Listen to God’s Voice
By Drenda Keesee
You are capable of anything. Matthew 17:20b says,
“Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you” (author’s emphasis).
Isn’t that encouraging?
I find for a lot of people that verse isn’t as thrilling as it should be. It has no power to them. It has no promise to them. I can’t believe that! If you believed what that verse really says, you would be jumping up and down. You would toss this book to the side and run around your house laughing and praising God. No joke!
The reason many people don’t react when they read that verse is because…
…they don’t believe it. They have it on a plaque on their wall, but they don’t even know the revelation that verse has to change their lives. God can’t lie. When He says that nothing will be impossible for you, He is promising that nothing will be impossible for you. I meet so many people with incredible potential that don’t
1. LISTEN TO GOD’S VOICE-Overcome your mental blocks and excuses!
YOU ARE BETTER THAN YOU THINK
Believe that. They can’t see all of the amazing things they are capable of or get a vision for their future, because everything is too good for them, too big for them, or too hard for them.
If you try, you can find a million excuses for why you can’t. How about a reason why you can? Or why you should? In fact, the Bible says that there is no question of “can” and “can’t.”
“What do you mean, ‘If I can’? Jesus asked. “Anything is possible if a person believes” (Mark 9:23, NLT, author’s emphasis).
“I can do all this through him who gives me strength” (Philippians 4:13, author’s emphasis).
Your job is not to figure out if you can or can’t. Your job is to ask God if you should, and if that’s a yes, your job is to say that you will. That’s all! Stop letting the question of “Can I?” hold you back and cripple you with doubt.
Dennis and his wife, Nancy, had three beautiful boys: six-year-old twins, Brock and Brayden, and four-year-old Bryce. They didn’t feel their family would be complete without a fourth child though—a baby girl.
Nancy became pregnant and miscarried. Nancy’s body proceeded to reject and miscarry three more pregnancies for a total of four miscarriages in a two-year span. Each time they felt like their faith failed and it became harder to get back up and try again. They reached a point of frustration. They decided they needed to figure out what the problem was and fix it.
Dennis and Nancy went to a specialist to find out what was wrong, but the specialist could not give a clear answer as to why Nancy was miscarrying.
They prayed and asked God to reveal it to them. God showed them two specific things that they needed to deal with, one of which was unforgiveness. They forgave people in their past and decided to step out in faith again because they knew that what God said was all of the evidence they needed.
They started driving an hour and a half each way to attend our church. God sent them on an assignment to figure out how His Kingdom operates and how it could transform their lives. They had to learn to think right. Nancy approached me one day, and I came into agreement with her that she would never miscarry again. Shortly after, Nancy became pregnant. She had signs of a miscarriage early on in the pregnancy, but this time she refused to speak a single word of doubt or fear over the baby—and at full-term, she gave birth to a beautiful baby girl!
At the same time Dennis and Nancy were standing in faith for their baby girl, they were also having difficulties in their finances. They had struggled financially for the entire duration of their marriage.
Dennis said that they realized insanity is defined as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, so they needed to do something differently if they wanted different results in their finances. Through the leading of the Holy Spirit, they found practical wisdom for structuring their finances.
Dennis had been managing a small store of 11 employees at that time. That same business had two locations, and he was managing the smaller one. The general manager of the larger store decided to resign and Dennis was one of three candidates to interview for that job. He was unanimously chosen for the promotion! He now oversees 160 employees and his income has doubled!
Dennis and Nancy could have made excuses. They could have said it didn’t work before, so there’s no point in trying again. But they didn’t—and the choice to ignore those excuses and let go of their doubt radically changed their lives.
What But God is keeping you from writing your success story?
~ Drenda
This was an excerp from Drenda’s book Better Than You Think.
Listen in Now to Faith Life Church!
Drenda Keesee’s contagious zeal and humorous personal experiences help make her ministry of spiritual, emotional and relational wholeness one that will bless your life and spark a new fire in your spirit.
A wife of over 30 years and a mother of five children, Drenda has ministered at churches, seminars, and conferences, and through the mediums of television and radio, for more than 20 years.
Her books, The New Vintage Family, Better Than You Think, and She Gets It are available wherever books are sold. In these heartfelt books, Drenda shares her personal journey and the life lessons that have brought her to where she is today, as well as practical answers that all people need to live a joyful life.
Drenda and her husband Gary founded Faith Life Now, a ministry designed to spread the message of freedom in the areas of finances, faith, marriage, and family. Tune in for their weekly messages here. Faith Life Now hosts conferences worldwide, and sponsors both Fixing the Money Thing, which Drenda co-hosts with her husband Gary, and Drenda.
Through their own life experiences, the Keesees have found the principles from God’s Word to be powerful and effective. At one point, Drenda was a young, suicidal feminist with no hope of ever being “good enough” for her own standards of perfection. She never wanted the “inconvenience” of a husband or children, and she was on her own path to success. But the stress of trying to achieve perfection and perform for love left her broken and used. She had success, but it was nothing compared to the pain and loneliness it had also brought.
That’s when God got a hold of her heart. It was there—at her lowest point—that she found the One who accepted and loved her, faults and all. Since that transformation, Drenda has had a passion to reach women who find themselves where she once was.
She married Gary after attending college, and there she found herself in a personal boot camp of sorts. She says, “I cried and told God, ‘I can do anything but be a wife and mother.’” She committed to learning how to do it God’s way. Through the many years of raising their children and struggling to make ends meet, Drenda learned from their mistakes. “I didn’t know how to be a wife and mother, but God saved our marriage, taught us how to parent our children for success, showed us how to have financial success, and then irony of all ironies, He called us to ministry.” It’s truly because of these life experiences that Drenda can now share so many insightful principles for people who are now going through the same struggles.
