't gonna humiliate him or his mom.
So I said, in the depths of my being, okay, we'll just start after this weekend. So they fed me and they fed me and they fed me, and this was my closing statement at the end of the weekend meetings. I said, I'm leaving here a bigger man than when I came as I tightened my jacket, hiding my enlarged capacity. I'm leaving here a bigger man than I came, and my prayer today is that you would leave here bigger than what you came in faith, in vision, in your God capacity. How many of you would like that?
Yeah. How many of you when you read your bible, and I trust you do, but when you read it, there comes a verse that even though you may have read it 50 times, a 100 times, it leaps out at you. It grabs you and you get drawn into it and you think, I've read this so many times, and yet it's like reading it for the first time. Anyone identify with it? You know what I'm talking about when I go into this verse.
Go with me in your bibles, whether it's digital or paper. *1 Kings-4* and verse 29. Now, I've not only studied the word, I have read the word, I have taught the word, and I have taught from the scripture multiple times. If I was to say to you, what was Solomon famous for? Don't tell me all his wives and concubines besides that.
What is Solomon famous for? His *wisdom*. How many of you would love wisdom? And the bible says, if any man lack wisdom and wisdom builds a house and he has become to us wisdom, so it is accessible. But yeah, remember God came to Solomon and said, listen, you can ask whatever you want.
And he didn't ask for wealth. He didn't ask for success. He didn't ask for a victorious army. What did he ask for? Wisdom.
And here is God's response to his request. And and is there because it's connecting to his request to God. And God, and I need to pause there, this is not just God, little g, this is God, the creator, the creator of heaven and earth. This is the I am. This is the 1 who caused Israel to pass on dry land as they walked through the Red Sea.
You understand? This is the God, and this god, and god, the covenant keeping god, the covenant cutting god, the god who is good, the god who is great, the god who is merciful, the god who is kind and compassionate, this god. But he's not just kind and compassionate, he is extremely wealthy. And over and above that, he is not only wealthy, he is generous. So we could say, and God or and the very generous God, the giver of every good and perfect gift, the father of lights, the 1 who the word talks about, for God so loved the world that he gave this God.
Yeah. And God, just take a sell a moment there and just God, we're talking about you. We sung about the thrice holy God, holy, holy, holy, this God. And God gave because he's a giver. He is not the subtractor.
He doesn't give you disaster. God is the giver of good gifts. The father of lights, he's consistent. And God gave Solomon *wisdom*. But notice there's no period there.
He asked for wisdom, but it it continues. And God gave Solomon wisdom and So God responds to Solomon's desire, request, prayer. God, I'd love to have wisdom, God says, I'm gonna give you wisdom, and that's a very generous, good, and kind God because he's not the God of just enough, He's the God of more than enough. He's the God of all sufficiency, and that God gave Solomon wisdom and, listen to these words, exceedingly great understanding. Now, if God had just given Solomon wisdom and understanding, that would have been pretty cool.
But because God is over the top in generosity, and kindness, and mercy, He didn't just give him wisdom and understanding. He thought, hey, let me just throw in exceedingly great understanding. Wow. How many of you would love to have exceedingly great provision from this large handed god. He's not stingy, mean, subtracting from your life.
He's a good god and the giver of good gifts. And God gave Solomon *wisdom* and exceedingly great understanding. That would've been more than enough. But it I'm like that, you know, those infomercials. But wait.
Is more. Because there's another and there. And **largeness of heart**. But notice that there's no period there. There is more.
Largeness of heart, this expanded capacity, you cannot do a great work from a small heart, from little faith. The capacity of the inner man has to be enlarged through the revelation of this good, kind, generous God that his touch comes upon your life, that expands your capacity because you cannot rule a nation from a small minded position. God's never given anyone something to do that he will not give you the ability to do it. We are not to think more highly of ourselves than we ought to. We do think soberly because God has given each the measure of faith.
I want you to know if God's given you a vision, you have the inner capacity to get it done. When God said to Noah, build an ark, he didn't give him a canoe capacity. A speedboat capacity, he gave him an ark capacity. You can't build bigger than the capacity that is inside of you. And so God gave him largeness of heart.
Like what? Like the sand on the seashore. Well, you live in Clearwater, so all of you have been to the seashore. Go count the sand. Go count the sand.
In other words, this is beyond our ability to measure, to describe our vocabulary is inadequate to describe the potential of the god life that is inside of you. *Hallelujah*. In Psalm a 119 in verse 32, the Psalmist says, I will run the course of your commandments for you shall enlarge my heart. You cannot run with the vision, with the word, with the strategy of God from a position of small heart. You have to have the enlarged heart to run with the enlarged vision.
