Being Increase Minded | Pastor John Greiner

In this Wednesday night message from Glorious Way, John Greiner preaches on being "increase-minded" from Isaiah 54, drawing on his own journey out of a poverty mindset after losing a business years ago. He traces the prophetic "words for the year" the church has received since 2023 (lifting the standard, power, milestones, and now, in 2026, new things), framing this season as a hinge point before an end-time harvest. Using the image of the barren woman in Isaiah who is told to sing before she sees any children, he calls the congregation to rejoice ahead of results rather than waiting for visible proof. He unpacks the tent metaphor from verse 2, enlarging the tent, lengthening the cords, and strengthening the stakes, as a picture of growth requiring greater accountability, deeper submission to authority, and a firmer anchor in Jesus.

Transcript

Prayer And Isaiah 54 Reading

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Let's uh, as we is our custom, let's just lift our Bibles up, wave them around, make Jesus glad, the devil mad. I do have a message for you tonight. Let's just say this together. Say, Heavenly Father, thank God for Wednesday night. I'm topping off my tank tonight. I'm gonna be filled with the Holy Ghost, filled with the Word of God. My faith is growing, and my heart is exploding with love for you, Father, and the desire to accomplish my purpose in Jesus' name. Amen. Let's turn in our Bibles to Isaiah chapter 54, and we'll start reading with verse 1. And the prophet Isaiah is prophesying, and he says, Sing, O baron, thou that didst not bear, break forth into singing, and cry aloud, thou didst not travail with child. For more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married wife, saith the Lord. Enlarge the place of your tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of thine habitation. Spare not, lengthen thy cords, strengthen thy stakes, for thou shalt break forth on the right hand and on the left, and thy seed shall inherit the Gentiles, and make the desolate cities to be inhabited. Fear not, for thou shalt not be ashamed, neither be thou confounded, for thou shalt not be put to shame, for thou shalt forget the shame of thy youth, and shall not remember the reproach of thy widowhood any more. For thy Maker is thine husband. The Lord of hosts is his name, and thy redeemer is the Holy One of Israel, the God of the whole earth, shall he be called. And

Breaking A Poverty Mindset

SPEAKER_00 1:50

so tonight I just wanted to share a message to encourage you entitled Being Increase Minded. Being Increase Minded. You know, these verses speak a lot to me back in uh, you know, a period of time in my life when uh I'd lost a business, I was unemployed, I had no money, and God had to get me to be increased-minded. I mean, I had to ch I had to change how I was thinking. I had I had to get out of the poverty mindset, the loss mindset, the defeated mindset, the shame mindset, all those things uh tried to come upon me. Thank God for his word. You know, this word I came across one day in my normal reading, and all of it was just was just such uh an encouragement to me, and I started thinking big. I started uh being increase-minded instead of decrease-minded. You know, God has big plans, and uh we're living in the last days. Jesus is coming soon. We don't have a date, but we know uh we're in the season of the Lord's return. You know, I look back on the number of years, the last few years, especially, where God would prophetically give us uh names for the years and something to quote unquote hang our hat on, something to shoot for for a particular year. I think about uh, you know, 20 uh 23, I believe it was, uh lifting the standard. You know, we'll you'll lift a standard and and and the Spirit of the Lord shall come and just like a raging flood tide, and uh, you know, and then uh 2024, the year of power. We talked about those locomotives uh that were sitting over in Galveston, you know, there's wasting of power here, all these about a hundred low uh, you know, diesel uh locomotives just sitting there on the side, and it kind of reminded me of churches that used to rely on the power of God, released, used to believe the word, used to let the Holy Ghost move, and now they're just empty shells. And uh things are beginning to change, you know. Then 2025, the year of milestones, 20, you know, 2026, uh the year of the new. And so God is getting us ready for something big. I mean, he's gonna do something big. This is the year of new things. We're letting go of the old and uh things that are irrelevant, things that are obsolete now, not that they were gone wrong, not that they were not fruitful, but now there's something else.

