Thursday, March 11th, ‘10

Thursday, March 11^th, ‘10

A THOUSAND TIMES MORE

“(The Lord God of your fathers make you a thousand times so many more as you are, and bless you, as he has promised you!)” (Deuteronomy 1:11)

That may sound a bit farfetched to the businessman with just him, his wife and Uncle Joe on the payroll, but go global with that cheesecake business, bottled spring water or whatever, perhaps a better mousetrap, and soon the Ma and Pop store has to relocate. With the favor of God one thousand times more is not impossible, not even improbable. People do it every day. It takes networking, creativity, inventiveness and a novel idea. Thirtyfold, sixtyfold and a hundredfold is the usual multiplication in seed but replant the hundredfold and soon the harvest is thousandfold. Warren Buffet has proven that on Wall Street. Mild-mannered Joel Osteen has proven it from his daddy’s pulpit. All it takes is a break, the right place at the right time. Joel says he just stumbled into his opportunity, now ministering to a thousand times the twenty-five or so with which the senior John Osteen started Lakewood Church. Now add television and multiply the current 25,000 by another thousand and our text makes sense. The audience is then 25-million. “But that’s the exception to the rule”, you say, “We’re not all that lucky”. But the thousand times promise is in your Bible just like it is Joel’s. And you have every bit as much right to claim it as does he.

Reread the text again. Notice, it is encased within parentheses. And it is punctuated with an exclamation point. Being parenthetical means it was added by Moses as an afterthought. If a thousand times more is Moses’ afterthought then what would be the Lord’s forethought? All scripture is given by inspiration of God even down to the least jot and tittle; that would include parentheses and punctuation. The last clause interprets the preceding gist of the verse, “as he has promised you”. A thousand times more is not pie-in-the-sky thinking, it is a matter of promise. The Author of this blessing is “the Lord God of your fathers”. We reap where former generations have sown. The thousandfold return may not come in Abraham’s generation but follow the chain past Isaac, past Jacob and Joseph and the patriarch who was not the “father of any” becomes the “father of many”. Two million or more Israelites marched out of Egypt. Today Abraham’s lineage numbers in the multi-millions. What I am saying is that, given time, all believers should expect to be blessed with a thousand times more. Dad’s first house was $20,000; a couple of my brothers’ houses were a thousand times that cost. Chalk part of that up to inflation.

I’m praying for my book sales to be a thousand times more. You have a gift, a product, a skill that can and should multiply. This is the difference between analog and digital. Exponential growth is much easier and common today. You watch Wal-Mart, Lowes or any of those monolithic chains buy up freeway exit property all across the country and you wonder how we can ever compete against such wealth. But then you see some no-name country store like Cracker Barrel or hair product designer like Paul Mitchell make their presence known and felt and then think, “I can do that”. Have you checked the stock worth of Google lately? All these companies began as gambles, maybe even hobbies that somehow caught on. Coca-Cola only sold four-hundred bottles of soda pop its first year of business but now it is the most recognized corporate name on the planet. The Lord make you a thousand times more than you are this day! Don’t count yourself out. The worst mistake you can make is to quit believing, to “surrender your dreams at age sixty to the authorities”, as Dennis Hopper says in the investment commercial. America has over a million millionaires now. There are hundreds of churches now with memberships over ten-thousand. Those barriers have been broken to serve as floodgates through which the rest of us can enter. You can enter. You can win. Whatever you are believing God for, add one, two, maybe three or more zeroes behind it because He is “able to do exceeding, abundantly above all that we ask or think…” A thousand times more.