Steven Furtick - Clear Out Room for God to Move
This is an excerpt from: Knocking Through The No
Now, for all of the things you want God to do in your life this year and all of the things I want him to do in mine, because I have my list too, the question is…Have you made room for him to do it? Whatever the answer is to that, it’s okay. That’s where we’re going to start. Remember, it started as a roof, and it turned into a room. I think that’s a revelation in itself. The roof can become a room. I think it’s significant that a roof is the highest part of the house. I think it is significant that if she had looked all around in the house she would not have had a place for the prophet to stay. How many know sometimes you have to go higher in order to see the opportunity God has given you? Tell your neighbor, «I appreciate your opinion, but sometimes I’ve got to go higher». «I know you don’t think I can do it, but you don’t have to think I can do it. I know I don’t look capable of it, but I don’t have to look capable of it». Man looks at the outward appearance; God looks at the heart.
So, for everybody who is still dealing with a root of rejection from somebody who didn’t see your potential or an opportunity that wasn’t extended to you because you didn’t fit the bill, I came with a word. Go higher! There’s a room on the roof. I almost preached a whole message called «There’s Room on the Roof». What is impossible with man is possible with God, because his ways are not your ways and his thoughts are not your thoughts. I’m going higher this year. I’m going to the top floor in 2024. «One day when Elisha came, he went up to his room and lay down there». The room she built for him with no ulterior motive. Motives matter. The room she built for him because it was the right thing to do. The room she built for him completely flexible to the schedule of the purpose of God and when the purpose of God would pass through.
Some of us cannot be used by God because we want to stipulate all of the times he can do the things he wants to do in our lives for when we are ready and refreshed and reset, but she had a different kind of obedience to God. I have three things for you to take notes on. The very first thing you are going to have to be to be the kind of person who can see the kinds of things you are dreaming about God doing in your spirit, not in your flesh; in your heart of hearts, not in your habits… The first thing is you’re going to have to be obedient. I didn’t expect a shout on that, and you didn’t deliver one. Good thing we were on the same page. I expected your stank face, and you gave me one, so we’re good. I was ready for that response. Yet there’s nothing in the text that says God told her to build the room. The Lord didn’t say, «Build a room. Please build a room. Would you please build a room»?
I’m going to tell you why God didn’t tell her to build a room: because God had options. Anybody could have built that room. It’s a privilege to obey God. Sometimes when I stand up and greet you I want to say, «Thank you for coming to church,» but then that doesn’t even feel right. On a human behalf I am thankful, because I’m really glad you’re here. Don’t get me wrong. So thank you. But we know we didn’t do God a favor when we came today, right? We know that, right? Just so we know that. God wasn’t like, «If Teresa would worship me today, I could have all power. Man! If Jimmy would just give me the praise today, I could really get it done in the work. I just need a Jimmy praise today. If Peter would pray…» No, God doesn’t need any of that. The kind of obedience I’m talking about in your life is very different than the human definition of obedience. Words do change over time. Phone used to mean something you talked to somebody else on when I was a kid.
Now if my phone rings for somebody to call me I’m annoyed because they interrupted the video I was watching on the phone. Phone is very different now. Listen to me. Obedience was different back then. Obedience to the Word of God was different back then. We don’t do well with obedience to God in our culture. We are drowning in too many opinions to respect the power of simple obedience to God. I will not lie to you and tell you that I always know what God is telling me to do. I will say that every time I know he’s telling me to do it and I don’t do it, it blocks me up inside. I start blaming everything around me, but what I’m blaming on the outside is usually a result of what I’m blocked from on the inside. I need to establish that this obedience the woman demonstrated was not to the word of a man or the suggestion of a TikTok influencer. Her obedience was directed by her inner compulsion for what God was calling her to do. She says to her husband…
Now, he’s the real obedient one. Right? «Go get a table. Go get a chair». We always preach about «Wives, obey your husbands». Well, here, the husband obeyed the wife and they all got blessed. I’ll preach this at Reflect next year. Anyway, she said, «Let’s just do it». The word that unlocked it for me wasn’t that God said, you know, «On January 14 (or whatever time you happen to be watching this in the future), I want you to start a new business and file the papers of incorporation». «On January 14, I want you to ask her out. See her, third row in the back? I want you to join the Welcome team next year and give her a special welcome with your phone number». There’s no specific word from God that tells her to do this. She did it to accommodate the purpose of God. You’re about to be very impressed with this woman, if you’re not already, because she said (verse 10), «He can stay there whenever he comes».
