“I Need Some Room”
Text: 2 Kings 6:1-7; Isaiah 54:2
1 Now the sons of the prophets said to Elisha, “Behold now, the place before you where we are living is too limited for us. 2 “Please let us go to the Jordan and each of us take from there a beam, and let us make a place there for ourselves where we may live.” So he said, “Go.” 3 Then one said, “Please be willing to go with your servants.” And he answered, “I shall go.” 4 So he went with them; and when they came to the Jordan, they cut down trees. 5 But as one was felling a beam, the axe head fell into the water; and he cried out and said, “Alas, my master! For it was borrowed.” 6 Then the man of God said, “Where did it fall?” And when he showed him the place, he cut off a stick and threw it in there, and made the iron float. 7 He said, “Take it up for yourself.” So he put out his hand and took it.
“Enlarge the place of your tent;
Stretch out the curtains of your dwellings, spare not;
Lengthen your cords
And strengthen your pegs.
Introduction:
President John F. Kennedy,
“There are risks and costs to a program of action, but they are far less than the long range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.”
The second by Max Depree who said,
“In the end, it is important to remember that we cannot become what we need to be by remaining what we are.”
The Third by Ronald E. Osborne,
“Unless you do something beyond what you’ve already mastered, you will never grow.”
I. Too Small
Which brings me to the text. In this portion of text is found what must become your anthem and heart’s cry for the rest of your life and our life as a church. I need to tell you that APATHY will try to overtake your soul. APATHY will try to seep into this church and make us comfortable, complacent and satisfied. We wouldn’t be the first church and group of people to succumb to this sickness. The cry that parted the lips of this young man must become our constant, daily, weekly cry. It should be our cry individually and corporately.
The sons of the prophet make a statement that was literal for them but must become a spiritual statement for us. They approach Elisha and state, “The place where we are living is too limited for us.”
This statement has implications for us personally:
The place where some of you have been living spiritually is too limited.
- I understand that you have been getting by on 2 minutes of prayer a day.
- I understand that you have been making it on reading one psalm a day.
- I realize that one meal you have been fasting a year has brought you
breakthrough in the past.
It is time to realize that the place where you have been living, where you have been abiding and spending your time is too limited.
Touch your neighbor and say, “I need some room”.
We know we are living in a small place when:
- you have that favorite author who pushes your buttons and so you won’t read anyone else’s stuff.
- you have that one favorite preacher and that one teacher who’s views you think are the only right views.
- you think that worship is only real worship when it is led with an acoustic guitar.
- you are convinced that you can’t really have church without a Hammond B3 and some thumpin’ bass.
- you think that the message is only anointed if the preachers stands real still and is stoic in his delivery.
- you that think the message is only for you and from God when the preacher adds and “a huh” on the end of every phrase.
But I declare to you that the place in which you have been living is too limited.
Touch a neighbor and say this place is too small for me.
The Word constantly tells us that we are commissioned to grow and mature. We are to move from glory to glory, precept to precept. We are to move from milk to meat. We are commanded to press onward and upward. We were never called to grow comfortable, stagnant, stationary, a monument. We are told to expand and lengthen the lines. And as much as I know you would like to stay with what you know best and what you grew up with you cannot grow if you stay in the same place and do the same things you have always done. You can never graduate to living in the level of the significant if you continue to stay in the small place. You must come to the place where you realize where you are living is too small. There is more out there. There is room to grow.
Touch a neighbor and say give me some room.
I don’t know what you thought Passion Church was going to be. Maybe you thought it would be a chance to sit back and relax. Some of you thought you would be able to just put everything on cruise control and slide by. Maybe some of you thought it was just going to be a small family church. But that is too small for us. God is getting ready to rock our plans and our schedules and He is going to make you so uncomfortable in your small place of living that you will be forced to find a bigger place to live. I am praying that as an eagle stirs up her nest to get the eaglets to fly that God will begin to stir up your comfortable, familiar, stagnate, routine, narrow minded, small nest and push you out on the edge until you will spread your wings and learn to fly.
MICE - There is nothing worse that being cramped up in a small place. A nine-foot square case that was built by Dr. John Calhoun, one of the leading psychologists in the area of mental health. The nine-foot cage could easily house as many as 160 mice. The cage was continually supplied with plenty of food, plenty of water, and a perfect mouse environment so that they would flourish.
They began with eight four males and four females then let the population grow to 2200. It took 2 years to get there, continually supplying it with food and water and removing all mortality factors except aging. After five years from the date when the experiment started, every mouse had died, even though there was plenty of food, plenty of water, and no disease.
If you try to live in too small of a place it will cause you to die. You may think you have everything that you need, the right friends, the right job, and the right material goods but unless you live in a place where you can grow you are destined to die.
I bluntly and I believe prophetically tell some of you that you have been the big fish in the little pond long enough; It is time to find a place to grow.
I am calling for some of you to wake up and shout I am tired of living in this small place. I am tired of living cramped and restricted. I am tired of living at a low level. I am ready for some of you to stand up and proclaim from the depths of your spirit, “Excuse me but I need some room. I refuse to die. I refuse to accept mediocrity. I refuse to stay like I have always been. I refuse to fight the same sin and temptation for the rest of my life. I refuse to be comfortable and just eat and go home. I refuse to stay in a small place. I need some room.”
Why don’t you touch your neighbor and from the depths of your being say, “Excuse me but I need some space.”
II. Borrowed Anointing
As I read this text over and over I would get to the part about the axe head I would falter. What does that have to do with needing space? When I realized that the point is that the young man was totally dependent on someone else’s edge to remove the obstacle to his growth.
