Bill Johnson - Create Space for the Fulfillment of Your Promise
What does it look like to create the room for God to do whatever He wants before He does whatever He wants? Do everything you can to anticipate what it looks like if God were to bring the increase you’ve asked for. Everybody in this room has areas of fruitfulness, and every one of us has areas of barrenness. Each of us has things that simply haven’t worked out as we’ve prayed, planned, or anticipated. We have great testimonies and extraordinary things that God has done, but we all have experiences of barrenness as well. Here, He is saying, «Shout for joy,» and then He says, «Cry aloud.» That word «cry» is actually the word «scream,» so we’re talking about deliberate extreme expressions of joy. It’s not a scream of pain, fear, or terror; it’s a scream of anticipation. Now, how many believe this is true? All right, all right.
So this is what it says: «Shout for joy while you can’t have kids.» Face the thing in which you have the least breakthrough, the most barren area. It may be the salvation of your family members; it may be a health condition; it may be you losing job after job after job. It could be any number of things, but there it is right in front of you, and the instruction in Scripture is to shout with extreme celebration before the answer comes. Now, someone might say, «Well, that’s not reasonable.» It isn’t reasonable from a human perspective, but it is totally logical and intellectual from God’s perspective. It’s the intelligent response when you see the promise and the eyes of the promised giver, the one who has never lied, the one who has no respect of persons, the one who is the same yesterday, today, and forever. When you see that, then it’s perfectly intelligent to act as if it’s already done, because for the one who gave you the promise, He lives in eternity, and in His sight, it is already completed.
When He gives us a promise, He goes into our future and brings back the word that is necessary to get us to where He saw us. So, He brings us the word that actually enables us to enter the very realm He intends for us. Therefore, it’s the intelligent thing to do to get happy before you need to. I like it! So He says, «All right, don’t just give emotional expression.» I believe emotional expression is vital; in fact, in this case, the emotional expression is the clearest evidence of faith in this chapter. To try to do the Christian life without emotion and emotional involvement is to avoid the nature of the Gospel, because the kingdom of God is righteousness, peace, and joy; two of those are felt realities. Now, it’s true that throughout history, there have been those who have embraced personal experience above Scripture, and it has led to denying Scripture. That is obviously a danger. It’s equally dangerous to approach Scripture on an intellectual basis and have no personal emotional involvement or relationship.
When I married my wonderful wife, I did not get married just to obtain a marriage license. Believe it or not, I didn’t get married so that the state of California would consider me a married individual. I got married because I was partnering with someone for a lifelong journey together, relationally before God. That was my purpose. When we came to Christ, it was not to have fire insurance to escape hell; it was to have an ongoing relationship with our Maker, who, according to this Scripture, becomes our husband. That makes fruitfulness in our area of greatest barrenness even possible. You may not like the illustration, but He’s trying to show you, «Listen, this is how near I am to you; I become one with you so that you become fruitful in your area of greatest barrenness. Because of that, you have reason to joy.»
So, He says not only should there be an emotional response before you see the answer; He says, «Lengthen your cord; strengthen your pegs.» What He’s saying is that if you want a child and you have a one-bedroom home, before you’re pregnant, you need to create the room for God to fill it. There’s a great story of Jack Coe; I tried to find it this morning, but I couldn’t. It goes something like this: he was going to pray for five people in wheelchairs. He set up an appointment to meet with them, and when he walked into the room, he noticed that none of them brought shoes. So, he said, «Come back tomorrow, and I’ll pray for you, but bring shoes.» The next day, he prayed for them, and all five got out of their wheelchairs and had shoes to walk with. The point was that you have to anticipate what’s about to happen and be ready.
Add the room on; add what it would look like. A lot of people actually don’t have time for revival because we’ve filled our lives without God. What does it look like to create the room for God to do whatever He wants before He does whatever He wants? So He says, «Stretch out the curtains of your dwelling.» They lived in tents, so He’s describing what it is to add the room before the child comes. Do everything you can to anticipate what it looks like if God were to bring the increase you’ve asked for. Some of you have received unusual promises from the Lord about prosperity and increase. Don’t wait until it comes to figure out what to do; get your values intact now. It may seem like a strange illustration to you, but Judas hung himself. There were 11 apostles; there were supposed to be 12. So they appointed a 12th one at the end of chapter one of Acts. At the beginning of chapter 2, the outpouring of the Spirit came. In other words, they got the wineskin ready, and then the wine came. Get the context prepared for what God’s about to do.
Make deliberate choices; demonstrate that there is genuine faith. Two things are mentioned as our inheritance in this chapter. The first one I’ll mention is verse 17: the ability to condemn the voices of darkness that oppose us. That’s part of our inheritance. The other part of our inheritance is in verse 3, which says, «You’ll expand to the right and to the left; your descendants will inherit nations and make desolate cities inhabited.» Has anyone ever looked online to see some of the pictures in China that have anticipated great growth in certain areas of their nation? They have built entire cities—skyscrapers, everything—and there are hardly any people living in them. It’s a strange thing to see. They’re brand new houses, high-rises, and hardly anybody is there. The Lord is saying, «That’s what I’m going to fill, but I’m going to give it to the people who are joyful. I’m going to give it to those who know how to express faith through their emotions. They anticipate before they see any sign of breakthrough; they are already preparing their ground. It’s those people I’m going to give the nations to, and I’m going to let them fill the desolate cities.»