New Season And End-Time Harvest

SPEAKER_00 4:10

And we're halfway through the year. I just want to keep you encouraged that God's up to something big. I mean, he must be. He's the Lord. He said, You're married to the Lord of hosts, the Lord of the armies of heaven. That when I see the Lord of hosts, I just think about the end times because that's when he's gonna send the angels out and help us bring in this great harvest. And so uh, you know, God has a history of making uh great from small, many from few, strong from weak, free from bound. I mean, he's just saying to this barren, this person, that, you know, in Israel it was a shame to a woman if she was barren. It was it was thought that God had dried her up for some unknown reason. And uh and really Sarah was like that. She thought the Lord had dried her womb up. Well, no, he didn't do it. It was, you know, he had nothing to do with it. And uh, you know, she had a baby at age 90, you know, that was Isaac. But she had to change her thinking. See, she had to, you know, she thought it was all over, she lived her life, and she's gonna be childless, and she tried to have an adopted son from her maid, and that didn't work, and and all of these things that she tried to plug into that desire that was in her, but no, God just had God had a plan, and and he executed that. So he's saying here in Isaiah to the barren woman, you know, hey, it's time to sing and shout, quit crying and quit weeping. Uh you're gonna be more fruitful than those that you think have it made. I mean, you know, that's what you know, that's what happened to Manoah. And then she's uh uh uh Samson's mother. She was barren, and she was crying in the, you know, in the temple, and and Eli rebuked her. What's wrong? You you're drunk. No, she's grief-stricken because she's barren, and so he he prophesied over her, and she said, Lord, if you if you'll just give me a child, I'll give him to you. And then, of course, the mother of Samuel, I said, Samson, Samuel's mother. She was barren before she bore Samuel. Then after that, she had more children. And so she's saying to the barren, which is just really a type and shadow of the church of Jesus Christ, the church has been barren now for the quite a while. We have not done our job. We're beginning to change. We're gonna be bringing forth a lot of children here coming up, and we better be ready for God to do something really big, and we're all part of that big thing that he's doing. Uh, he's saying, be increase-minded. See, let's not be satisfied with just a little bit. You know, here at Glorious Way, we're not satisfied. We're glad you're here, we're glad you come, but we're looking for increase. We're believing for increase. And uh and it's the time of increase. Amen. So uh here in Isaiah's prophecy, I already mentioned the church, but it really is talking to the Jews first, and it's talking to the church uh second. And the church was barren before Pentecost. You think about after Jesus rose from the dead and he appeared to the twelve, and for 40 days, you know, he taught them things concerning the kingdom of God. And what were they doing? Well, they were hiding behind closed doors. They weren't fruitful, they weren't going out, they're still afraid. Even though Jesus had already risen from the dead, they're still afraid. In fact, a bunch of them went fishing one day. They're broke, and they're not making money from their ministry. They should be out teaching, they ought to be spreading the word, but no, they're not. They're, you know, they're just kind of, you know, aimless and fearful. And so they were barren, small, confined, behind closed doors, and fearful. Uh but then Pentecost happened, and 3,000 people got saved in one day. I mean, it just, it exploded. And see, I still believe that's if that's how it began, I believe it's going to end in much similar fashion. I mean, we've been kind of, the church has been kind of caught between all this terrible culture that we're part of. Part of the reason we have this terrible culture is the church hadn't done its job. You know, and you get a young man like Charlie Kirk that goes out and says, hey, let's repent here. This is not right. Boom, he shot him and killed him. I mean, these people hate our guts. Well, we're gonna have to get some guts, and who's protecting us? The Holy Ghost is our protector. Greater is he that's in us than he that's in the world. I'm not gonna be afraid of some crazy. I'm gonna preach the gospel. I'm gonna say, I'm gonna give them the truth. Amen. So uh I believe it's gonna explode the same way uh at the end as it did at the beginning. And uh, you know, every revival that we've had in this in this nation in this world, and some revivals turn into awakenings. We've studied that uh last month, in the month of June, and uh we talked about the Great Awakening and and all of that. Uh, we've had some great awakenings. Not every revival results in an awakening, but every revival is necessary because it brings the church back to things that it's let slip. And to a degree that we needed a revival, that's before that revival came, then the church was barren. And I think especially before the Pentecostal revival and the turn of the 20th century, but from around 1904, 1904, whatever the date was, Azusa Street, uh, the church basically was barren because we'd abandoned the baptism of the Holy Ghost. We abandoned Holy Ghost power. We didn't know anything about really much about healing. I mean, we've abandoned, we knew about born again, and that was about it. We're just leaving a lot of things on the on the table that are useful for a mighty harvest. Uh so uh I I believe that I believe right now, you know, we we're at the we're in the edges of revival that could, and I believe it's gonna turn into the Great Awakening, the last great awakening before the return of the Lord. Well, how do you know that? Well, I just believe that that's we're running out of time. If it doesn't happen pretty soon, then God's got to put this whole thing on hold and wait for a whole nother generation. I don't know about you, but I don't want to wait for a whole nother generation to be raised up. I think we've got a great opportunity right now, right now, to uh be increase-minded, to be to look upon the fields. Jesus said, you know, quit looking at things in the natural. Look in those fields. They're white already to harvest. He said, the harvest indeed is plenteous, but the laborers are few. I mean, you know, we need more laborers. That's what we need. The more people we have, I'm not just looking for numbers just to have numbers. We want laborers. We want people that we're that are going to help bring in the harvest. Amen? So we need to be increased-minded, and uh, especially now because this end-time harvest is coming. I mean, it's coming and we need to

