The Spacious Room

Purpose, Mission and Responsibility

Kings and Queens can be seen as being born into a privileged life, however, according to the Apostle Paul, we as believers are destined to be adopted as God’s children through the sacrificial life of Jesus. ‘He destined us to be adopted as His children through the covenant Jesus the Anointed inaugurated in His sacrificial life…With immense pleasure, He laid out His intentions through Jesus, a plan that will climax when the time is right as He returns to create order and unity – both in heaven and on earth – when all things are brought together under the Anointed’s royal rule. In Him, we stand to inherit even more. As His heirs, we are predestined to play a key role in his unfolding purpose of energising everything to conform to His will.’ [Ephesians 1:4-11]   The lies from our enemy keep trying to kill, steal, and destroy our identity, authority, and confidence in who we are and whose we are in Christ, this sabotages our thinking, so we never see ourselves as heirs to the royal inheritance in which Jesus gave His life for.  Time to leave your beggars cloak behind and step into your royal inheritance!

I Will Live Unafraid!

I will live unafraid. Hmmm, it says it right there at the end of Psalm 4, the poetry of God reminding the ones who feel afraid, anxious, out of control or discouraged to stop fussing, to stop controlling outcomes. To remember that God is our champion defender and to live unafraid, no matter what happens. ‘Now, because of you, Lord, I will lie down in peace and sleep comes at once, for no matter what happens, I will live unafraid!’ Psalm 4:8 [TPT]  No matter what happens? And this is where we flinch and hesitate. We mistake peace and sleep that the Lord offers in that verse, the slumber He promises in return for our surrender as hibernation, as shrinking back because the ‘no matter what happens’ part sounds risky business. It sounds too dangerous a path to follow. Right? 

An Ordinary Sight For An Extraordinary Message

 “What do you see?” asks God to the reluctant prophet, Jeremiah. Jeremiah tells God that he sees an ordinary almond tree. This ordinary sight starts a chain reaction of events that leads Jeremiah into his vocation and calling. God had already chosen Jeremiah as His prophet to ‘speak My word to the nations.’ (Jeremiah 1:5) This is where Jeremiah tries to talk God out of the calling He had chosen for him by telling God that He’s got the wrong guy because of his lack of credentials and how he is too young and inexperienced for the massive task ahead of him. What about you dear, creative friend? Has God shown you an ordinary sight for an extraordinary message? Something that reveals heavenly eternal truths through the ordinary. However, like the prophet, Jeremiah, you’ve listed a number of excuses that let God know He is mistaken, that He’s chosen the wrong person for the job.

Moved With Compassion

What is it that moves you with compassion? What motivates you enough to see God do something great through you? What do you feel creates a motion that motivates you toward action? When we’re moved enough to try something new, create something different, to be compassionate about something that we feel needs to change, why is it that fear suddenly rears its ugly head?  So, you hit the pause button and put a cap on all that kindness, empathy, and compassion enthusiastically bubbling up on the inside of you to help others because you’ve believed the lie that you’re just not enough.

A Spacious Room

Psalm 31:7-8 reminds us that God hasn’t handed us over. ‘I will be glad and rejoice in your love, for you saw my affliction and knew the anguish of my soul. You have not handed me over to the enemy but have set my feet in a spacious place.’ Let that truth sink into the depths of your soul. ‘You have not handed me over to the enemy but have set my feet in a spacious place.’ Satan wants to keep your thinking contained. He needs you cramped up and restricted because, like Eve, if we knew how much authority we have over him, he’d have nothing on us.  

To The Moon And Back

The gravity of God’s love for us goes far beyond the moon and back because He gave His only Son so we could have the hope of our salvation. Amazingly, God created the universe with every syllable from His mouth. Yet, He still loves humans higher, deeper, and wider than all the cosmic stars put together because, unlike the universe, we get to have a relationship with Him. When we pause and remember the sacrifice Jesus made on the cross as we take the elements of communion, we acknowledge the power communion holds over death and darkness.

Properly Loved

How can we properly love again? Eden is lost, gone, stolen from us. The garden we once communed in with God was exposed to a lie that turned our joy, peace, patience, kind-heartedness, goodness, faithfulness, and self-control into shame, disappointment, abandonment, and grief. The freedom we once walked in as we communed with God was destroyed by a cunning serpent, who hatched a plan to kill any hope we had of a fruitful life the moment he saw we’d been made in God’s image, fashioned according to His likeness, and given authority over all the earth (Genesis 1:26). But God had a plan the serpent wasn’t counting on. A plan to help us to come out from our hiding place that helps guide us how to properly love so we can love others properly. 

Fished All Night

In Luke chapter 5, we read about Peter, who had fished all night and didn’t catch a thing. So, Jesus asks to borrow Peter’s boat as a pulpit so he can teach the crowd. Maybe Peter felt like giving up trying to fish for anything? However, he did what Jesus asked and to his astonishment, he was called to something much bigger than himself. There are some observations in this story that can help you out when you feel stuck. When you’ve fished all night and didn’t catch a thing it leaves you wondering if you’ve missed the boat to your calling.  Feel like you’ve fished all night? Maybe God is asking you to throw out your net again but you’re afraid because you are fearful that He won’t provide for you?   However, there is nothing fishy about God's promises.  

Clear Your Plate

Remember when you were a kid and your mum told you that if you didn’t clear your plate you wouldn’t get dessert? And remember that feeling of smugness you felt when you did clear your plate and got dessert but your sibling didn’t because they’d left all that yummy, delicious kale on the plate? Yeah, good times. Right? Some wise soul once said, “If we want to live a full, attentive life to God and others we need to clear our plates.” Wise words indeed. But how do we clear our overfull plates when we’re overstuffed on busyness and we’re not able to live that full, attentive life to God and others? How do we enjoy the good, sweet part that becomes the reward for clearing our plates?  The problem isn’t that we wouldn’t gladly clear our plates from all our busyness, we just don’t know how to.  If you’re struggling to clear your plate and want to live a full, attentive life to God and others, here are two suggestions…    

The Scarlet Thread Pt 2

Last week I shared in The Scarlet Thread Part One, how the shameful wounds from our past can cause us to feel unqualified from having any kind of relationship with God. However, all He is looking for is obedience and total dependence on Him so we can live in victory and freedom from our past. I talked about, Rahab, a prostitute in the Old Testament, whom God selected to play a pivotal role in the story of how Joshua conquered the city of Jericho and this scarlet woman was led to the scarlet thread, propelling her toward her future that changed her life forever. So, this week we will move into the New Testament and pick up the scarlet thread in Mark chapter 5.  The heading Bible scholars have used in the text is, ‘A dead girl and a sick woman’ as the writer, Mark, joins these two women together by a common thread. Each story is about uncleanliness, but on a deeper level, each miracle is about a person recognising the power of Jesus because they chose to follow the scarlet thread.