From Sowing to Overflowing: 52 Powerful Seeds That Will Change Your Life

By Gregg Dennington

Each of the short articles in From Sowing To Overflowing contains at least one vital seed that can help position your life for greater revival breakthrough. In these pages, you'll discover God's kingdom keys to:

* Healing the sick
* Building better relationships
* Defeating the devil
* Responding to hot-button issues
* Hearing God's voice
* Guarding yourself from getting hurt
* Dealing with hard-to-honor people
* Making a significant impact

Plant the seeds from this book deep in your heart and they will transform your life!

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Apr 23, 2018
• ISBN: 9781543928624

Book preview

life.

Some years ago, a private investigator in Bolivia set out to find a 67-year-old homeless man named Thomas Martinez. The detective looked everywhere, finally tracking Martinez down to a small pub in the city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra. But just as the PI walked through the front doors of the bar, the drifter slipped out the back, before he could hear the news the investigator was hired to deliver. A family member had passed away, leaving Martinez an inheritance of over six million U.S. dollars.

This wealthy-though-he-doesn’t-yet-know-it homeless man remains missing. Which means he still has no idea of the huge inheritance just sitting in a bank somewhere with his name on it–just sitting there waiting for him to make his rightful claim. How sad is that?

About as sad as what happens with so many of us. We walk through life, day after day, with no idea of the staggering inheritance God has waiting for us right here, right now. The freedom, power, peace, and destiny we’re expected to claim on this side of heaven. All bought and paid for through what Jesus accomplished on the cross.

But here’s the deal: If you can’t see your inheritance, you won’t pursue it. And if you don’t pursue it, you can’t claim it. So lift up your eyes and see it. Please don’t be satisfied with what you’ve seen, heard, or experienced in life so far. And please don’t be limited by your own small thinking or the small thinking of others.

Start with the incredible truth that God has far more for you in this life than you could ever ask or imagine (Eph. 3:20 NIV). As much as you might have already tasted of God’s kingdom inheritance, know there’s a whole lot more available to you. Up till now, you’ve probably just been dangling your toes in the kiddie pool of the Father’s birthright promises for your life. I encourage you to look up! There’s a huge Olympic-sized pool just beyond the fence of your imagination that’s inviting you to dive in and explore its depths.

But don’t stop there. Look up again. And discover that you’re within spitting distance of a Pacific-ocean’s worth of God’s inheritance that makes the Olympic-sized pool seem like a tiny drop of water. Welcome to the fathomless kingdom riches that God has waiting for you to claim.

If you can’t see your inheritance, you won’t pursue it. And if you don’t pursue it, you can’t claim it. Please don’t be content to dip your toes in the kiddie pool of Life. Lift up your eyes! Get a good look at the birthright promises that Jesus died to give you, and make it your lifelong passion to grab hold of every single one of these unbelievable treasures.

Followers of Jesus (drum roll please) follow Jesus. And according to I Peter 2:21, this means following the example He set for us 2000 years ago. To follow in His steps. To do what He did, how He did it, and in the spirit He did it. To live the way He lived, pray the way He prayed, love the way He loved, think the way He thought, and minister the way He ministered.

Hope you caught that last little bit. It’s one of the more breathtaking privileges Jesus has given us. To heal the sick, raise the dead, and cast out demons the same way He did when He walked this earth. Same calling. Same power. Same authority. Same anointing. Same results.

There was a time in my life when I ignored this calling. Felt it was reserved for those more gifted or chosen among us. Well, not anymore. This last decade has been an amazing journey of discovering what it means to truly follow Jesus in this on earth as it is in heaven mission. I haven’t raised any dead (yet), but I have had the joy and honor of partnering with God to heal everything from insomnia to bad backs to carpal tunnel to stage-four brain cancer. He’s so good!

How are you doing in this part of your Jesus-following journey? Do you want to heal, save, and deliver just like He did? Same calling, power, authority, anointing, and results? No matter whether you’re a never- done-it-before newbie or an experienced-to-the-gills expert, it’s yours for the taking. Here are three things we see in Jesus’ life that can help us experience this kind of miracle-working breakthrough.

Jesus Spoke to Mountains

I was shocked when I discovered that Jesus, the greatest Man of prayer who ever walked this earth, never prayed for others to get healed. Never. Not one time. Go check it out. He spoke to the sickness, to the sick (or dead) person, or to the demons causing the sickness, but never to God about the sickness. What’s up with that?!

