Last week I unpacked the first of 5 enemies of more.
Lack is the root from which all the rest grow. Remember, lack doesn’t say God can’t. Lack says God won’t. And because he won’t, you are forced to make it happen for yourself.

In reality, God supplies all our needs according to his riches in glory. God is under no obligation to give you what you want, but he’s promised he will give you what you need, IF. Yes, there are conditions…

If you want God to bless you financially, you have to obey his commands concerning finances. If you want God to bless you relationally, you have to obey his commands concerning relationships. Etc. Etc.

Biblical proof:
Deuteronomy 28:
...the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the world. 2 You will experience all these blessings: 3 Your towns and your fields, children and your crops, offspring of your herds and flocks, Your fruit baskets and breadboards, Wherever you go and whatever you do, you will be blessed. 7 “The Lord will conquer your enemies when they attack you. They will attack you from one direction, but they will scatter from you in seven! 8 “The Lord will guarantee a blessing on everything you do and will fill your storehouses with grain and in the land he is giving you. 11 “The Lord will give you prosperity in the land 12 The Lord will send rain and will bless all the work you do. You will be the head and not the tail, always be on top and never at the bottom.

Now if you read along in your Bible, you will find I omitted some key phrases. We want the blessing that destroys lack, but do we want the IFs, too?

The IFs I ommitted:
If you fully obey the Lord your God and carefully keep all his commands that I am giving you today, if you obey the Lord your God: If you obey the commands of the Lord your God and walk in his ways, If you listen to these commands of the Lord your God that I am giving you today, and if you carefully obey them, You must not turn away from any of the commands I am giving you today, nor follow after other gods and worship them.

Deuteronomy 28:15-19
15 “But if you refuse to listen to the Lord your God and do not obey all the commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come and overwhelm you: 16 Your towns and your fields will be cursed.

I think you get the point, but if it still needs to be clearer:

OBEDIENCE TO GOD is the most effective way to defeat lack.
Obedience leaves no room for doubt or fear. If God says give, you give. If God says forgive, you forgive. If God says do unto others, you do unto others. Obedience smothers the flames of lack.

If you are lacking, are you really obeying?

But that was last week. Today is this week.

So let me share with you the last 4 enemies of more. God wants you walking in blessing and abundance. These will keep you from it.

2. Expectation
Nothing takes the joy out of more like missed expectations. Have you ever had someone tell you they randomly got you an incredible present and you get all excited only to find what they got you was something that maybe they really liked but you were kinda meh about it? Funny how expectations can take the joy out of something you didn’t even know you were going to get in the first place.

When I say that God made you for more and that he wants you to have it, what are your expectations of what that more is? When I say more in your marriage, what do you expect that to be? More in your family? More in your career? More in your walk with Jesus?

This is what can get us in trouble. We hear more and we build this expectation of what more means only to discover that more doesn’t mean what you think it meant. God always gives more to be beneficial for your growth and development. But God is not going to give you more if it will compromise your integrity or lead you away to sin.

Now, I need to say that with a caveat. If you continue to ignore God, he will withdraw himself (Romans 1:24 Greek is paradidomi - to hand over), by handing you over to “the impure desires of their hearts.”

Why am I making such a big deal of this?
Because when you begin to idolize your expectations, you allow your own impure heart to dictate what God will or will not do. Expectations will emphasize what you want and reject what God wants.

Psalm 81:11-12
But no, my people wouldn’t listen. Israel did not want me around. 12 So I let them follow their own stubborn desires, living according to their own ideas.

And do you know what that produces? Anxiety. Fear, Worry. Doubt. And we’re back to lack.

Philippians 4:6
Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.

The correlation between anxiety and expectations is interesting. A study showed four ways anxiety was triggered by expectation.
1. Having unrealistic expectations.
2. Dwelling in the gap between expectation and reality.
3. When positive expectations are not met.
4. Holding onto a negative expectation.

Do you have unrealistic expectations?
What if I told you what you expect RARELY ever matches reality. How would your life be different if you expected what you expected to be different from what you expected?

Do you live in that gap between expectation and reality? Worrying yourself to death.

How do you respond when positive expectations are not met? Instead, negative expectations happen, and you respond by holding onto them, and in holding onto them, you negatively alter your next set of expectations?

How would your life change if rather than living at the mercy of your expectations, you simply asked God to help you? What if you prayed for wisdom and guidance instead of being anxious? You’d be surprised at how easy it is to not be anxious once you turn it over to Jesus.

Don’t let expectations destroy the more God is trying to give you, because they will!

3. Pride
I’ll try to only to stop here for a moment for a couple reasons. One, we talked about this several weeks back already. But two, you already know that pride will keep you from receiving the more God has for you.

How?
- You convince yourself you don’t deserve it.
- You’ve already been convinced your past actions are too much for God’s blessing so you essentially decide how God is going to respond before giving him the chance.
- You think you don’t need what God has to give you.
- You are so angry about what God has allowed in your past that in your pride, you’ve judged him.
If any of these describe how you feel, let me respectfully ask you to remember your place and repent as soon as possible.