I wanna pray for you that God today would expand you. Let us pray. And so God, as we place our hand on our heart, the inner man, the hidden man. I pray God for a download from heaven's unlimited resource for wisdom, exceedingly great understanding. An expanded *capacity* that cannot be defined by our vocabulary, that is beyond our ability to articulate the vastness of this holy deposit of the Christ in us, the hope of glory.
I pray God for the boundaries, the limitations that have come upon our lives through trauma, through injury, through abuse, through religion, through culture, through distorted value systems. I pray every limitation to be broken off our lives today to be all that you have called us to be and to do all that you have called us to do, that we may run with your commandments, that we may run with your word, that we may run with the vision, that we wouldn't find ourselves staggering under the weight of the holy obligations that have been placed upon us. But with great joy and enthusiasm and passion, we would fulfill the desires of your heart because you have enlarged our hearts. I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.
To Some people say to me, Leon, why do you go to small churches? I've been in churches that have 15, 20 people. They say you could be in crowds. I said, I've never been drawn to a church that is big in numbers, but I've never been drawn to a church that is small. If I go to a church that may be few in numbers, they are certainly not small in heart.
That's right. I've been in churches in an African village sitting around a fire with 12 people, a pig, a goat, and naked babies, but it's been a glorious invasion of God. It may be small in numbers, but big in heart, big in love, Big in desire for what God has for their impoverished lives. And I've learned this to grow a big church. All I have to do is grow big people.
Because the *capacity* of the the membership is not based on the size of the building, though I'm not against a huge building, a gathering of of thousands or 10 thousands. It's not the size of the crowd. It's the size of the heart of the people. I once went into 1 of the largest churches in South Africa, and the pastor was a good friend of mine. We did a work together.
And before he had the ability to introduce me to the church, I walked around the building. I went into the bookstore, and it was a big bookstore. It was about the size of your auditorium. It was a fairly big Christian bookstore for back then. Of course, it was before amazon.com.
And I walked around and I've gotta say, the greeters at the door were the unfriendliest greeters that I'd ever met. The people in the bookstore were the unfriendliest people that I'd ever met. When I moved into the main auditorium, I found it to be cold and indifferent. And I thought, you can have the biggest church in the country, but I would hate to be your pastor because you mean arrogant and full of yourselves. You don't know the warmth of God's love.
And so for me, the size of the building has no appeal. The size of the crowd has no appeal. What matters is the size of the *capacity* of our faith, of our vision, of our passion. And that's 1 thing that I recognized not only yesterday, but on my previous trip and this morning. And, of course, in the many times we have sat together, your pastor's so huge in capacity.
Schools, students, leaders, nations, and you as a people that are so active in prayer, evangelism, discipleship, I get to many churches. I travel at least 42 weeks of the year to different churches and I have hundreds of churches related with me. When I say this, I say this not to make you feel good to stroke your ego, but I talk about this church everywhere I go because it's a good church with very good people and a exceptional pastoral couple that are so huge in capacity. So with him being so huge, why am I talking about an expanded capacity? Because I want you to grow, to increase, to multiply, and to have limitations that you have been raised in a society that is not operating in a strong measure of honor, *faith*, and commitment.
The church, by and large, broad stroke, not here, is soft belly, gutless, namby pamby, weak need, living average mediocre spiritual lives. And we're praying for a revival, but most people won't even leave their TV set or their devices to read the word, to pray, to reach the lost, to disciple the found, to grow the church. They just want a great meeting thinking a great meeting is revival. Revival is about changing a world. Changing a nation.
I believe God wants you to grow, to be big in love, *faith*, passion, word, anointing. I I love the story of Jabez. To me, it's like the secret embedded code in scripture because it's in the genealogies. Just hidden there, just name after name. It's like reading Matthew-1.
And then suddenly you come to 1 Chronicles-4:9-10. Now, Jabez was more honorable than his brothers. What made him more honorable than his brothers? His brothers were satisfied with where they were at, and he was dissatisfied. Now, I wanna make a statement.
I am not dissatisfied in God. He has never failed me yet. So when I say I'm dissatisfied, I'm not dissatisfied in the reality of who he is and what he has done, but if I have a dissatisfaction, it's because my generation hasn't reached its capacity. We are not hastening the return of the Lord. We have stagnated and we have stalled, and in many ways, the church is still sitting in the mentalities of 1970, 1980, 1990.
Well, welcome to 02/25. And we're gonna have to be dissatisfied with where we at to get what God's got for our generation. And Jabez was dissatisfied, and his brothers were good, loyal, Jewish men, but they had become satisfied. And he said, I wanna be a carrier of change. How many of you wanna be a carrier of God's change, God's *redemption* to your world?