That’s an open-door invitation for the prophet who preached the Word of God with power and rain came to the valleys in 2 Kings 3; the prophet of God who spoke the word and a widow’s oil flowed in 2 Kings 4. She says to the prophet, «Hey, I want you to stay, and I want you to eat something, and I want you to know that whenever…» Stop trying to tell God the timeline. Stop trying to tell God when it should have happened by. Stop trying to control the timeline and start trusting the eternal God who sits on a throne.
«Here I am,» said Jesus. «I stand at the door and knock». What God has been teaching me lately in my life is that closed doors are important too, because sometimes what was behind that door that he closed would have killed me if he would have opened it before I was ready for it. Is this your word today? Is the Lord taking you up on the roof of your resources, the roof of your relationships? «Well, I don’t have anybody in my life, so I feel very lonely».
Can I check your whole text thread for everybody you asked and reached out to? Or did you not even reach out and call it rejection? If I understand this text correctly, she opened the room. She set it apart. It wasn’t apparent on the surface, but she took the space she had. God will not hold you accountable for what he didn’t give you. God will not hold me accountable to preach Billy Graham’s sermons. God will not hold you accountable to raise somebody who goes to Harvard if your kid is just supposed to graduate high school. He knows the plans he has for you and for them. I believe one of the reasons we can’t see God do what he wants to do in our lives is there’s no room for him to do it because our hearts are so crowded with what we think he should be doing because of what we’ve seen him do through others.
I was impressed by her obedience, but I was also impressed (this is the second thing you have to be) because not only was she obedient but she was open. Are you open? If God wants to do it through you… I know I’m being vague. In this woman’s specific situation we’re about to see what that thing was she needed that she didn’t even know how to articulate anymore. Do you ever feel that way?
«I know I need something right now, and I would reach out, and I hear you on that, but I don’t even know how to articulate it. Besides that, when I came into church today and walked through those doors… You couldn’t see it, Pastor Steven, but I was dragging disappointments behind me a mile long from every time I’ve had a new year and thought it was going to be different and it wasn’t. From every time I told my friends, 'I’m going to get clean, ' and now they kind of laugh at me when I say it. 'Yeah, we’ll catch up with you in February and see how you’re doing.' For every time I promised God, 'No, I’m really going to read my Bible this year.' And, Pastor, I haven’t made it past Genesis 12, and I’ve been saying that every year».
(Genesis is the first book in the Bible in case you were slow catching on to that. That would be 12 days.) In case that’s where you are today, let me give you this woman’s story as an encouragement. This is an amazing story for those of you who are holding a disappointment in your heart as I speak to you right now. I never can tell what you carried with you when you came to church. I never can tell what you really have. I really don’t know what happens when you close the doors at home.
I can’t tell that when you come in my doors on Sunday. I don’t know what the conversations are like in your house. I don’t know what the thoughts are like in your mind. I don’t know what the doubts are like in the darkness. I don’t know any of that, but this woman who was so great and so generous and so wealthy and so proactive… The Bible says in verse 11, «One day when Elisha came, he went up to his room and lay down there. He said to his servant Gehazi, 'Call the Shunammite.'»
That’s the woman who built the room. We don’t even know her name. She apparently wasn’t in it for the credit. She wasn’t in it for the glory. She wasn’t in it for the approval of people. She was in it for the purpose of God. But how many know even if they don’t call your name, God can? Even if they don’t say, «Thank you,» God can fill you with a blessing, good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over. God doesn’t need them to call your name to know where to drop the package. He knows your name. He knows your neighborhood. He knows your zip code. What he has for you is for you, and nothing in heaven or hell can hold it back when he says it’s time. I’m going to show you that now. I’m going to prove it to you from the text. Don’t take my word for it.
Listen to this. He said, «Call the Shunammite». «So he called her, and she stood before him. Elisha said to him, 'Tell her, „You have gone to all this trouble for us“.'» «Appreciate the chair. Appreciate the lamp. Appreciate the bed. Appreciate the table». «Now what can be done for you»? «Now that you did all of this for us, what can be done for you»? That question, «What can be done for you?» and the answer to it hinges on what she did in verses 8 and 9. What God can do for you is not limited to who he is, because he’s infinite.
There’s nothing he can’t do for you, because he’s God. There’s nothing he can’t accomplish, because he’s God. So, the question is never…Can he do it for you? The question becomes…Have you given him room to do it? Or is your roof so cluttered with past hurts and expectations…? Are you even hearing me preach this message today or are you so bitter about the last church where you got your feelings hurt that you can’t even receive the word of the Lord because somebody hurt you in church one time? Yet I know you ate at a bad restaurant once in your life and you still eat. Are you really never going to enter heaven’s restaurant again because of something that happened back then?