Making Room For A Promise

Making Room for a Promise

Enlarge your house; build an addition. Spread out your home, and spare no expense! Isaiah 54:2

THE PROPHETIC WORDS OF ISAIAH told the barren to go ahead and sing because a season of fruitfulness was coming. Their disappointments would turn into praise. Their lack would turn into gain. Their pain would give way to rejoicing. No matter that there were no signs of this coming fruitfulness yet, no evidence of pregnant promises. The word was true. It was a done deal. The time for celebrating had already begun, even though the answer was not yet seen.

But the prophetic word doesn’t end there. Faith not only sings and celebrates the promise of God. It does much more than anticipate. It prepares. The “barren” and “childless”—again, literally and figuratively—were not simply to wait for the appearance of God’s answer. They were to go ahead and enlarge their houses. They needed to make room for the promise in advance.

That’s how faith works. Passive, sofa-sitting faith is not the way God normally partners with his people. When we really believe God is going to do something, we prepare for it. We make room. We take a step in that direction. Like Noah building his ark, we have to get ready for the day of fulfillment. Otherwise we won’t be able to handle the fulfillment when it comes. God calls us to be equipped to carry the weight of the promise when he gives it.

This is how God works, not just with barren women and captive people in Isaiah’s era, but at all times—especially in an age of redemption and restoration, the year of God’s favor Jesus inaugurated. It doesn’t mean we can simply presume upon God to fill up any empty vessels or empty rooms we’ve prepared. We have to hear and receive his promise first. But once it’s given, we are to partner with him, at least in some degree. We affirm with our words and do something, no matter how small, to suggest that we actually believe. It is never up to us to bring his promise about. But it is up to us not to be caught off guard by its fulfillment. We do that by putting feet to our faith, even as we sing and celebrate his faithfulness.

Action springs not from thought but from a readiness for responsibility.