Powerless Churches And Public Faith

SPEAKER_00 10:55

get ready for it. You know, a few years ago I read about an Episcopal pastor, and uh, he was from another part of the country, I don't remember, but he was traveling around the country and he was chronicling where where is the power of God in the church? And of course, you know, the Episcopal Church is not exactly known for the power of God. I mean, you know, that's one of those denominations that slipped greatly. They have ordained uh, you know, homosexual clergy and all of that. Bishop of Canterbury, which is the Anglican church, which is kind of kin to uh the Episcopal Church. I mean, those people are ah, there's there's no way that they're really truly Christian. They've just completely left the Word of God. And so there's a lot of that here in this in this uh nation. But this young, this episcopal church uh pastor was stirred up, and I believe the Holy Ghost stirred him up. He's looking for the power of God. And so he was going across the country and spending time in each major city, and he came to Houston and he visited a few churches, and his judgment on Houston is uh the church is devoid. The church in Houston is devoid of the power of God. Well, he didn't come here, he could have seen the power of God right here if he'd have come in here. And so I think he he kind of judged in a broad way, but I can't understand what he's saying because a lot of the power of God, you know, is is has been distributed and has not been utilized or it's not been released. Some people are ashamed of the power of God. They want the power of God to operate behind closed doors. They don't want it to be public, they want everything done private, they don't want to offend anyone. You know, we're just not like that here. We we let the Holy Ghost do whatever he wants. He's the executive power of the Godhead. And whatever he does is in order. He's the one that establishes the order. So I yeah, much of the church is barren right now, but watch out. See, I believe things are changing. I think I believe that, you know, I'm I'm I'm stirring myself up to stay increased-minded. I've been increased-minded a long, long, long time. Long time. And uh, and of course, you're tempted sometimes when things don't increase to go back the other way and settle, but I never have. I've never settled, I'm not settled now. We're gonna get bigger, we're gonna have more influence. Amen. And I've got, I'm, I'm increased-minded. You know, think about the year momentum. See, we've got to keep our momentum, and uh, we've got to have those milestones, and then and then we've got to press in to get the new things that God, just the last three years, God's been talking to us about things. Every one of those uh means that there's a pressing forward, there's a going through the resistance to it. See, you think the devil's not gonna stand around and let you increase. He's gonna do everything he can to stop you. So our job is to be uh increase-minded, and I believe that these verses here in Isaiah give us uh a little bit of the way to stay that way.

