"ENLARGING YOUR BOUNDARIES: PREPARE THE GROUND & THINK BIG!"

Isaiah 54:2-3: "Enlarge the place of your tent, And let them stretch out the curtains of your dwellings; Do not spare; Lengthen your cords, And strengthen your stakes. 3 For you shall expand to the right and to the left, And your descendants will inherit the nations, And make the desolate cities inhabited."

For this week's Stephen's Gate I want to share with you a post that I wrote last week and posted on "For God's Glory Alone Ministries" website. This is a media ministry that Kristen and I are affiliated with and I now serve as a Pastor for this ministry. I recently have been writing daily posts for this ministry and you can check them out, as well as other great posts, on fggam.org. I pray you are encouraged and blessed by this week's Stephen's Gate.

I was thinking today about the Scripture I had posted and territories being enlarged, I was reminded of this passage in Isaiah and began to think about this passage. As I was researching different translations of this passage I came across The Message version and love how it is translated. It says this: "Clear lots of ground for your tents! Make your tents large. Spread out! Think big! Use plenty of rope, drive the tent pegs deep. 3 You're going to need lots of elbow room for your growing family. You're going to take over whole nations; you're going to resettle abandoned cities."

As the Lord expands your territory there are some things that need to be done first. The first thing that needs to be done is to prepare the ground. Enlarge the place of your tent or clear lots of ground for your tents. Some translations say, "Enlarge your house, build an addition." My full time job is working for a national homebuilder and I've worked in the construction industry for most of my life, I know what it takes to prepare the ground for a new home or to prepare the ground to build an addition on a home. You have to clear off the old sod and scrape off the top soil. If there are trees or roots that are going to be in your way you need to cut down the trees and dig up the roots. Any rocks that may cause interference need to be dug up or blasted out of the way. It takes a lot of work to prepare the ground for the home. Once that new grass is planted, what's underneath becomes unseen but was the first and most important step to building the addition to that home or building a new home.

What am I trying to say? As we pray in this new year for God to enlarge our territories we must prepare the ground first. A home built on bad ground won't last for the long haul. We must make sure the things in our lives that will get in the way of our enlarged territory are taken care of. In fact, God can't expand the territory until those things are removed, just like a contractor can't build a home unless those obstacles are first removed. Those trees, those roots, those boulders that are in your spiritual life that may be in the way; hire the best builder you know, Jesus, to remove those things. Allow Him to come onto your land and do some ground work. Remove that old sod and scrape off the top soil so that He can get down to the good soil of your heart and begin to work with it. Ask the Lord to reveal to you in the blueprint of your life what needs to be removed so that He can enlarge the place of your tent.

Let's start this New Year off right and let's prepare the grounds of our life for the things God has. He wants you to spread out and think big so let's deal with the unseen first so that the end result yields a well-built home.

Part of verse 2 says: "...Stretch your tent wide, do not hold back..." The Message translation says it this way: "Make your tents large. Spread out! Think Big!" Now that your ground is prepared it's time to build, it's time to spread out. Your tent curtains are your boundaries, the walls that surround your ministry, your calling, and your life. In this coming year as God desires to expand your territory He desires that you set your boundaries wide. Don't limit yourself and don't limit what God wants to do in and through you.

God wants to do a great work in your life this year but He will only go as far as you are willing to go. Just like building a home, you can only build as far as the land is prepared. Sometimes we limit ourselves when God has plans much bigger than we can even imagine. He has blessings that go far beyond our imagination and sometimes we let our imagination limit how far He can go. Part of what the Lord has been revealing to me over these past few weeks about this New Year is DO NOT LIMIT HIM. Remember, 2014 is a year to breakout, a year to implement all of those things you've been preparing for years for. So, stretch those tent curtains wide.

Do not hold back! Spread out! Think Big!