From the Beautiful Gate to a Beautiful Place –Babatunde Olugboji
Have you been agonizing over that blessing you desperately want? Are there long- standing issues in your life that require the touch of God? Do you know that God is able to turn a bad situation around just like that? The story of the lame man in Acts 3 is a great testament to God’s ability to turn things around very quickly, in a manner that would leave you screaming: what a mighty God we serve.
On a particular day, Peter and John were going up to the temple and they saw this man who was lame from birth being carried to the temple gate called Beautiful, where he daily begged from those going into the temple. This man asked them for money, and they in turn asked him to look at them, so he gave them his attention, expecting alms, but Peter said, “Silver or gold I do not have, but what I do have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk.” (Acts 3:1-6)
Have you wondered why this man’s friends would lay him daily by the gate? People will only help you to a point, only God can get you to the place of your breakthrough. When you are incapacitated financially or physically, people will determine what they think you want, not what you really need. This man’s friends were happy for him to beg for alms, but in their estimation, he was not good enough for the temple.
The good thing was that as he saw Peter and John, he did not give his disability his attention. What gets your attention will impact how far you can go. In other words, whatever you give your attention will be magnified. The lame man expected Peter and John to give him some cash, but God was about to exceed his expectation. As you are reading this, I pray that God will do exceedingly, abundantly, much more than you can ever think, or imagine. Where you are expecting little, God will flood you with abundance.
Like the lame man, people may have met and left you in a place of negativity, of problems; people may have used you to give directions ‘…when u see a man sitting by the gate, then the temple is right in front of you.’ In 2021, you will no longer be a signpost, you will no longer be defined by your sickness, by your poverty or by your failure. Things will change for you. As you encounter the one that makes the impossible possible, you will do the impossible, your situation will receive strength, just like the lame man’s leg received strength.
I want you to declare this week: God, I have been very close to my breakthrough too many times, being close is no longer good enough, I want you to move me from the beautiful gate to a beautiful place, a place of joy, of progress, and of prosperity. As the year is coming to an end, I will no longer give my attention to my situation. I will not allow the devil to see me showing that the fire in the furnace is burning me. I will celebrate God and create the atmosphere for him to show up in my life.
Kingdom Dynamics, a weekly column is written by Dr. Babatunde Olugboji, the President, Kingdom House, a non-profit organization in New Jersey, USA.
