There is not a man or a woman that God ever used that did not find themselves at one time or another hiding behind inadequacy, fear, and even disobedience – from Moses – to Gideon – to Esther – to Elijah – to Jonah – to you and to me!
The very first man, Adam was found hiding from God (Genesis 3:8) and so has every one since!
The good news is that God will do the same thing for you that he did for Adam and Eve and every once since… He will find you in your hiding place, remind you who He really is, remind you who you really are, take you by the hand and bring you out by His grace and power!
2 Samuel 14:14 declares that He is not the God who sweeps us away when we fail but that He is the God who is always devising ways to bring us back to Himself and to His greater purpose when we have been separated from Him.
As we begin this New Year, I declare to you by the Spirit of the Lord that God sees something greater in you than you see in yourself and God see something greater for you than you see for yourself!
I believe that 2025 will be your greatest year ever for your life, your family and for your ministry!
God is a God of increase and has a great investment in you! Your stock is on the rise! I declare that by God’s grace YOUR PROMOTION IS IN MOTION IN 2025!
But it’s not automatic…
Could it be that while perhaps settling for good instead of great – blessing instead of power – success instead of significance – comfort instead of destiny – safety instead of risk – that you may be hiding from the greater thing that the Lord has for you?
2025 is your time to do the same thing that Adam did, and Gideon did, and Jonah did, and the one talented servant did (Matthew 25:25) – it’s time to stop hiding from your promotion!
So here are five promotion blockers that the Lord will help you breakthrough starting today that will take you to higher heights in God’s gifts and calling on your life in 2025!
The person you talk to more than anyone else is yourself.
The greatest battle over your life is what you believe about God and what you believe God believes about you.
You cannot rise higher than how you see yourself or how you believe God sees you.
10 of the 12 spies that Moses sent to bring a report back from their mission to the promised land missed their destiny because they thought little of themselves: “We saw the giants (the descendants of Anak came from the giants); AND WE WERE LIKE GRASSHOPPERS IN OUR OWN SIGHT, AND SO WE WERE IN THEIR SIGHT”
Numbers 13:33 NKJV
Proverbs 23:7 declares “For as a man thinks in his heart, so is he”
The Bible is not only a declaration of who God says He really is, but the Bible is also a declaration of who God says you really are!
That is why the greatest investment you can make in 2025 is spending more time in the word of God and establishing the voice of God as the greatest voice in your life.
Romans 12:2 encourages us to “Let God transform you by changing the way you think …” The greatest thinking the Bible can transform in your life is what you think about God and what you think God thinks about you! 
Dr. David Jeremiah famously said, “The greatest source of good thoughts in all the world is the word of God!”
As you study the word of God, you will discover a God of the Bible who thinks about you MORE than you think about yourself, and who thinks HIGHER of you than you think of yourself!
While Psalms 139 establishes HOW MUCH God is thinking about you right now, Isaiah 55 tells us HOW MUCH HIGHER God’s thoughts about you are higher than your own:
“For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and MY THOUGHTS ARE HIGHER THAN YOUR THOUGHTS”
Isaiah 55:9 NLT
While it is true that scripture admonishes us not to think higher of ourselves than we ought, many like King Saul have swung the pendulum so far the other way from a place of insecurity and a false sense of humility, ascribing virtue to a life of thinking little of yourself, thus never rising up fully to who God says you really are.
Jesus not only came to forgive your sins, He also came to lift and restore your identity as sons and daughters of God, and ambassadors of the King. You are gifted and called to impact the world from an overflow (and not a deficit) of God’s love, confidence and grace from your life to others.
Like Peter said in Acts 3:6, we cannot give to somebody else something that we do not first have ourselves!
God wants to transform you by changing the way you think about Him and yourself so that you can be and do all the great things He has in His heart for you!
Back to Saul…
So when the big day had come, and all Israel was gathered to celebrate King Saul’s promotion as king of Israel, he was nowhere to be found!
Not even the great prophet Samuel could find the man that God had anointed and chosen to be the first king of Israel.
Then the Lord spoke to Samuel and told him he would find King Saul HIDING amongst the baggage! 
1 Samuel 10:23-24 declares that Samuel found Saul hiding among the baggage, brought him out, and said to the people, this is the man the Lord has chosen as your king. No one in all Israel is like him! And all the people shouted, long live the king!
Just like Saul, today God will find you in your hiding place, remind who you really are, take you by the hand, bring you out, and fulfill His destiny for your life!
Later on in Saul’s life and ministry, we discover the destiny-destroying characteristic that limited Saul from being all that God had intended for him…thinking little of himself and God’s great destiny for his life!
As the kingship was being taken from Saul to be given to David, the prophet Samuel said these haunting words from the Lord to Saul, “Although you may think a little of yourself, are you not the leader of the tribe of Israel?”
This is your year to experience breakthrough in seeing yourself as God sees you and to understand that thinking little of yourself is not a virtue!
As Dr. Morris Cerullo would always say, “You are not what the devil says you are. You are not what your past says you are. You are not with the world says you are. You are not what your failures say you are. You are who God says you are, and today you are stepping in to your end time destiny!”
There are two voices over your life. The lying voice of the Accuser, the Devil and the much greater voice of the Intercessor, Jesus Christ!