Rejoice Before You See Results

SPEAKER_00 13:55

And uh one of the things that I see here, it's right here, it's in verse one, sing, O baron, that did not bear, and break forth into singing and cry aloud, that you did you that you know haven't seen any growth, you don't have any children. Uh stay increased-minded. You're gonna have more kids than all the rest of these. You're married to, you're married to God, the Lord of hosts. In other words, he's able to bring forth with you all the things that you're supposed to bring forth. So the first thing, being increased-minded, rejoice in expectation of what's coming. See, faith people look at different things differently. Well, faith people don't look at the natural, they look at the supernatural. They look, they look at what the Bible says they should have and can have. And they don't, they're not so persuaded about present circumstances. God has big plans, as we've said. Overall, we're, you know, we're we're all uh part of it. No fear, no confusion. Prepare for big. Quit thinking about the failures, quit thinking about over your shoulder, quit, you know, break. I like to say it this way, break off the rear view mirror. You know, I mean, if you ever tried driving down the road with a rear view mirror instead of looking out the windshield, you're looking in the rear view mirror. I mean, it's a good way to have an accident. You're gonna run off the road or run into someone. And that's the way we're we're not designed to keep looking back. I mean, you know, we can look back briefly and learn from what happened back there, but let's be forward-looking, let's be increase-minded. Everybody say, I'm increase-minded. See, greater works are in the offering. You know, I like Peter, uh 1 Peter 1:8, rejoice uh with joy unspeakable and full of glory. Glory to God. I mean, you know, that the kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but it's righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. I mean, we ought to be full of joy. You you can't get any sad Holy Ghost. You get people that are down in the down in the dumps and giving themselves permission to have a pity party every time they turn around. Well, you know what? You're not expecting great things. Let's let's be increased-minded. God's a great big God, and he's able just like that to change things around and make them much bigger. I was thinking about uh Paul. You know, he said, a great door and effectual is open unto me, and there are many adversaries. So he didn't say a little bitty door. You know, God's not interested in opening little bitty doors. He doesn't do little bitty things. He wants to do great things, he wants to do mighty things, especially right now, because it's more and more important as um as we get closer to the day. You know, Charles Capps is in heaven now, but we've got some of his uh material out in the resource center. And uh, of course, I cut my teeth on Charles Capps when I first got saved. I listened to four preachers every day, 15 minutes each, on KJOJ, Conroe, A.M. I'd go to the post office. My post office was in spring, and I lived out of spring, so I'd drive real slow all the way to the post office, and then I'd, you know, I'd idle around and drive around for an hour. It took me an hour to go to the post office because I didn't want to go in the post office and miss one of the programs. So we had Charles Caps, we had Derek Prince, we had R. W. Shambok and Kenneth Hagen, those four. And I mean, all four were different. They had a different, but they were all just so powerful. And when I first got saved, I mean, I fed on that and fed on that. And uh Charles Caps, one of the great Bible teachers. And I heard him a number of years ago, I want to say probably 25 years ago, he was in the latter part of his ministry, and he came up with a description of the age, and we're lit, he said, we're living in the compression of the ages. The compression of the ages. And he likened it to an hourglass. And so if you've got an hourglass, you know, it's V-shaped, it's got a little tiny neck, and so the sand is running through that tiny neck, and it's you can barely see at first, when you turn it over, and just at first, you know, it's if if it's one hour, I mean you can hardly see the sand go down, and it just barely moves. And it's then it moves a little faster as it gets narrower, it gets a little faster, and then a little faster, a little faster. And by the time it gets to the neck, man, it goes. And that's where we are. We're right here. We're at the compression of the ages where everything is compressed, everything is pressurized, and we're about to have the most explosion, we're gonna have an explosion of harvest. I want you to be anticipating that. Don't get seduced by the slow sand at the top. We're right here at the neck. I mean, things are beginning to happen so fast, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. Things are happening so quickly. And so recognize that's where we are. So, so

Enlarge The Tent With Authority

SPEAKER_00 18:55

begin to rejoice ahead of anything that you see. And then it says here in verse 2, enlarge the place of your tent. So if you're gonna get bigger and you have a tent. See, I was in the Boy Scouts and I we had tents, and so we pitched tents. And so if you're gonna have a tent, let's say you want a bigger uh enlargement of the tent, well, you can't just simply make it bigger this way. I mean, you've got to have a taller uh tent pole. The tent's got to be higher. Why? Well, because if you if you just go out this way and this way, then the canvas or the material is flatter, and when it rains, it's gonna hold that water and the whole thing can fall in. You've got to get it steep enough where the water sheds off of it. So you've got whenever you m make the tent bigger, you've got to have the the center pole bigger. And that means what? You've got to have uh the uh cords bigger. You know, enlarge the place of your tent, let you stretch forth the curtains of thy habitation, spare not, don't just be a little bit, don't just try for a little increase. No, let's have a big increase, lengthen your cords. Lengthen your cords. Your rope has got to be longer. Yeah, because it's it's more it's more length than it that it goes to the center pole where it's holding up all this material that you've got. A lot of modern tents are mostly some other kind of, you know, they're not canvas much anymore because they're so heavy. I just remember how heavy those tents were. I remember one time when I was a little guy, like five years old, we were camping in Garner State Park, and my my dad had one of these old-timey tents, and it was canvas, and I was laying on the cot taking a nap, you know, five years old, take a nap. It's hot in there. And it started raining, and I put my finger up to the canvas and water started pouring through. It just nobody told me not to put my finger on the canvas when it's raining. But anyway, um, so lengthen your cords, your ropes. What does that mean? It means be a person under authority. The bigger the tent, the longer the cords. You've got to be tied to the authority. You've got to, you've got to make sure that you stay under the authority. Uh God, God is, Jesus is the head of the church, but He's He's set the pastor to be the head of the local church. So you've got to, if you're gonna have a bigger footprint and we get bigger, then you've got to lengthen and strengthen your uh authority, flow, the flow of authority. Uh as the tent grows, the center pole gets taller, the cords get longer, and everything has to change. So the more we grow here, everything changes. You have to change. Every member of this church has to change. Every ministry has to change. Why? It's accommodating the growth. Enlarge, enlarge, get bigger, have a vision for increase. And that means we have to increase all the growing and the changing, bearing greater responsibility. I mean, each one of those ropes has got more responsibility now because it's carrying more weight across that from there to the From the bottom up to the center pole. So then we need to be willing to change. We need to be willing to be accountable. See, in our modern society, accountability has kind of disappeared. We don't teach that anymore. Our children go to schools that they don't hold them accountable. Their behavior is horrible a lot of times. They're out of control. No accountability. Even in our law enforcement, and you I heard a congressman today, a U.S. congressman, are encouraging people to fight and to resist law enforcement. I mean, he should be arrested. He should not be allowed to say that from the floor of the Congress. I mean, what kind of an idiot have we got? Well, we've got a whole bunch of them. They're lawless. And uh and so that's part of the church. The church has got to get back and get push out all these ungodly people that have gotten elected because the church sat on the sidelines with her arms folded. Amen. We're tasked to help them all to change and to become accountable. Everybody say accountability. All right, then the other thing it