How many of you wanna be light in the midst of a wicked and perverse generation standing in righteousness and God confidence, moving mountains and changing the spiritual climate. That's just my alarm. I'm not alarmed. Jabez was more honorable than his brothers, and his mother called his name Jabez because I bore him in pain. He wanted to break the reputation that had been imposed upon him by the pain he had afflicted his mother.
Now listen, mothers inflict pain on their children. He inflicted pain on her, but she inflicted pain on him because she put a prophetic declaration upon his life that he would never amount to anything other than causing distress, pain, discomfort. What a name to have. Unlike many people in the Bible, his name is not changed, but he is changed. Why was he changed?
Because Jabez called on the God of Israel. Who was Israel? Jacob. What happened to Jacob? He had an encounter with God, and Jacob became Israel, the carrier of God's glory, the carrier of God's transformation, and Jabez called on the God of transformation, the God of change.
And if you will call on the God of change, he will change you. If you're living wounded, hurt, discouraged, broken, abused, limited by religious indoctrinations that have been imposed upon you. You can break that off if you will call on the God of Israel, the God of transformation. And what did he pray? Oh, that you would "bless me indeed".
Not bless me with stuff. He was not thinking about stuff. If you go into the Chaldean translation, he was after disciples. He wanted to raise up a generation of teaching priests who would carry the word into the nation to restore the nation to God's economy. He wasn't after stuff, and bless me.
Most people see the prayer of Jabez as just about being increased financially. I don't have a poverty mentality, but at the same time, Jabez, the prayer of Jabez was way more than superficial living. Oh, that you would bless me indeed and enlarge my territory. But guess what? You cannot have an enlarged territory in smallness of heart.
To have an enlarged *capacity* means you will have You can stretch out the 10 pegs. You can have an expanded territory that you would keep me from evil, that I may not cause pain. And I love this. So God granted him what he requested. And this is what the spirit of God said to me, if anyone requests this kind of an enlargement, I'll do it for them.
I'll do it for them. I'll break the limitations of their life that have been imposed through what they have grown up in. In this dysfunctional era that we're living in, I can take them to the original state that I had intended for them. *Hallelujah*. I do have to somehow come in for a landing.
How do we get an enlarged capacity? 1 of the things I I love about Barnabas, When it says Barnabas was a "good man", when you go into what good means, it wasn't just moral living, moral goodness, purity of living, but it was way more than that because you remember Barnabas, the son of encouragement, was able to step out of his Judaic upbringing into the Gentile world. And so when I use this, and I do it with my SLT students when we study Barnabas, I write there about being liberal minded. Most of them write back to me and say, I'm not a liberal, I'm a conservative. And even though I put in brackets, this is not a political statement, they still want to define that they are not liberal minded.
But Jabez was liberal minded. He was not stuck to the limitations of his upbringing. He could step out of the environment into an enlarged environment to reach and change the world. And 1 of the things about Barnabas was he was a good man. He was full of faith and full of the spirit, and many were added to the church.
And I know you wanna see the church added to, but you can't add to the church from a position of being small minded. You're gonna have expanded faith, expanded anointing, increase that comes upon your life. And that's what I wanna pray for you right now. If you feel your life has been limited and that, Leon, I want to have an expanded *capacity* in faith, anointing. I don't wanna live where my brothers are living.
I am dissatisfied. I'm satisfied in Christ, but I'm dissatisfied in where I'm at. I know God's got more for me, but it seems like I'm held down. I'm held back. I want the limitations broken of my life.
Would you stand right now? And I will pray for you, and then I'm gonna ask your pastor to also come up right now and be ready for the next few prayers that we will have. Well, that's a plus. The entire church stood, but that's good. It shows that you are living for more.
You want to do a greater work. To do a greater work, you have to have a greater capacity. The works that I do, you shall do also, and even greater works. You can't do that from unbelief. You can't do that from small mindedness.
You can't do that from visionless living. You have to have an expansion, and I'm gonna pray what I hope will be a miracle prayer that something tangible will be downloaded into your life right here and right now, that limitations will be broken off. Like Peter, you will step through the bars of prison gates. They will be flung open. Chains will be broken like in, Paul and Silas in the inner stocks in the prison, that there'll be a shaking of the spirit that will break the limitations of your life.
How many of you want that right here and now? And so, God, I do pray for these precious saints standing here with **holy hands** before you saying, god, here I am surrendered, placing my life on the altar of sacrifice for a miracle to take place in me, for smallness and lack and stinginess and small thinking and small speaking, limits that have been placed upon me by culture, by family, by tradition, by religion, every blockage, every limitation, every chain, every prison door flung open, flung off, broken in the name of Jesus for a huge shift in the inner capacity of their lives that the fulfillment of your word and all that you have desired for each 1 will take place in them, not only in them, for them, but ultimately through them as they release this glory into their world. In Jesus' name.