I declare that as you are reading this today, as your Great High Priest, Jesus is praying for you! 
I also declare today that the voice that pushes you down, the voice that pushes you to the sidelines and the voice that pushes you away from God is never the voice of God!
Adam and Eve heard both voices in the garden of Eden.
We find the first man and woman that God created hiding from their loving Creator because of shame, fear and guilt. Trying to separate man from God’s great love and purpose was the devil‘s plan then, and it is still the devil’s plan now. 
But God did not leave man in his guilt and shame. Even in the garden of Eden, God pursued Adam and Eve and called to them. God found them in their hiding place, reminded them who He was, and who they are, and brought them out.
Today I remind you that the God of the Bible is not looking for ways to short-circuit your destiny. God is looking for ways to fulfill your destiny!
What many call the greatest chapter in the Bible, Romans 8, declares:
“So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus.”
Romans 8:1 NLT
“Who dares accuse us whom God has chosen for his own? No one—for God himself has given us right standing with himself. Who then will condemn us? No one—for Christ Jesus died for us and was raised to life for us, and he is sitting in the place of honor at God’s right hand, pleading for us. Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death? No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us. And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Romans 8:33-35, 37-39 NLT
1 John 1:8-9 declares, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
Today as you come out of hiding and confess your sins, not only is God faithful and just to forgive you and cleanse you from ALL righteousness, God doesn’t want to continue to have a conversation with you about your past, God wants to have a conversation with you about your future starting right now!
When it was time for God to raise up Gideon to deliver the nation of Israel, Gideon was hiding at the bottom of a wine press!
The angel of God appeared to him with a simple message, “Mighty hero, the Lord is with you!”
God found Gideon in his hiding place of fear and didn’t condemn him – instead He reminded him who he really was!
Let me say it again: God sees something greater IN YOU than you see in yourself. God sees something greater FOR YOU than you see for yourself! 
One of the great statements from the life of Dr. Morris Cerullo is “God is not depending on anything you possess, God is depending on what He can make of you!”
You cannot feed your fears and your future at the same time, and you and I are feeding one or the other!
It is better to do something with a little bit of fear and lack then to do nothing at all!
When God was ready to do one of the greatest miracles in the history of the nation of Israel, literally a 24 hour miracle that would take Israel from famine to abundance, he did not look for the leading prophet, priests, or king, He simply found four unlikely lepers that were sitting at the gates of Samaria and challenged them to take a miracle step with a simple question: “Why should we sit here waiting to die!”
In all of their weakness and fear, these leopards did one simple thing, and that was to make a move toward the thing they feared, the camp of the Samarians – only to discover that when they arrived at the gates, these powerful enemies had fled in fear, leaving their entire camp to be plundered by the four lepers who quickly became the heroes of Israel!
Sometimes the greatest testings of the enemy can come after the greatest victories that the Lord brings through our lives.
When Jesus had the glorious experience of being baptized in the river Jordan by John the Baptist – and the heavens opened with a dove descending upon Jesus and the voice of the Father declaring “This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased!” – what a divine moment that was – as the Father, Son and Holy Spirit united on this heavenly introduction of Jesus to the world. Only to find Jesus a verse later, being tempted of Satan in the wilderness during 40 days of prayer and fasting.
Here was Elijah, the greatest prophet that ever lived, after perhaps the greatest victory of his ministry, calling down fire upon the Mount Carmel, now on the run in fear from Jezebel!
Elijah is now hiding in a cave only to have the Lord find him in his hiding place with the words each one of us may need to hear from time to time, “WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?”
The Lord found Elijah in his hiding place, reminded him who he really was, and brought him out.
The Lord did not rebuke him. The Lord listened to him, encouraged him and strengthened him.
In Psalms 23 King David declares that the Lord is our Shepherd, that He makes us lie down in green pastures, beside the still waters, restoring our soul, anointing our heads with oil, comforting us, and preparing a table before us in the presence of our enemies.
He is not your slave driver. He is your Father. He is the God that cares much more about what He can do for you than for what you can do for him!
When you are tempted by weariness and discouragement, you can draw your strength and encouragement from the word of God who loves you more than you know and who chose you not for what you can do for Him, but for what He can do for you! 
Maybe you can relate to Jonah. God told you to do something, but you disobeyed and did the opposite.
Maybe you were afraid. Maybe you were distracted. Maybe you were compromised. Maybe you were just plain rebellious and disobedient.
Romans 11:29 declares: “For God’s gifts and His call can never be withdrawn.”
The good news is that God has not abandoned you. He has not changed his mind about you or about His plan for your life.
As second Samuel 14:14 declares, “God devise ways to bring us back when we have been separated from Him”
In the case of Jonah, God devised a whale!
The Bible declares that Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from inside the fish!
The next step in restoring your destiny begins with a conversation with God!
Wherever you are today, you are not too far gone for God to quickly hear your cry and turn your life around!
The Bible declares that the word of the Lord came to Jonah THE SECOND TIME!
God is the God of a second chance… third chance…another chance…
God does not have a plan B for your life, he does not have anybody else that can do what you can do, and He has not changed his mind about you or his plan for your life!
Your new beginning starts today, and I declare that YOUR PROMOTION IS IN MOTION WITHOUT COMMOTION IN JESUS NAME!
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