Create Space
I’m a master at to-do list! I have them on my phone, sticky notes and a running one in my head. The list combines endless to-dos for work, kids, husband, house, friends and ideas. I always try to write them down so I can just get them out of my head and on paper promising to get back to them when I have time. We women say we are masters at multi-tasking and even profess that it’s a gift that we can do so many things at one time. But lately, I’ve been re-thinking the whole idea of multi-tasking; is it really what it’s cracked up to be?
At the beginning of this year, we put the Created Woman Magazine on pause so that we could really seek God for direction for the whole CW Foundation and what God wanted us to do for 2015. It has been during this season that there have been some major revelations and I want to share with you why I believe we’ve been able to have some breakthroughs.
It all boils down to 1 simple idea: Create Space
You know there are times when you feel like you’ve heard from the Lord and then there are times when you know you’ve heard His voice and it forces you to take immediate action? That word for me, or words rather, has been ‘Create Space.’
At the beginning of the year I felt like I was suppose to enter a season of rest and study. Well that’s all fine and dandy but I don’t know how much rest I was going to get with a newborn baby! But I knew I had to put down the to-do list and study his word. Then, at the Women of Faith Conference in Houston, Charlotte Gambill, who was our Inside Out writer for the magazine last year, spoke on 2 Kings 4.
8 One day Elisha passed through Shunem. A leading lady of the town talked him into stopping for a meal. And then it became his custom: Whenever he passed through, he stopped by for a meal.
9-10 “I’m certain,” said the woman to her husband, “that this man who stops by with us all the time is a holy man of God. Why don’t we add on a small room upstairs and furnish it with a bed and desk, chair and lamp, so that when he comes by he can stay with us?”
11 And so it happened that the next time Elisha came by he went to the room and lay down for a nap.
She went on to explain that the woman cleared a room for the voice of God. She created a space; she carved out an area. The woman was intentionally about making sure the voice of God was in her house and sometimes we need to carve out a space to hear the “what” God wants us to do. For me, that meant clearing off my to-do list. Wipe it clean.
Yesterday, as I sat at church once again the message talked about those exact words; clearing a space.
Now, for some of us clearing a space every day to do our quiet time is something that is normal. Meeting with God is something we look forward to doing but I have to ask; has it become part of your to-do list? Do you buy a book or devotional without thinking about it to help guide you in your daily routine of meeting with God without any thought to what He may want you to read or study?
Today, I ask you to reflect and ask God what He may want you to clear out today so that you can create a space for Him. Is it a to-do list or things in your life that add a distraction to your day? Maybe it’s that devotional that you picked up to do for no other reason other than it’s the latest published book from your favorite author.
Ask God to show you how you can Create Space for him and I can promise that in that space, He will reveal your next steps.
Isaiah 30:21New International Version (NIV)
21 Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, “This is the way; walk in it.”