Strengthen The Stakes In Jesus

SPEAKER_00 23:05

says there, strengthen your stakes. So the ropes or the cords are tied to a stake that's driven in the ground. And uh, you know, when you've got a small tent, it's no big deal. You just get a hammer and drive the tent stake in the ground, and maybe it goes in six inches or eight inches or something, or maybe, and depending on the soil, and if it's if it's rained, then it's got to go deeper. But uh, it's no big deal. Then, you know, it'll it'll the rope has got some pressure on it, and it's it's pulling against that stake, and so you know, but what happens when you get bigger? What happens when you get bigger? I mean, I I saw some old video of uh one of these old-time gospel tents that held 10,000 people that took five or six, 18 wheelers to haul the tent. And uh you talk about it uh now. I mean, inside it's 30 foot tall. And you've got big old huge rope. And the tent stakes were not, you didn't hammer them in the ground even with a sledgehammer. They were screwed into the ground. They're they're they're all they're augers, they're they're spirals, and they and they they they're screwed. You've got to have a motor and put that on there and it screws the thing down in the ground, you know, about three feet. Now you've got something that will hold the force of that of that rope that's going up to the top of that tent. That's a tremendous amount of stress on that uh tent peg. So it says, strengthen your stakes. See? So in Zechariah 10, 4, Jesus is the nail. Jesus is the tent peg. We've got to get stronger in Jesus. We've got to be stronger in the Word. We've got to, all the pressure is on the tent peg. I mean, if we're not, if we're not strong in Jesus, then we're gonna get uprooted. You know, the first time the wind blows, the first time there's a storm, I mean, the next thing you know, the tent the tent peg is pulled out of the ground and the whole thing falls over. And I've seen churches like that. I've seen churches that were filled with weak tent pegs. Why? Because they weren't put anchored into Jesus. They weren't anchored by their pastor sufficiently to be able to withstand storms. Storms are gonna come. Jesus said they're gonna come. He said when the storms of life come. He didn't say if. So we know there's storms coming. So the thing is you've got to be rooted and grounded in Jesus. That means rooted and grounded in love. You know, Ephesians chapter 3, or rooted and grounded in love. See, because God is love. And then rooted and grounded in God's word. So all growth and all change and all challenge will test your love walk. It'll test your faith. So without being strong in those two things, the love and the and the faith, and the word, which means the word, then you're not gonna be under uh uh able to undergrow the pressure that growth and change and increase will bring. So increase by itself has got to be answered by decisions on each of our parts. I mean, God's not gonna bring increase to people who are unwilling to get ready for it. And so we're getting ready for it right here in 2026.

Big Plans And Final Declaration

SPEAKER_00 26:20

I believe the rest of this year is going to be exciting. We're gonna see, begin to see things uh accelerate in our world. Come on, lift your hands right now. Let's be increase minded. Hallelujah. Glory to God. God has big plans. Everybody say he's got big plans for me. Amen. We're all part of something bigger than ourselves. Hallelujah.