Simple. He was showing us how it’s done–what true kingdom-releasing partnership with the Father looks like. God gave Jesus authority to heal the sick (the same authority that’s since been given to us) and because He understood that this power genuinely belonged to Him, He boldly wielded it by faith. He spoke to the mountains instead of speaking to God about the mountains, and by God’s miracle-working muscle, the mountains moved (Matt. 21:21-22).

This one revelation has probably caused the greatest healing-ministry breakthrough in my own life. When I began to wield this God-stamped authority and speak directly to the sickness, people started to get healed. I encourage you to do the same. Go partner with God to bring healing to a sick and dying world around you. Speak to the mountains. Use the authority He’s already given you and He will move in miracle-working power through you.

Jesus Healed With Open Ears

If you’re searching for a surefire five-step method for healing the sick, you won’t find it in Jesus’ example. From touching tongues to sticking fingers into ears to spitting into eyes to looking up to heaven with deep sighs, He was all over the board.

Which means one thing–Jesus had an ever-open ear to heaven, constantly listening for direction from His Father. He didn’t depend on methods, steps, or past experience for His success in healing, He depended on the instructions His Father gave Him about what to do with every person and every sickness and every situation (John 5:19).

I encourage you to do the same. Instead of looking for foolproof formulas to heal the sick, start training your ears to hear the Father’s direction. And what you hear, do. That’s as close to a surefire method as you’ll ever see in Jesus’ life.

Jesus Called Forth Faith in the Sick

We all know that faith is vital for the work of healing. Jesus made this crystal clear to a couple of blind men who cried out to Him for a miracle. His response? It shall be done to you according to your faith (Matt. 9:29). And how many times did Jesus say something like, Your faith has made you well (Matt. 9:22)? He knew the importance of faith in the healing process, which is why we so often saw Him calling it forth, stirring it up in those He ministered to.

Get up! Go wash in the pool of Siloam. Pick up your pallet and walk. Stretch out your hand. Go show yourselves to the priests. Jesus even stirred up faith in a dead guy. Lazarus, come forth! A call to action. A call to faith.

Without the action, faith can sometimes get stuck in neutral. So I encourage you to challenge those you’re praying for to do something that requires a step of faith, a step which will often release the restoration they so desire.

So here it is, Jesus-style healing. Since you’re one of His on-fire followers, I encourage you to go follow Him in this. As you do, you’ll experience a mighty outpouring of the Spirit’s supernatural power to destroy the works of the devil and minister freedom to a lost and broken world. Just like Jesus did.

Some years ago, a young Finnish woman who was in Taiwan on a short-term missions trip shared her testimony at a local pastor’s prayer group. She spoke for ten or fifteen minutes about how she had struggled her whole life with fear of man, admitting it was a battle she still faced at times. The pastors were very attentive, seeming to hang on every word the young woman shared.

A short time after she finished, the translator came up to her and confessed, I didn’t really understand what you were talking about when you said ‘fear of man’ so I translated it ‘affairs with men.’ The young woman was floored! She’d just stood in front of a roomful of pastors–mostly men–and admitted to struggling her whole life with affairs with men. Not only that, she let them know it was something she still wrestled with at times!

I guarantee you this was the best testimony those pastors had ever heard. No wonder they hung on every word.

Mark it down, a bad translator can destroy a good message. Through all my years in Taiwan, I’ve had my share of both good translators and bad. The good ones are a delight to work with. They not only understand all the words coming out of my mouth but also all the thoughts and passions of my heart. Their facial expressions, hand gestures, and body movements often mirroring my own, these amazing translators become a nearly identical image of who I am and what I’m trying to get across to my audience.

In John 1:1, the beloved disciple referred to Jesus as the Word. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. As most of you know, the Greek term for Word here is logos, and while most Bible translators have settled on Word to convey the main gist of logos, I’m not sure they got it totally right. Mostly because English doesn’t have a word that adequately expresses its true meaning. Logos is simply too deep a concept to be covered by just one term. It not only includes the word being spoken, but everything behind that word–all the thoughts, dreams, attitudes, values, desires, and passions of the person speaking that word. Logos is the full, perfect expression of the speaker’s heart.

Jesus is the logos. Which means He is the full, perfect expression of the Father’s heart.

So why is this important to us? Because how we view God will determine how much revival breakthrough we experience in life. If we hold a wrong view of our Father, we’ll be timid in our approach to Him, and hindered from entering all the depths He has for our lives. But if we hold a right view of our Father, doors to His kingdom riches will burst open, ushering us into depths of breakthrough we’ve never dreamed of before. All dependent upon how we view the Father.

I know, I know. Some