Isaiah 10:27, John 10:27, 2 Corinthians 2:12-13, Acts 12:5, Gen 24:1-2

Men and brethren, the difference between ordinary and extraordinary is the extra. Today’s devotion will help you gain the extra blessing, extra miracle that will turn your ordinary living to extraordinary living. It will inspire you to cultivate an extraordinary life filled with daring explorations of reality both within and without “And Ruth said, Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people and thy God my God” Ruth 1:16. She had to leave everything that was familiar and all her customs and all her rituals and go to a place she’d never been before. And there she is in Bethlehem, and the Bible says she was over in the corner, living a life of struggling, a life of the ordinary. Then an opportunity came for her to make a choice whether to continue living the ordinary or choose the extraordinary life with the extraordinary God. 

Right where you are, you must get off from that corner. Ruth was over in the corner gleaning a little something, something over in the corner. Over in the corner of the field until she got the call to go to the middle, a call to the extraordinary abundance Ruth 2:7-14. And I want to take this opportunity to challenge you as a leader, to stay off the corner; as Ruth did, to stay off the corner. Because what God has for you is not in the separate nuances of your comfort zone surrounded by everything that you understand. You must desire some new stuff, going some new places, meeting new people, trying new companies, reaching out. Don’t sit down there complaining about why you were not born in America, or why your parents did not train you at school; if no one helped you, then that is the more reason why you have to help yourself, what a tragedy to hide what we have.

We’ve robbed ourselves of rich opportunities, but we also rob ourselves of a growth experience of getting off the corner and out into the thrust of things where the grass is green and the harvest is plenteous. And if our world continues to change, our churches will become obsolete if we only minister in the corners and the safety of our communities. Because I believe as leaders God is going to do a new thing in your life in the midst of all the craziness of our times. Our generation is drifting back away from those meeting places back over into the corner, and it is creating some real hostility. The death of civility is present everywhere. Nobody is polite to anybody any more, people get hostile, I think in part because you can hide behind a computer and say all kinds of little nasty stuff and nobody knows where you live. But our job as Christian leaders is not to allow anything that happens around us to force us back into the corner. If Ruth would have went back to the corner she would have missed Boaz and she would have been stuck gleaning in a field that she ended up owning because her vision got big enough and broad enough to get outside the box. And I have it on divine authority that there are some planet-shakers in this forum. I have it on divine authority that there are some giant killers in this place today. I have it up under divine authority that there are some thinkers in this place today who are filled with treasure and love and concepts and ideas that could change the world. But you can’t change the world from the corner. We should not allow the tabernacle of God in our generation to be nuanced in a corner and hidden from people that need it and from people that need us.

You can be pregnant with possibilities that will propel you to the extraordinary. The bible says “Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.” Matthew 1:23. “It is not new things we need, but new fire.” John Wesley, You can’t play it safe and be a leader, we must be in the front of the battle. Psalm 34:7, 1 John 4:4

The apostles had the real challenge of taking what happened on the cross and presenting it into the world. And so they wrote books where they defied culture and went in to change the world. We have a God who can speak to anything. If He can speak to a fly He can speak to a man. If He can speak to a frog He can speak to anybody. If He can speak to water and make it turn to blood He can speak to anybody. My question is who can you speak to? You can tell who you speak to, by who you draw because it is only an idiot that follows a man without evidence. Therefore, if you always do what you’ve always done you’ll always be where you’ve always been.
Until we are willing to be uncomfortable we cannot grow. If you live in a world where you are the smartest person in the room, get out of the room. Go into a room that’s so big that you don’t know what the rules are and you feel a little bit nervous and you feel a little bit uncomfortable and you’re out of your element, because when you get out of your element you’re dynamics change. Your stress changes. Your focus changes. And God can use you in ways He could never use you before because God is saying to you over two days, “This is the year that I’m going to stretch you and pull you and add on to your life and show you why you went through everything you went through. I believe God is speaking to you, to spread your wings as far as they can reach. To overcome the storms and the hostility and the lack of civility of our times, and let it push you up, not down. And as you go back home to lead your church, your ministry, and as you go back home to bring people into your life that irrigate your understanding with fresh perceptions of what the world is now, spread your wings. Because I believe that you can fly. They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up on wings like eagles. They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not faint Isaiah 40:31. God, please give us pastors and leaders and thinkers who stretch beyond the familiar and the ordinary and the mundane, and risk the nervousness and the fear to extend themselves beyond the average. Give us leaders that can fly.

Before I share testimonies and the concluding prayer. Please ignore fake profiles of Uma Ukpai Breakthrough Prayer.. We dont have Ophanages.