Make room.

God can do anything. Nothing is too hard for Him. Nothing is impossible for Him. He created the Heavens and the Earth, the sun, the moon, the galaxies, and universe. He created it all. So, if God can do anything and nothing is too hard for Him, how come we don’t see crazy miracles happening in our lives all the time?

I think there are three reasons which we will look at today. First one is found in James 4:3 which says, “And if you ask, you won’t receive it for you’re asking with corrupt motives, seeking only to fulfill your own selfish desires.”

One thing I have realised is that God does not answer ignorant prayers. What do I mean? You have to know the word of God to know the heart of God. If the miracle you need is a lightning bolt hitting your boss on the head because they got angry at you for not finishing a project on time. Well… maybe what you should be praying for is wisdom on how to manage your time because I’ll tell you now, that lightning bolt ain’t coming. However, God promises that if we ask for wisdom, He will give it to us (James 1:5).

So, the first thing we need to do when we pray is to think about whether or not our prayer violates the word of God. If unsure He narrowed down the 10 commandments for us to 2. Love God and love people (Matthew 12:30-31). That is the check we need to do within ourselves as we pray. i.e. with this prayer, am I loving God and am I loving people or is it just an angry vent that I am calling a prayer?

If we are all good and are praying the right prayers why then are we not seeing the breakthrough we are waiting on? The second thing is our faith. We have been doing our series on faith. God can do anything but what He actually ends up doing is limited by our faith. We see a clear example of this in 2 Kings 4. There was a poor widow who went up to Elisha asking for help in a time of famine. Her husband had died and a creditor was threatening to take her two sons as slaves. She had nothing to give the creditor. All she had was a little bit of oil. So, Elisha told the widow to borrow as many jars as she could and start pouring the little bit of oil that she had into the empty jars.

2 Kings 4:5-6 says, “So she did as she was told. Her sons kept bringing jars to her, and she filled one after another. Soon every container was full to the brim! “Bring me another jar,” she said to one of her sons. “There aren’t any more!” he told her. And then the olive oil stopped flowing.” She was then able to sell the oil and pay the creditor.

What’s worth noting is that the oil kept flowing until the woman ran out of jars. Meaning, had the woman collected more jars she could have had more oil. Had she found an empty silo and decided to pour in there, it would have been filled to the brim using only the little oil she had. God can do anything and he is limitless but He was limited by the number of jars she collected. So sometimes we pray for a big miracle, but we make room for only a little bit then we turn and look at God like He short-changed us. It’s not about what He can do. He can do anything. It’s about how much room we have to receive it.

The third thing is God’s timing. God does things in His time. His timing is perfect. We may not understand it but we can trust it. It may not be our time but it is the right time according to Him and according to His will and we need to be able to wait on Him. To wait on His timing to do what He needs to do and to trust Him as we wait.

I pray that God shows us the places where we have limited Him so that we can make room in those places to receive all that He has for us in His time.

Love and blessings,

Melissa Tsingano