Get Your Bounce Back: Mix the Word with Faith and Flourish

Sermon outline

The righteous are made to flourish like a palm tree, and the way to see it is to mix the Word you hear with faith: be teachable, stay planted in God's house and keep speaking what God says until your life bounces back.

1. The righteous shall flourish: righteousness is a nature

   You are not made righteous by right living or by your works; righteousness is a nature imparted by God's Spirit the day you are born again. So a person's behaviour is not the measure of whether they are a Christian: someone whose character is still 'scratchy' may be walking in faith and pleasing God. Define spiritual things by the Word, not by how you were brought up in church. In 2008 you will flourish like the palm tree while others dry up.

   Illustration: A husband or wife in an argument says, 'You raised your voice at me, you're not a Christian.' He says that is wrong.

   “Righteousness is a nature imparted by God's Spirit the day you're born again.”

   • Psalm 92:12
   • 2 Corinthians 5:21

2. Don't call the situation by its name: speak what God says

   When the Spirit hovered over a chaotic mess, God did not say 'this is chaos'; He said 'let there be light', calling things that be not as though they were. The creative force is in the tongue, so do not say finances are tight, or they will get tighter. Let the sick say 'I'm healed' and the poor say 'I'm rich'. Christianity is a profession, and our profession is the confession of God's Word; the tongue is like the small rudder that turns a huge ship.

   Illustration: A ship's captain locks the wheel and the whole huge ship turns full circle on its small rudder.

   “You have today what you have spoken yesterday. And you will have tomorrow what you speak today.”

   • Genesis 1:2-3
   • Romans 4:17
   • Proverbs 18:21
   • Psalm 45:1
   • James 3:4

3. You shall bounce

   Those planted in the house of the Lord will bounce: pressure, people and lack of money may try to deflate you, but you keep the ball bouncing by speaking: 'I'm the healed of the Lord, I'm the blessed of the Lord.' Do not wait for someone else to create a bounce in your life. Jesus is the way and you are in Him, so if your way looks blocked, speak to it and open it; sometimes you have to 'muscle your way' through, as David took down Goliath.

   Illustration: At college he played basketball for the first time and loved the big orange ball: the harder you bounced it, the higher it went.

   “Don't wait for someone to create a bounce in your life. Start to create your own bounce.”

   • John 14:6
   • 1 Samuel 17
   • Romans 8:11

4. Be teachable

   The wise thing to do when someone teaches you is to listen, go home and practise it, because results are the acid test. Older people are often set in their ways, but anyone can change if they will just be teachable; if you do not yet have the result, listen to someone who has. He will keep teaching on money because most prayer requests he receives are for financial breakthrough, and money in a believer's hand is for building churches, saving people and helping others.

   Illustration: A gnat on a bull's horn asks whether it is too heavy, and the bull replies, 'Quite frankly, I didn't even know you were there.' A millionaire teaching on wealth is interrupted by a questioner and asks, 'Are you a millionaire? No? Sit down, let me finish my lesson.'

   “Be teachable.”

   • James 1:22
   • Ecclesiastes 10:19

5. Be planted in the house of the Lord

   Only those who are planted flourish, so do not be a church hopper who leaves every six months when you do not get your way and drags your family with you. Do not be over-sensitive or leave over something you disagree with; you will not stop eating because of one bad meal. A Sunday message is only a short segment of a subject he has studied for years, so stick with the game plan, be disciplined and faithful, and change your thinking, because as a man thinks in his heart, so is he.

   Illustration: A tomato plant that is pulled up just as it buds and replanted in the neighbour's garden, then the uncle's, then the auntie's, until it rots. Someone who changes business every three days, from polishing shoes to selling Coca-Cola to cleaning gardens: 'busy doing the wrong thing.'

   “Plant yourself in the house of God.”

   • Psalm 92:13
   • Proverbs 23:7

6. Stately, useful, fruitful and incorruptible

   The Amplified Bible says the uncompromisingly righteous will be long-lived, stately, upright, useful and fruitful, majestic, stable, durable and incorruptible, and will bear fruit in old age. Neither academic qualifications nor hard work alone make you rich; there is an anointing for wealth and health, and you can change your status. You cannot corrupt, because you were born again of incorruptible seed, and God wants His people to have abundant life and to be able to build churches for cash.

   Illustration: If academic qualifications made you rich, the professors would be the richest people in town. Fruit from the shop starts to rot after a few days on the shelf, 'but that won't be so with you.'

   “Look here, I was poor and I was rich. Rich is better.”

   • Psalm 92:12-14
   • 1 Peter 1:23
   • John 10:10

7. Mix the Word with faith

   God brought Israel out of Egypt towards a land flowing with milk and honey, but they wandered in circles for forty years because they could not mix what they heard with faith. While the Word is preached, grab it and say 'that's mine'. When sickness or poverty comes, do not embrace it; say 'stay away from me' and keep it at bay with the Word. Like Jesus, who blessed a few loaves and called Lazarus out of the tomb, speak life over whatever looks dead: finances, business or sales.

   Illustration: He grew up so poor that 'the poor called us poor', without a father, with his mother working as a domestic worker. At ten years old he told his eldest sister he would one day buy her a truckload of saris. A man selling packets of onions should move to bags, then a shop, then truckloads, then pickling, then the farm.

   “You've got to mix the word with faith.”

   • Exodus 3:17
   • Hebrews 4:2
   • Matthew 14:19-20
   • John 11:39-44