Gerald Brooks is the founding pastor of Grace Outreach Center, an interdenominational church in Plano, Texas. The church began in 1982 and has grown to a weekend attendance of over 5,000. Grace Outreach Center has creatively targeted youth and children as the focus of its ministry. The congregation, although located in a community that according to the 2000 census is 78% white and only 5% African American, is a diverse body of believers, with 45% of the attenders representing other ethnicities and cultures. Over 35 nationalities are represented at Grace Outreach Center, with the majority of these representing African nations.

Pastor Brooks is well-known for his passionate heart to help other pastors, and he mentors and teaches ministers across the country through church growth seminars including John Maxwell’s Breaking the 500, and Breaking the 1000 Barrier conferences. Pastor Brooks hosts the annual North Texas Leadership Conference in Plano, which draws ministers from all over the country. He travels across the nation teaching roundtables and also offers monthly leadership tapes. He is a contributor to the New Spirit Filled Life Bible and the author of 8 books: What I Learned While Destroying a Church; Jesus on Leadership; Paul on Leadership; The Old Testament on Leadership; Building Blocks of Leadership; The Emotions of a Leader; Ladder Focus (co-authored with Samuel R. Chand); and most recently, Leadership According to 1 Cor. 13.

Pastor Brooks and his wife, Geni, have been married for 37 years and are the proud parents of three children: Wendi, Kayci, and Cody.Laws govern every aspect of our lives. They are always there. Regardless of whether we choose to obey them, it would be incredibly foolish to ignore them. The Bible teaches us that there are also spiritual laws at work in our lives. Ignoring them might be possible, but it’s not wise. The Laws of Increase are comprised of seven of such spiritual laws. Instead of ignoring them, let’s educate ourselves about them, and learn how to apply them to our everyday life, habits, and mindset.

The Laws of Increase
Gerald Brooks

The Laws of IncreaseGod’s plan is to bring multiplication and increase into our life. Each of the seven Laws of Increase defines a different aspect of increase according to God’s definition, challenging our existing definitions, presumptions, and motivations to pursue increase.

  1. The Law of Words – Our words have the power of life and death (Proverbs 18:21). Words have the ability to impact not just our lives, but the lives of everyone around us. God created our voices to be in tune with our heart. If we speak uplifting things to others, and always try to build one another up, then we will in turn be built up and encouraged. On the other side of the coin, if we only say negative things, and always tear people down, we speak negativity into our own lives. By simply changing what we say from a negative to a positive, we can experience an increase in positivity and encouragement into our own lives. It’s all in the way we choose our words.
  2. The Law of Sowing and Reaping – There are consequences to everything we do; it is a principle we all know, but the implications go much farther into our natural and spiritual lives than most of us realize. The Law of Sowing and Reaping affects us, spirit, soul, and body. It might be easiest illustrated by our physical bodies. If we exercise regularly and choose a healthy diet, our bodies will reflect that by being strong and healthy. If we choose a couch potato lifestyle, our bodies will reflect that too. Sowing seeds doesn’t change our past, but it can change our future. We might always have been a couch potato, but one day choose to exercise and eat healthy foods. While we won’t see the results immediately, eventually we will reap the harvest. We can’t change that we were a couch potato before, but we will change our future to be healthier and stronger. The same principle is true of the rest of our lives: in our words, activities, attitudes, faith, and our values. If we sow positive seeds in our attitudes, such as an attitude of generosity, the Bible says we will reap the generosity of others. This law is at work whether we realize it or not, so let’s be mindful of the seeds we are sowing now, so that our future will bring a good harvest.
  3. The Law of Time – We all live through extremes in life: ups and downs, highs and lows, times of the greatest joy and times of most crushing grief. The Law of Time explains these extremes, and helps identify the ways we can use our time the way God intended for us, as well as identify the ways we can appreciate each season we find ourselves in. A new mother, for example, might long for the day when there are no more dirty diapers and no more 4 AM wakeup calls from a screaming infant. But the Law of Time teaches us that it’s all in our attitude. With God’s help, that new mother can learn to appreciate the time she has with her baby while he is still young and still wants to be held close. She can sow seeds of nurturing love while that rough season is upon her, and she will be rewarded later on. Even in what seems like an extreme time, God’s promise of increase is still at work.
  4. The Law of Discipline – None of the rest of the Laws of Increase would have any effect if we lack discipline. As the old saying goes, “Opportunity knocked on the door, but no one answered because it was dressed in overalls.” God wants to give us opportunities to increase, but those opportunities look like hard work. There are some basic actions we can apply to have discipline in our heads, our hearts, and our habits, so that we might experience the increase God wants to give us. First, we can discipline our heart with diligent prayer, praise, and pursuit of God. Secondly, we can discipline our head and our tricky minds by studying Scripture, being selective with our thoughts, and being strategic about what we let ourselves think about. Thirdly, we can practice discipline with our habits. We can create good habits by doing six things: Pray often, worship often, serve often, give often, love often, and forgive often.
  5. The Law of Use – We have all been given a certain amount of time, talent, and treasure, not for our own use, but to use to benefit others. God will one day ask us all how we used each of these three gifts. Jesus taught in His parable in Matthew 25 about this concept. The master left his three servants with an amount of money and came back a time later to see how they used it. Two of the servants invested what they had been given, and doubled their portion. The third servant buried his portion, and had exactly as much as he started out with when the master returned. The first two servants got it right: God gives us time, talents, and treasures that are not supposed to be used only for ourselves. We all have the responsibility of using our gifts unselfishly, and God simply wants to know that we used them as best we could to further His kingdom.
  6. The Law of Wisdom – Wisdom is the ability to apply knowledge correctly. Some of the smartest people make some of the worst decisions. First, let’s identify what wisdom is not: Having wisdom does not mean having a high IQ. It also does not mean having a large amount of faith. You can have great faith without wisdom, and vice versa. There are three types of wisdom the Bible teaches us about. God gives us wisdom to match the day we are in. God also gives us wisdom to live by. The book of Proverbs is a list of many life lessons that we can learn and use. Life is a great teacher, but the tuition is amazingly high. Sometimes the wisdom we are given to live by comes at a high price when we learn it the hard way. There is also wisdom for the marketplace. God gives us wisdom that we can use beyond the walls of the church; it should follow us into our everyday lives.
  7. The Law of Faith – First, there are some things that faith is not. Faith is not a math equation, where we follow certain pre-laid steps and get an exact result. Faith is also not a blind denial of problems. Faith is the assurance that God is greater than the problems. Faith is found in our actions and attitudes. When we give, for example, we shouldn’t give grudgingly, but cheerfully. Our generous action of giving, with our cheerful attitude is faith at work; in essence, we are telling God that we are grateful to have something to give, and we know that even after giving it away, He will still take care of us.

We all want the most we can get out of life, and while God has made it clear that He wants to increase us and give us more, the Laws of Increase teach us how and why He wants to. We are blessed so that we can be a blessing, and learning ways that we can have a greater impact in the Kingdom of Heaven through simple actions and attitudes is a great start. The Laws of Increase give us the guidelines we need to learn how to apply the promise of increase of God to our lives.