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Faster
    I n December 2003, we signed a sixty-year lease with the City of Houston for our Lakewood Church facility. We always wanted to own it, but the lease was the best thing to make it happen at the time. Deep down I knew sometime during that sixty-year period God would give us the ability to purchase the building. In 2003, I was forty years old. I would be one hundred years old at the end of the lease.
    I prayed, “God, I want to purchase this building in my lifetime. I don’t want to leave it up in the air for the next generation.”
    Seven years into our sixty-year lease, the city was running low on funds. The tax revenues were not what they projected. They decided to sell off some of their excess properties to make up for the shortfall in the budget. The mayor’s office called and asked if we would be interested in purchasing the facility, buying out the lease. A building like ours would cost $400 million to construct. Of course, we were interested, but we had to see what the sale price would be. The city did an appraisal. They had to take into account that any new buyer would still have to honor our sixty-year lease. The appraisal came back not at $100 million, not at $50 million, but at $7.5 million!
    Today, we own our beautiful facility free and clear. No lease involved.
    Here’s my point: What could have taken sixty years, God did fifty-three years sooner. He took us further faster. We’re living in a day where God is speeding things up. Because you honor God, He will do in a fraction of the time what should have taken you a lifetime to accomplish.
    In your career, maybe it should take you twenty years to work your way up to that position, twenty years to build up your business. No, things have shifted. God will give you breaks that you didn’t deserve. He will bring the right people across your path. You will see opportunity like you’ve never seen before. It will take you further faster. Get those two words down in your spirit. It may look like in the natural it will take you years to get out of debt, years to get well, years to overcome that problem. No, you need to get ready. You’ve come into this shift.
    Think of it as a car. When you shift from second gear up to fourth gear the engine is still running at the same speed. It’s not working any harder, but you’re going faster. You’re covering more ground. The higher gears have greater capacity. They’re designed to go faster. In the same way, because you’ve kept God in first place, He is shifting you to a higher gear. You will go further faster, not because you’re working harder, trying to make it all happen. No, you’re putting forth the same effort, being your best every day, but all of a sudden you get a good break that thrusts you years down the road. You get a promotion that you weren’t qualified for.
    You will look up and think, “How did I get here? It should have taken me another twenty years but here I am.”
    “The medical report said it would take me five years to recover, but I did it in six months.”
    “It should have taken me most of my career to get into management, but here I am at the age of thirty.”
    What is that? God taking you further faster. Part of the shift is acceleration. It will not take as long to accomplish your goals as you think. It will not take as long to get out of that problem as it looks. Almighty God, the Creator of the universe, is breathing in your direction. He is causing things to fall into place. The right people will be drawn to you. Good breaks, opportunities, healing, restoration, favor. It’s not business as usual. You’ve come into a shift. It will be business as unusual.
    I talked to a gentleman who’d had a stroke just a few months before we met. He was a young man in his early fifties. Because of the stroke, he’d lost control of his left side. He couldn’t move his left arm. He had to drag his left leg. The left side of his face was paralyzed. I asked him about his prognosis. He