Table of Contents
Isaiah 54:2, “Enlarge the site of your tent [to make room for more children]; Stretch out the curtains of your dwellings, do not spare them; Lengthen your tent ropes And make your pegs (stakes) firm [in the ground].”
What is Faith Stand For?
F.A.I.T.H. = Forwarding All Issues To Heaven
When You have faith your mountains move away easily, but when you have doubt you create new mountains.
What is FEAR Stand For?
FEAR = Face Everything and Recover
A bowstring is useless unless it is stretched and in return, it throws an arrow far. The more you stretch it the farther it can throw the arrow. The same is the case with a rubber band because it is useless unless you stretch it to release its full potential. The same is the case with our faith unless you stretch it you can’t experience its full potential.
Through stretching your faith, you develop strength and great endurance to overcome the impossible. Every person who wants to see more miracles and also greater miracles must stretch themselves. You can never know what you are capable of unless you are stretched
Remember what you want to achieve is bigger than you and it requires more resources than what you have now and so you will be required from time to time to stretch yourself so as to achieve it. Everything the lord promises you is beyond your capacity and reach and it will require you to stretch yourself.
Remember if you can get it so easily then it’s not that vision that God has for you. Because it means you can achieve it and take credit for it and not give God the credit. For instance, look at the big projects which you ever achieved, at first they looked impossible until you stretched yourself, and then you achieved them. God needs you to reach out to him so that he can reach out to fill in that gap you are missing through prayers, fasting and giving.
Examples Of People Who’s Faith Was Stretched
Abraham trusted God for the child he was promised, despite his and his wife’s advanced age. His faith-stretching ended with a little baby in his arms named Isaac.
Jesus’ disciples feared for their lives when a violent storm threatened to sink their boat. But Peter’s faith caused him to step out of the boat at Jesus’ invitation which then resulted in Peter’s human feet miraculously walking on water.
Jesus told a crippled man, with muscles weak and atrophied, to get up and walk. The man stretched his faith as he stretched out his legs and walked for the very first time.
A blind man who had faith to believe that Jesus could heal, soon saw Jesus’ face with those very eyes. Joshua might have felt
God calls us all to do some faith stretching now and then. Whether we are called to leave our comfort zones to obey and act, or to rest and trust God during a difficult season of life, He always rewards great faith with wonderful blessings, just as today’s key verse promises.
And it is impossible to please God without faith. Anyone who wants to come to him must believe that God exists and that he rewards those who sincerely seek him.” Hebrews 11:6
Maybe stepping outside of your comfort zone to obey God seems like too much of a stretch right now. Keep in mind that although it may seem impossible, God will never stretch us beyond what we are capable of in His strength — not ours. And when we are willing to be stretched, blessings begin to flow.
To stay where you are or to go where you’re supposed to be is your choice. So, leave your comfort zones because they are dying zones and you will have to learn to live in uncomfortable circumstances due to you being stretched beyond your limit. God wants to stretch you beyond your normal comfort zone. When your faith is stretched like a rubber band that is nearly broken, that is when you will begin to see growth and progress like never before. It is likely that God wants to stretch your faith today.
If you want to see God work, stretch! Extraordinary faith produces extraordinary blessings. When you stretch out on faith, God stretches out His hand to do the supernatural.
How Do You Stretch Your faith?
To Stretch your faith you will need to stretch beyond limited thinking, fear, and worry. You will have to Stretch beyond the walls those negative voices have erected in your mind. You simply put your confidence in the Lord. You walk by faith and not by sight. You take actionable steps toward what you believe God is saying you can do, be and have, knowing that, in His way and His timing, He’ll come through for you.
Consider the following when it comes to the ways God may want to stretch you:
- God may want you to DO something.
- God may want you to STOP DOING something.
- God may want you to GIVE something.
- God may want you to SAY something.
- God may want you to STOP SAYING something.
- God may want you to SELL something.
- God may want you to BUY something. (Presumably for a person or ministry in need)
- God may want you to START something.
- God may want you to END something.
- God may want you to LOVE someone.
The chances are great that God likely wants to stretch you today!
