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Apples of Gold
Radio Script for November 12, 2009
“If You Want More, Increase Your Capacity”
Hello, I’m Doug Apple…with Apples of Gold.
Do you want more out of life?
Then you have to increase your capacity.
Now don’t miss this simple little concept. If you want more, you have to increase your capacity.
You can’t hold more than you have the capacity for. The capacity has to come first.
Mike Floyd is the owner of Wave 94, and other businesses and ministries, and this is something he teaches often, this concept of increasing your capacity.
He begins with this story from Second Kings chapter 4. There was a woman whose husband was a prophet, and they had two sons, and they owed someone a lot of money.
Well the prophet died, and to cover his debt, his creditor decided to take the two boys as slaves. As you can imagine, the new widow was distraught.
So she took her plight to the great prophet Elisha, and he asked her a very interesting question.
“What do you have in your house?”
“Nothing at all,” she said, “except a little oil.”
Then Elisha told her to go borrow empty jars from all of her neighbors. And not just a few, he said. Then she was to take her little bit of oil and start pouring it into the containers.
Well she poured and poured, and the oil kept flowing as long as she had more containers. Then when all the containers were filled, the oil stopped flowing. Then Elisha told her, “Go, sell the oil and pay your debts. You and your sons can live on what is left.”
It was a miracle. The oil kept multiplying as long as . . . what? As long as she had the capacity to hold it. As soon as she ran out of capacity, the oil stopped flowing.
What had Elisha told her to do in the beginning? Increase her capacity.
Yes, this was a special miracle just for this one woman, but Mike finds in the story a wisdom principle. You can’t hold what you don’t have the capacity for, so if you want more, you must first increase your capacity.
Now back to the widow. Think about this. If God was going to multiply the oil, He could have just multiplied the containers of oil. That would have saved her the trouble of borrowing all those jars from her neighbors.
I don’t know why God structured His miracle this way, but He set it up so the woman had to do some work. She had to do her part to increase her capacity.
So my question today is, what are you doing to increase your capacity?
Recently I was at a Christian men’s gathering and heard a story about Brad Johnson, a former quarterback for the Florida State Seminoles. The team would go through their brutal two-a-day practices, and the players would be worn out. Time to relax – they earned it.
But not Brad Johnson – while other players were sprawled out on the couch, Johnson was in there brutalizing his legs on the Stairmaster. This is just one example of his tremendous work ethic, and he eventually became a Super Bowl champion with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Now listen, I doubt he would have made it to the Super Bowl if he had not been relentless about increasing his capacity.
So what are you doing to increase your capacity?
Going to school – that’s a good way to increase your capacity. The more you learn, the more capacity you have.
I was a journalism major in college and took lots of writing classes, but I did not stop increasing my capacity as a writer when I graduated. To this day I still read books about writing and listen to lectures and I even subscribe to the daily e-mail from Grammar Girl, for crying out loud.
In the early days of the World Wide Web my boss said, “We need to have a website.” He was talking about paying someone to create it.
But in my mind I was thinking, “Hmmm, maybe I could do that.”
One problem, I didn’t know how to create a website . . . yet. But I studied and practiced and learned the program and what was I doing? I was increasing my capacity. Before, I didn’t have the capacity to create a website, but afterward I did.
I’ve seen Mike apply this to his business. I’ve seen him buy machines we didn’t need . . . yet. What was he doing? He was increasing our capacity. We increase our capacity for production, then watch the production increase to our capacity.
“But Doug, maybe God doesn’t want me to increase.”
Well that’s not what I get out of the Parable of the Talents. The guys who increased were rewarded, and the guy who stayed the same was punished.
No, I think God wants us to grow and grow and grow. We keep learning and expanding and making a bigger impact.
God was ready to provide for the poor widow, but first she had to gather those containers.
And I see that principle at work in our lives today.
So do you want more out of life? Do you want increase?
Then you have to make room for it. You have to prepare for it.
And the principle is this. If you want more, you have to increase your capacity.
Comments?
E-mail me: dougapple@wave94.com.
May God bless you today! With Apples of Gold…I’m Doug Apple.
© 2009 The Arrow’s Tip
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(Proverbs 25:11 – “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in settings of silver.”)
Why “The Arrow’s Tip”? Each morning, after diligently seeking the Lord, I write Apples of Gold. Then before I release it to the public I pray one final prayer, “Lord, send forth your arrows.” I envision Apples of Gold as arrows, tips dipped in the river of the water of life that flows from the throne of God (Rev. 22:1), sailing toward the hearts and minds of men and women around the world.
Doug Apple
General Manager - Wave 94
Christian Radio for Tallahassee
PO Box 4105
Tallahassee, FL 32315
(850) 926-8000
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