Enlarge Your Tent

Reject Smallness

Isaiah 55: 8 – 9
“For My thoughts are not your thoughts,nor are your ways My ways,” declares the Lord.For as the heavens are higher than the earth,so are My ways higher than your waysAnd My thoughts than your thoughts.
First, we must reject smallness. Enlargement requires us to get out of our small boxes, our small routines, our small thinking and our limited view of God. Caleb and Joshua saw a place of enlargement before them, but the rest shrunk back and stayed small. Caleb and Joshua believed it could be done, but the rest said they were afraid to try and remained small-minded.

Remove unwanted baggage:
Hebrews 12 

Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that you will not grow weary [c]and lose heart.

Increase and deepen your relationship with God

Give more room for God in your life
When God tells you to lengthen your cords, it means lengthen your reach. Wider tents require longer cords to keep them securely held in place. Once you lengthen your cords you must also strengthen your stakes, driving them deeper into the bedrock of God’s truth. 

Lengthen and strengthen your spiritual disciplines 

Life is like a huge tree. The more the branches spread, the deeper the roots must grow.
I believe these expansions and solid growth are born in faithfulness to fast. There is both reward and wisdom to be found when we tune out the noise of the world and come away to hear God’s heart through fasting and prayer. That is when you can hear that simple word that can take you from glory unto glory, from faith unto faith.

Making room for some new people in your life:
People will s-t-r-e-t-c-h you! Relationships with people will stretch your nerves, stretch your patience and stretch your prayer life.

Start or increase your serving God
The example of the prophet Samuel as a child is very encouraging

1 Samuel 2: 11, 18 & 21
1 Samuel 3: 1 & 19

Be prepared for trials and testings

James 1:2 Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters,[a] whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3 because you know that the testing of your faithproduces perseverance. 4 Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything…... 12 Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial because, having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him.

Hebrews 12:4 In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. 5 And have you completely forgotten this word of encouragement that addresses you as a father addresses his son? It says,

“My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline,
    and do not lose heart when he rebukes you,
6 because the Lord disciplines the one he loves,
    and he chastens everyone he accepts as his son.”[a]

7 Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children. For what children are not disciplined by their father? 8 If you are not disciplined—and everyone undergoes discipline—then you are not legitimate, not true sons and daughters at all. 9 Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of spirits and live! 10 They disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share in his holiness. 11 No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.

12 Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees. 13 “Make level paths for your feet,”[b] so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed.

 If you want more, if you’re tired of an unfulfilled, unfruitful, barren life, then God is saying, “enlarge and stretch.” You will never see a miracle until you stretch your faith. Every time this ministry has gone from one level to another, God has done it. But God had to take us as a people and put us through the expanding and the stretching, the lengthening and the strengthening. We felt the pressure and the stress of it, but I am so glad we did not spare; we did not draw back.