Before you have a flat tire always have a spare wheel, and in short, before the enemy attacks have your faith stretched ready to attack him, like a stretched bow that is ready to attack. For instance, 2 Kings 4:34-35, “ Elisha…stretched himself out…and he stretched himself out again.
When Elisha stretched himself beyond his capacity it was the key to this miracle. What was lost was restored, just like this man of God we must stretch ourselves beyond our traditions and norms so as to achieve the impossible.
Romans 7:19-23 There will be a tug-of-war because God is transforming us. He is moving us forward into the likeness of Christ. How is He doing that? It happens in the stretch. If we stop stretching, we stop growing.
Faith is like a muscle – if it is not used, it doesn’t grow. Did you know that your faith grows when you use it? Some of us spend time every day exercising certain muscles that we want to develop. The longer you go without using faith, the greater the danger that you will forget how to use faith altogether. So, faith is like a muscle and needs to be exercised.
Faith is not only for the special few because God has no specific favourite and everyone is His favourite. Anyone who knows Jesus as Lord and Saviour already has been given a measure of faith (Romans 12:3).
Start building your faith muscle
Like when you start to lift weights, you are going to feel it, and you will be tempted to give up because it feels too hard. That is when you have to stand your ground. I know it may feel rough, but if you can stand to be stretched, you can stand to be blessed.
When Jesus healed the man with the withered hand in Mark 3:1-6, He simply told the afflicted man, “Stretch out your hand.” In verse 5, the Bible says, “He stretched it out, and his hand was restored.”
Here’s something I want you to pay attention to, that is the fact that he had to stretch out his hand in faith because even after Jesus spoke, his hand was still shrivelled up. There was no visible change until he stretched it out. To stay where you are or to go where you’re supposed to be is your choice.
Stretch past your inabilities, insecurities and indifferences to be restored to your full usefulness. When we begin to stretch in faith then our faith is stretched to cover that problem. For everybody and every situation it may be different, but here are some tests I have gone through on the road to building my faith.
Through your trials, troubles and difficult circumstances, God is up to something. No, He’s not on a mission to destroy you. But yes, He is stretching you. Why? Because the stretching comes before the blessing!
Do you remember when God told Moses to stretch out his rod over the Red Sea in Exodus 14:26-27? Well, the children of Israel had the red sea in front of them and Pharaoh and his army chasing them from behind. It seemed that they were in great danger.
But Moses obeyed God and he stretched out his rod and that’s when God stretched out His hand and parted the Red Sea. Moses, just like the man with the withered hand, had to do something first.
We see that in Genesis 22:10 after God commanded Abraham to offer up his only son Isaac as a sacrifice, the Bible says Abraham stretched out his hand to slay Isaac. As painful as this must have been, Abraham still stretched out his hand and his faith. At that moment, the angel of the Lord called out to Abraham from heaven and revealed that there was a ram caught in the thicket that would be used for the sacrifice instead. Abraham called the name of that place Jehovah-Jireh, which means, The Lord Will Provide. Not only did God provide, but in Genesis 22: 17-18, God pronounced a blessing over Abraham’s life.
Finances – Believing God for financial provision and God asking me to not only tithe, but give offerings with the little bit of money that I had.
Healing – Continuing to work and not staying in bed, when I was feeling sick.
Relationships – Forgiving someone who hurt me badly and still treating them with God’s love, even though they didn’t deserve it.
Each test was hard, in fact, some of the hardest things I have done in my life! You are probably wondering what happened. Over time, as your faith grows, you will be able to believe in God for bigger and bigger things, like a muscle that can lift more weight. There will come a time when you will be able to have faith for anything!
Now one thing to remember about building your faith, most things do not come right away. There will be a period of time before it comes and many times it will not come in the way that you imagined. You have to trust that God knows how to supply your needs.
“But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:13-14).
But Jesus’ question in Luke 8:25 makes it clear that you can have this gift of faith and never use it. “Where is your faith?” he asks the disciples after a storm blew up as they were rowing across the lake. Jesus had been asleep in the back of the boat, and the disciples panicked! But Jesus awakens, calms the storm, and then asks, “Where is your faith?” In other words, “Why aren’t you exercising the faith I have gifted to you?”
Pastor Nathaniel.