Job 31:2-4, 6, 24-25, 35-37
2 …what has God above chosen for us? What is our inheritance from the Almighty on high? 3 Isn’t it calamity for the wicked and misfortune for those who do evil? 4 Doesn’t he see everything I do and every step I take?
6 Let God weigh me on the scales of justice, for he knows my integrity.
24 Have I put my trust in money or felt secure because of my gold? 25 Have I gloated about my wealth and all that I own?
35 …Let the Almighty answer me. Let my accuser write out the charges against me. 36 I would face the accusation proudly. I would wear it like a crown. 37 For I would tell him exactly what I have done. I would come before him like a prince.

Look at how God responded.
Job 38:1-3
1 Then the Lord answered Job from the whirlwind: 2 “Who is this that questions my wisdom with such ignorant words? 3 Brace yourself like a man, because I have some questions for you, and you must answer them.

God then goes on a 70 verse rant demanding Job to explain to him the mysteries of the universe: Where does light come from, how were the stars formed, do you know the measurements of the foundations of the earth, and can you command the oceans to stop and go no further?

Job 40:1-2
1 Then the Lord said to Job, 2 “Do you still want to argue with the Almighty? You are God’s critic, but do you have the answers?”

Then God goes another 52 verses.

My point is that we have to be careful of exercising pride against the one who spoke a word and the universe was born, especially when all that one is trying to do is reunite us with him for the purpose of relationship. We give him pride and arrogance and all he’s trying to give is his love and blessing.

And that leads me to my second point here on pride:
Is your pride keeping you from asking God for more? I read this last week, but here it is again: James 4:2
2 You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God.

You can live with lack and allow pride to keep you from asking if you want,
but if you are going to experience the more God made you for, perhaps it is time to swallow your pride and, in humility and fear, come to the father.

Humility kills pride. And when mixed with prayer and the Word and repentance, it stays dead. One other thing helps, though, too. Community. If you feel isolated and alone, outside the circle, be sure in this moment that it is not pride keeping you from community. Pride will say “I deserve,” or, “I’m entitled to,” and then justify it.

Don’t let pride keep you from the more you were made for.

4. Misunderstanding
Imagine this scenario:
You go to men's group on Tuesday night and have a great time sharing with the guys, but on Sunday, you get here and Tony, Edgar, and Nathan are circled up talking, having a good time. As soon as you walk up, it seems like the group breaks up and the guys disappear. So at that, you start thinking, "These people don't like me.”

After service, they invite you to watch wrestling on Monday night, but you pretend you have something going on because you think they're just inviting you out of pity. So rather than go and have a good time, you stay home, frustrated, missing out on the relationship. But what really happened was not that they didn't like you, but they realized it was two minutes before service started and they had to be on the platform. Which is why they broke their group real quick and disappeared. It was all just a big misunderstanding.

You'd be surprised at how many times something like this happens at church, but I really want you to catch the point here:
Misunderstandings have the power to stop good things in their tracks.

In John 11, Jesus and the disciples were a full days journey away from Bethany in a town called Bethany beyond the Jordan when Jesus got word that Lazarus was sick. Mary and Martha immediately sent for Jesus to come and heal Lazarus. The Bible tells us that Jesus tarried in Bethany beyond the Jordan two more days. In those two days, Lazarus died.

After those two days, Jesus returns to Bethany and while still a couple miles out, Martha comes to Jesus, and it says in John 11:21
21 Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

When Martha went out to meet Jesus, Mary stayed at the house because she was clearly angry at Jesus. But when she finally does come to Jesus, she says the same exact thing in verse 32, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

I hate to prove point number two right here, but Martha and Mary clearly had an expectation of how this was going to go down, and that expectation included Jesus coming at once when they wanted him to do the thing they wanted him to do so they could have the result that they wanted to have.

The problem is that not only did they have an unrealistic expectation of what was going to happen, they completely misunderstood what Jesus was doing in that moment. Jesus had already healed people before. Everyone knew he could heal. And Jesus had already raised someone from the dead before, but that person had only been dead for a matter of hours. Lazarus at this point would have been to the point where he was stinking from his flesh rotting. There would be no denying he was dead.

Mary and Martha wanted a healing. But Jesus wanted more.
Perhaps we would be talking about Lazarus right now if he were healed,
but we are talking about Lazarus right now because he was dead and now he has come to life. Jesus wanted them to not only see that he could heal, but that he could raise the dead. And the reason this story benefits us even more now is because the very thing that Jesus does with us when we come to him is the same thing he did to Lazarus in that moment: dead becomes alive.

We have to be very careful that we don't misunderstand what God is doing in our lives.
It is easy to look at what's happening around us and make judgments about who God is and what he's doing, who he's not and what he's not doing, and demand that he fulfill every expectation and desire that we have. But God it's not content to give you just enough. Over and over and over again in the word, we see that he is a God that operates an abundance, over and above, the extra mile, more.

