Expand to Fill – These are the Days of Elijah by Crystal Wade

Hico, TX

Our Heavenly Father designed people to be creative like Him. To expand. To fill the atmosphere, time, and space with good things like He did at Creation.

History shows that people have indeed done that – they have expanded to fill the atmosphere, time, and space. Most often by pushing other people out. Not with nearly enough good things (the God kind).

We're created to expand and grow. By default, we'll fill up on food, media, work, and activities.

That won't give us the life we want though – one that releases joy and fulfillment to our lives and maximum impact for eternity.

Creating the Life Impact We Want

So, if we want the life of maximum impact, with personal joy, we have to step away from life-as-is and do things differently.

1. Make room for Jesus in our lives (rather than pushing Him in the barn as when He first came to earth).

2. Give Him space with our focused attention like Mary did.

3. Receive freedom (and exercise it) from the Father to be who you uniquely are as a distinctive person – a John the Baptist, "Jedi knight" individual, not a religious Clone Trooper!

Then His love and life expands to fill our spirit, soul, and body.

This is a personal journey. We have to choose it. He won't force it on us.

That journey will yield a really cool harvest. The kind of welcome when the Lord Jesus Christ invites us to move up at the table seating instead of asking us to step down! The kind of loyalty from friends who have heart-thankfulness that we prepared a place for them, too.

As much as we've been designed to expand, to fill...it is amazing how closed human nature is (minds and hearts) when the soul is allowed to fill in the way it wants (unyielding to the Lord and manipulated by sin forces).

Elijah's Day

In Elijah's day, he'd done the personal journey in his wilderness to make room for the Lord, to give Him focused attention so the nation could be shown "God is God," as His name illustrated his calling. He emptied himself of how he thought it should be and allowed the Lord to fill him.

Well, that worked!

Elijah gained strength, confidence, direction, and faith by going through the lonely, hard, and quiet places to allow the Lord to fill him. In so doing, he had the intestinal and spiritual fortitude to destroy baal worship in a nation, single-handedly.

Ahab and Jezebel ruled, and in their "expanding to fill" policy of baal worship, they pushed out all the worshippers of the God of Israel. There was no room for Believers in the Father's own nation. Ahab and Jezebel's unredeemed, God-given desire of "creating and expanding to fill" left no room for Believers to move freely.

As a result of the confrontation on Mt. Carmel, the limit was set to baal worship. Elijah, as a human, experienced exhaustion – which shows the level of spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical exertion it took, though the Lord was with him. The Lord met him there at Mt. Sinai and said, in effect, "Thanks for making room for the 7,000 (the remnant) in the nation (and the hidden prophets in the caves)."

Prophetic Impact of Making Room by Setting the Limit

Almost immediately, and certainly within weeks, prophetic schools were operating freely again. Room was made at the table by Elijah's confrontation (which was at the Lord's directive).

The reason why many of us have felt "there was no room for me or the gift God gave me" is because many in each generation did not heed the Lord's call to "come away." However, we don't blame them; it's difficult to walk the path to be like Elijah. Or John the Baptist. You're at odds with the culture, maybe even your own family.

Here's good news – if you have found yourself in a hard, solitary place, He's working on a process with you so with Him you can create space and room for others.

It's a joy to learn that the Father created us to create and to expand to fill. And to learn how we can work with the Lord's processes instead of against them. As we embrace that personal journey in the desert process, it creates room for others – and is a delight to our King.

We are, again, in the days of Elijah.

May we yield voluntarily to the Lord Jesus Christ to be filled with His life-giving Spirit so we can expand in a way that creates room for Him and others in our cultures.

Prayer Response:

Father, thank You for creating me to create and to expand. I dedicate these attributes to You. Please give me the grace and the desire to make room for You, to create space for You with my full attention, and to recognize and yield to Your processes. Please heal me of wounds from the times there was no room for me or the gifts You gave me. Strengthen me and help me create space and room for others so that solutions are released by Your wisdom through Your people to the culture's and the world's problems.

Shield, defend, strengthen, support, and sustain all those men, women, and children who have been working with You to cultivate the "spirit of Elijah," which we are anticipating to bring confrontation at Your directive and turn the generations' hearts to each other. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, amen.

Crystal Wade
Hope Streams 
Email: contact@hopestreams.net
Website: www.hopestreams.net