Why Do I Feel Stuck Even Though I Know God Has More for Me?

Because you are still jumping like the lid is on. Christ removed it. But if nobody ever told you the lid was gone, or if you have been hitting it so long that your body just adjusted, you will keep limiting yourself to a jar that has no ceiling anymore.

You know God has more for you. You believe it. You have confessed it. You have prayed about it. And yet here you are, in what feels like the same place, the same ceiling, the same invisible wall that you cannot quite push past. And somewhere in the back of your mind you are wondering, is something wrong with me? Why can't I break through this?

I want to show you something from science that is going to change the way you see this.

What Does a Flea Have to Do With Your Life?

A flea can jump seven inches. Seven. Now picture a Mason jar that is five inches tall. If a flea can jump seven inches, it should be able to jump right out of that jar with no problem.

Scientists did an experiment where they put a group of fleas in a five inch jar and put a lid on it. The fleas immediately started doing what fleas do. They jumped. And they kept hitting the lid. Over and over. Hit the lid, come down, jump again, hit the lid. They did this for three days. And then something interesting happened even before the scientists removed the lid. The fleas had already adjusted their jump. They stopped hitting the lid not because the lid stopped them but because they recalibrated how high they were willing to go. They were now jumping just under the lid. Staying in bounds. Staying safe.

Then the scientists removed the lid entirely. No more lid. No more ceiling. Seven inches of open air above them. And the fleas? They still only jumped as high as they had conditioned themselves to jump. The lid was gone. The limitation was not. And here is the part that really gets me. Those same fleas reproduced. And their offspring jumped with the same limitations. Generation after generation after generation, never jumping as high as they were actually designed to go. Because nobody told them the lid was gone.

We see the same thing with elephants. In the circus, baby elephants are tied with a rope they cannot break. They try and they try and eventually they stop trying. They accept that the rope means they cannot move. Then they grow up into one of the most powerful animals on earth. The rope gets removed and they still do not try to break free. Because the limitation was conditioned into them long before they had the power to overcome it.

Dorothy Already Had the Power

Here is my one movie analogy for this lesson and it is a good one.

In The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy spends the entire movie trying to get home. She meets the scarecrow, the tin man, the cowardly lion. She defeats the witch. She goes to see the wizard. She misses the hot air balloon. She goes through all of it trying to figure out how to get back to Kansas. And at the very end, Glinda the good witch shows up and says, you have always had the power, my dear. Those ruby red slippers have been on your feet the whole time. All you had to do was click them three times.

The whole movie. The whole journey. The power was already there.

Now let's bring this home. In The Designer You, we learned that God created us in His image with dominion and authority. That is our original design. Then the fall happened and it was like a lid got put on the jar. We were born as seeds of Adam, with all of that power and purpose buried under the weight of sin and limitation. Then Christ came. And He removed the lid. He restored access to everything that was lost.

But many of us are still jumping like the lid is on. Still living like the rope is attached. Still wandering around Oz looking for something we have been wearing the whole time.

Ephesians 3:20 (NKJV) says, "Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us." Above all that we ask or think. Not just what you can imagine. Not just what your experience has conditioned you to believe is possible. Exceedingly abundantly above that. But it says according to the power that works in us. That power is there. The question is whether you are jumping like it is.

What Fictional Lids Do You Need to Remove?

What are the lids you are still jumping under? What ceiling did someone put on you years ago that you have accepted as permanent? What limitation got conditioned into you through pain, through rejection, through failure, through a family pattern, through something someone said about you that you never fully stopped believing?

Christ removed the lid. The rope is off. You have had the ruby red slippers the whole time. The limitation you keep running into is not coming from God. It is coming from a perception that has not caught up with your redemption yet.

Shed the perceptions that are keeping you small. Shed the belief that the lid is still on. And shed the habit of reproducing those same limitations into the people around you, your children, your community, the women you disciple, because they are watching how high you jump.

Take this to the Word yourself. Ephesians 3:20, Romans 8:11, Philippians 4:13, 2 Timothy 1:7.

What This Means for You

What is one area of your life where you have been jumping just under a lid that Christ already removed? And what would it look like to jump at full height this week?

This continues the Our Foggy Lenses series. Last time, we talked about why following God feels like rowing against the current. Tomorrow we close out the series by pulling everything together and answering the big question: what is actually holding you back from walking in everything God designed you to carry?

I teach God's Word weekly inside the SheShed Community, and this is exactly the kind of teaching that hits different when you're in the room for it. The replay of this teaching, "Our Foggy Lenses," is available inside the community as well. Come sit with us.