A prophetic word by Lynn Fowler, a member of Women’s Apostolic Alliance.
I love to crochet, but I sometimes find written patterns hard to follow, so I often watch video tutorials. Recently I was watching a tutorial for a shawl when the instructor said, “This is your point of increase.” I hadn’t heard that specific term before, but I knew what she meant. The point of increase is the point on each row of the pattern where you do something different to ensure that each row will be longer than the previous one, building up to the triangular shape of the shawl.
Some time later, during my prayer time, I felt the Holy Spirit ask, “What is your point of increase?” Obviously He was talking about my spiritual life, not my crochet. I found myself wondering, Do I have a point of increase? Is there something that I do every day to ensure that every day in the future my spiritual life will be deeper, higher, broader than it is today?
God never intended our Christian life to be static. Jesus talked about faith like a grain of mustard seed. Most of the time we miss the point of that teaching. Yes, He was saying that even the tiniest amount of faith can bring about amazing things. But to make that point He could just as easily have talked about faith the size of a grain of sand. Instead, He chose a seed: a seed is living, and it has the potential for growth. In fact, it is more than just potential – the only way a seed cannot grow is if it is dead. Growth is the very essence of what the seed is about.
It’s the same with our spiritual life. It is meant to grow. Paul rebuked the Corinthian church because they were still behaving like babies, not wanting to grow in their faith and go on to maturity. (1 Cor 3:1-2) I’m sure we all know people who were saved 30, 40, or 50 years ago, but are spiritually still babies. Rather than having been Christians for 30, 40, or 50 years, they have been Christians for one year 30, 40, or 50 times over.
So the question comes back for each of us: What is our point of increase?
I know that over the past year or two the Lord has been drawing me into an increasingly narrow path. He has greatly increased my time in the Word each day – but that has limitations, because there is only a limited time available. So, whilst extra time in the Word is great, it is not something that can go on increasing. My point of increase has to be something that is not limited by the finite-ness of human existence. Something that is not so much about doing as about being.
There are things that I could do a year ago – not bad things, just spiritually irrelevant things – that He will no longer allow me to do. I’m sure that refining will continue as He draws me close and closer to Himself. Is that my point of increase? Probably partially – but not totally.
The more I think and pray about it, the more I feel that the real point of increase is the same for all of us: our passion, our zeal, our hunger for the Lord. Moses, who had performed amazing miracles before Pharaoh, who had seen the parting of the Red Sea, who had been up the mountain as it quaked with the presence of the Lord, still cried out to God, “Now show me Your glory.” (Ex 33:18)
Paul, to whom God had given the great revelation of His grace, who had seen incredible miracles and had taken the Gospel to a large part of the known world, still declared, “I want to know Him!” (Phil 3:10) The point of increase for both Moses and Paul was that, no matter how much of God and His power they had experienced, they wanted more.
May God give all of us that ever-increasing hunger that will never be satisfied, no matter how great a relationship with God we have today, but will always be pressing in to go deeper, to reach higher, to know more of Him.
