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Through the Prophet Isaiah, God told the Children of Israel in Isaiah 54:2 (NIV), “Enlarge the place of your tent, stretch your tent curtains wide, do not hold back; lengthen your cords, strengthen your stakes.” This instruction may not make much sense to those of us living in modern times. We don’t live in tents, and it is not customary for us to worship in them, but in those times things were different. The tent, one made of animal skins, was their tabernacle, and God told them to enlarge it. Please note here that God did not say that He would enlarge it; He told them to do it. He then proceeded to give them other instructions relating to the increase that was slated to come their way. This is a remarkable and critical piece of truth that will help us as we prepare to receive all that the Lord has promised to give us.
I’ve heard many people complain that Christians have created a culture where they are overly motivated by what they want to receive from God. I understand the premise of this line of thinking. We should be supremely loving people who have put on the nature of our loving God. As instructed by Jesus Christ, giving and sharing with others should be our mission in life. We should feel that it is more of a blessing to give than to receive. This was the heart of Christ; and therefore, it should be ours as well, but it certainly doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t expect wonderful and extraordinary blessings from our Heavenly Father.
The bible tells us that all things belong to the Father, including us. We can do nothing on our own, and it is because of Him that we live and breathe this very moment. He’s our everything, and there isn’t anything that we can add to His glorious existence. So our privilege and honor as children that love Him is to be continuously and deeply thankful for all that He is to us, and to have faith in His awesome provision.
He’s a Great Big Wonderful God who does great, big, wonderful things. He tells us in Ephesians 3:20 that He is able to do exceedingly abundantly above anything that we could ask or think. This provides a benchmark for our expectations. In other words, we can and should expect that God will exceed our expectations, but there’s one essential caveat that we simply cannot overlook. The exceedingly abundantly requires increased capacity to handle it. If our arms are already full, it is logical to deduce that we lack the ability to hold any more. This is an elementary summation, but it seems to confound even the most intelligent among us.
When we talk about having our arms already full, understand that this isn’t necessarily about the physical. We’re referring to the load of stuff that the Apostle Paul schooled us about in Hebrews 12:1 (NLT) when he said, “Let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us.” Sometimes the stuff that keeps our arms full is good stuff. Many of us busy ourselves with the care of others. When we are demonstrating the love of God in this way, our burdens will never become too heavy. As we give out of a generous heart, God will fill us with more. It is a never-ending cycle of goodness. But often our arms are full with the negative heavies that weigh us down and keeps us from running with endurance. This is what Paul was referring to, and this is the stuff we must unload in order to prepare to receive, and to increase our capacity to walk in spiritual strength and power.
Enlarge Your Tent
Preparing to receive a blessing requires us to follow the instruction that God gave to the Children of Israel through the Prophet Isaiah. We have to enlarge the place of our tents. Enlarge the place where you worship God in Spirit and in truth. Enlarge the tabernacle of your heart.
When explaining the parable of the farmer and seeds, Jesus Christ said in Luke 8:15 (NLT), “But the seed on good soil stands for those with a noble and good heart, who hear the word, retain it, and by persevering produce a crop.” God has told us the way to expand our hearts, and His way is the only way. We must hear His Word, retain it, and then persevere. To persevere suggests that there’s going to be some pressure in the road ahead. There’s going to be obstacles and barriers that the enemy will try to put in our way. These distractions are designed to get us to waste and expend our energy responding to them. We should use our every resource to stand on the Word of God, because Heavenly Father’s promises are a sure thing. When we persevere in God’s Word, He will see to it that we produce a crop.
Don’t Hold Back
God also told the Children of Israel to stretch their tent curtains wide, and not hold back. This speaks to one of the major problems that we have. The things that are holding you and me back from moving in the realm of overflow must be released. These are most often in the form of limiting beliefs and fear. Sometimes our resources are limited, and we can’t figure out in the natural how something is going to work, so we place these limiting beliefs on what God is able to do supernaturally. We bind it on earth, and therefore bind it in heaven. We need to free ourselves from these limitations by renewing our minds to what God says.
Lengthen your Cords
As the cords of our faith are pulled, the width and depth of our capacity to handle expansion follows suit. It is a mistake to think that God will give us a blessing that we are unable and ill-equipped to handle. He’s the One True and Wise God. When we come to Him with a heart that is yearning for something, He helps us to prepare for what we’ve asked Him to receive. Our faith is the appropriate response of gratitude for His help. We need to constantly lengthen the cords of our faith by continuing to stretch ourselves beyond our comfort zones, because loosing elasticity causes us to become flaccid. Our faith will flatline if we don’t continually meet our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, in a place of hopefulness and expectation.
Strengthen Your Stakes
To strengthen our stakes is to anchor our tents—anchor our hearts. We don’t want to be broken cisterns that can hold no water. We want our spiritual capacity to be aligned with the blessings that God has for us. This is very important, because indubitably the blessing will bring with it a measure of pressure and testimony, we should be able to handle both with a heart of thanksgiving and a mind that is anchored in the Word of God. ■
Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
“Enlarge, Stretch, and Do Not Hold Back” written by Reverend Fran Mack, edited by Kim Times for Sundie Morning Sistas ©2017. All rights reserved. All done to the glory of God through Jesus Christ, our Lord! SMS is dedicated to inspiring and encouraging Christian Women through the Word of God.
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