When we misunderstand what God is doing, it stifles our ability to receive the more that we were made for. And when we misunderstand, we begin to doubt, worry, we begin to operate in fear. Those things stir up negativity and faithlessness, and we find ourselves right back in a place where we are experiencing lack.

Then Satan jumps onto that and uses it to reinforce the lie that God can, he just won't. That's exactly what he was doing with Mary and Martha in those moments before Lazarus was resurrected. "I know Jesus you can, but why won't you? Why didn't you come when we called for you? If you would've come he would not have died. “

And trust me, I'm not hating here. You and I both would've been in the same place Mary and Martha were.

Sometimes we can't see the bigger picture. Sometimes we can't understand what God is doing and why he's doing it. Why God isn't doing, and why he's not doing it. We have a partial view and with a partial view, we overlook the eternal and demand God fix our temporal.

And this is where we missed the miracle, the more we were made for. We've taken our eyes off of Jesus and put them onto our lack.

I'm curious, is there a misunderstanding right now between you and God?
Are you having a hard time understanding why God didn't answer your prayer or do what you asked him to do?

John 11:39-44
39 Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, by this time there will be an odor, for he has been dead four days.” 40 Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?” 41 So they took away the stone. And Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. 42 I knew that you always hear me, but I said this on account of the people standing around, that they may believe that you sent me.” 43 When he had said these things, he cried out with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out.” 44 The man who had died came out, his hands and feet bound with linen strips, and his face wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”

Sometimes you are not going to understand what God is doing and why he's doing it. Sometimes you're not gonna understand why he's not moving, not answering, not acting. Sometimes God is going to ask you to walk towards the very thing that you lost, and though you can't understand why, he's going to ask you to trust him, to obey him.

You are not going to always understand everything God asks, everything that he does or does not do. But your job is not to ask why but to do or die, to trust him, not your own understanding. He even commands it!

Proverbs 3:5
Trust in the Lord with all your heart and don't lean on your own understanding.

Do you trust him even when you don’t understand him? MORE is waiting on the other side if your willingness to trust and obey.

5. Hopelessness
When all you feel is lack, your expectations aren't met, you don't understand what God is doing, it causes you to doubt God, and that doubt causes pride to well up in your heart, and it's all with one goal in mind: hopelessness.

Hopeless means to have no expectation of good or success. We’re back to he can but he won’t.

And remember, this is what lack does. Satan uses lack to make you feel like you never had enough, aren't enough now, and will never have or be enough in the future.

Maybe some of you feel hopeless today. Maybe not in every area. Maybe there are some zones where you’re optimistic.

But I am willing to bet that somewhere in you there is hopelessness that is rooted in this idea that God can but won’t.

This mindset is an enemy of more because it forces you into a place where you not only feel God hasn’t provided, but that he never will.

So what’s the answer?
Do we just push through or man up? Toughen up buttercup, life is hard? Do it all on your own and rely on your own strength? How’s that working out for you?
OR…
we could defeat hopelessness and embrace the more we were made for.

How?
First, realize that if you are feeling hopeless right now, God is closer than ever.
Psalm 34:18
The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.

Second, realize that God loves and wants you.
Romans 8:32a
He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all

Third, understand that provision is his plan for you
Romans 8:32b
He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?

Fourth, but not just provision for what we need, but exceedingly, abundantly more
Ephesians 3:20
All glory Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us

and Fifth, that he loves to pour blessings into you life.
Luke 12:32
…It is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom
and
Deuteronomy 30:9
The Lord will again take delight in prospering you

5 Enemies of More
Lack, Expectations, Pride, Misunderstandings, and Hopelessness.

What defeats them?
Trusting God. Obeying him. Having faith in him. Believing what he promises. Going to God in prayer first. Consuming the Word. Church community. All these things help defeat the enemies of more.

But I also think there has to be a shift in what you really believe about God and his goodness.
So many of us have had experiences in life where people have intentionally hurt us. As a result, we are conditioned to doubt the goodness of God because, for so many, they could not count on the goodness of people around them who were supposed to love and protect them.

LISTEN TO ME: GOD IS GOOD and his plans for you are good.
If you will give God a chance, you will taste and see that he is so good.

Do you really believe God when he promises verses like 2 Corinthians 9:8,
that God will generously provide all you need so you will always have everything you need with plenty left over for everything he’s called you to do?

If you are struggling to believe, let me just end today with this passage of scripture. Listen closely to God’s desire for you in these verses.

Ephesians 3:16-20
16 I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit. 17 Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. 18 And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. 19 May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God. 20 Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think. 21 Glory to him in the church and in Christ Jesus through all generations forever and ever! Amen.

Here’s how I’d like for you to respond today:
What enemy is keeping you from more today?
Lack, expectations, pride, misunderstanding, hopelessness.

The way we respond if one of these is active is:
Repent and receive forgiveness
Confess and recommit
Surrender and engage

What is the Holy Spirit saying to you through this message?

How does he want you to respond?