Hosanna Restoration Church

We have talked about pressing and being pressed, about the shaking and being shaken, and now we get to the part that everyone wants; the running over. Everyone on the world wants running over blessings, but much of the time people feel more like they are being run over. In fact if you listen to a lot of people talk, they will tell you that they expect to be run over. If things are going well, they will tell you that it probably won’t last. I have known people who never really enjoyed their good times because they were busy worrying about the bad things they were sure were coming.

As I thought about the overflow, or the running over, God brought to my mind the story of chicken that wanted to bake some bread. No one wanted to help with any of the work, but everyone wanted to eat the bread. In the same way, many people do not wanted to hear about giving. They have all kinds of excuses, and without faith, they see giving as something that costs them. They do not understand that God uses that for a measure to give them a large return.

Neither do people like to hear about the need to press toward the prize of God’s high call. We want God on our own terms, but He tells us to draw near to Him. And we certainly do not like to think that we might be pressed in the process. We don’t want to have to live by faith, we want to see and know everything. Sorry, but it just does not work that way.

The idea of enduring shaking or continuing in faith while God increases the return just does not fit our microwave society, but if we will just get a firm grip on the promise of the overflow, it will help us to be there when it comes. Even though no one wanted to help the chicken with the planting, harvesting, grinding, or baking, she was not discouraged because she knew what would come out of the oven.

So the idea is to believe no matter what is going on that God will keep His promise and the overflow will start at any moment. Scripture says of Jesus, that He endured the cross because He was focused on the Joy that God had promised in the end. God always provides. In the Old Testament we can see how He even provided before the need arrived. He told Israel how to grow their crops and rest their land. The year before they were to rest their land, he would give them enough for three years. There were probably many who failed to even recognize or praise God for the overflow the year before they rested their land. There were probably even some who did not bother to rest their land. I wonder what happened to their crops. Remember when God gave them manna and told them to gather only what they needed. Those who tried to hoard extra just in case God did not show up the next day, found that it rotted. But then when God told them to take extra so they could rest on the Sabbath it did not rot. God’s way always works.

God gives us promises because He knows there are trials in this world. He also shows us how we can do more than survive in this lifetime. He tell us how to thrive. This may be an over simplification, but I think it will help us all if we will remember that when we press close to God, nothing can shake us because we have confidence in His promise of the overflow. In fact we can rejoice from the start because we know that God is on our side.