I am here to declare to you that some of you have been depending on mama’s and grand mama’s prayers long enough. I am here to tell you that some of you have been letting others dig truth and life out of God’s Word for you long enough. You can no longer depend on someone else’s edge to remove the obstacles to your growth.
You can’t depend on me to break your bondage. You got to get your own edge. The Word declares that you are an over comer- not that Pastor Steve is and over comer for you.
You have got to get in the quiet place and sharpen your own edge. You must get the power to remove your own obstacles.
TD JAKES - pray for me pastor that I can get your anointing. Began to pray for failure, pain. Can’t have the anointing I have without going through what I have been through.
Exposure is important but it is not enough - you must also have experience. Just being around a great minister won’t make you one. Just being around powerful people won’t make you powerful.
You can know every known preacher and prayer warrior but when you try to use someone else’s edge you are destined to take a beating. Ask the 7 Sons of Sceva what happens when you try to use someone else’s edge. When you try to rely on someone else’s edge it will leave you exposed for a fraud. It will leave you uncovered and overpowered and it will leave you bruised, embarrassed and running for your life. That obstacle will rise up and say Pastor Steve I know, Tina Baker I know, and Jesus I know but who are you?
I thought if I could just get the pastor to pray for me and so and so to council me I could get control of my thought life. The Word says for you to take every thought captive.
I have some habits and if I could just get the prayer team to anoint me I could quit. But the bottom line is the Word says for you to present your body a living sacrifice.
It is time for you to get your own edge. It is what you have been through that makes you. The anointing oil that they anointed the Old Testament priests with was made up of 5 spices. Three of those spices were myrrh, spikenard, and cinnamon. Two of those are sweet and one is bitter. To get your own edge you have to mix all the bitter and sweet things that you experience and allow it to make you powerful.
Quit depending on someone else to dig for you, fast for you, pray for you, study for you. Take what you have been through and let it sharpen your own edge.
It is time to realize that the place you living in is too limited and you must also come to the place where you will develop your own edge so that you can remove the obstacles to your growth. Take it up for yourself.
But there are also implications for us corporately.
We are at a crossroads corporately. We have a choice to make. We can become comfortable with what we have and how large we are now. We can allow apathy to make us say we have arrived since we are already larger than the majority of all churches in America. But I would say the place where we are living is too limited for us.
We could say we are occasionally doing outreach and that is good enough. We can hide out in here and then every once in a while we pop back out and make forays into the unknown and call it good. But that is too limited for us.
But how does that look practically?
I want to talk to you about 3 very specific areas that we must make room.
1. We must make room in here. Do you realize that once a room is 70% full it is at capacity? Our 70% capacity is 135. Before summer began we were averaging 129 and had a high Sunday of 164. We need some room. If we fail to make room we will fail to grow. We will be saying that we are satisfied where we are and we don’t want anyone else to join us. We need some room. We have to prepare for growth. We have to internationalize growth. Touch your neighbor and say I’m ready for some room. I’m ready to grow.
2. Second aspect ties into that as well. We need more room to serve. I must concur with Ed Young when he said if you aren’t serving you are not really a member or a part. You need to serve. If we are going to live up to Jesus’ example we must serve. He came to serve not to be served. I don’t want you to come and sit and soak for the rest of your life. You will only find true fulfillment and spiritual maturity when you begin to serve others. If you fail to or refuse to serve, you will not grow! Therefore we need to create more openings for some of you to begin to utilize your gifts! You have been sitting and watching others serve. You have been satisfied to come, eat, and leave. I realize some of you arrived here tired, burned out, maybe even abused and bruised and it is OK to sit and heal. But there comes a time when you have to get back up and serve. The healing time is a season! Now is that time.
So with those two things in mind I would like to inform you that beginning on Sept. 7th we will start a new service. Our services will be at 9:15 and 11:15. It will not help us if we simply split to two groups of 60 or 1 group of 100 and a second group of 30. That won’t cut it. This makes room for you to get busy inviting your friends, family and co-workers. If you take the mentality that they are doing 2 services and the only thing I need to do is pick one then we will flounder and remain the same size as we are now. I need you take on personal responsibility. I need you to see this as a challenge. It is now my responsibility to help fill this service up. I dare you to help me feel up the service you choose to attend.
This also addresses the need for room to serve. We are challenging you to change the way you attend church. I am asking you to serve. Find a place to use your gifts. This is how we want to do this work one; worship one. Choose which service would be best for you to encounter God in and then use the second service as a way to engage culture. We have several areas that we are going to need immediate help in: greeters, coffee prep, parking attendants could be used very soon, children workers, sound techs. Serve. We have folks who have been serving in their role for almost 1 year and they need someone to come along and help. If you try and they resist you push them out of the way and serve. Tell them you are on assignment from God to serve.
3. Third area we need to grow in is outreach. I have challenged our outreach team leaders to begin developing a strategy for more constant and consistent means of outreach. So that we can make a dramatic impact on our community. I believe that they are on track to do that. They are working on that strategy now. However, they might be able to come up with the strategy, but they can’t do it by themselves. What they are working on will take scores of people who are committed to reaching out. It may mean your calendar is impacted. Your schedule may have to adjust. Just attending church won’t cut it! Just getting your spiritual fix every week won’t do it. We are called to bring others in and through. The place you are living is too limited for you!
All of this will demand more of your time/energy, finances – new building – in other words we will have to grow. We need some room. This is a huge leap of faith, but without faith why even exist. I believe that just as Elisha agreed to go with the young men, God will go with us. Let’s be audacious.
Closing:
Sir Edmund Hillary, who attempted to scale Mount Everest, lost one of the members of his team in the failed effort. He returned to a hero’s welcome in London, England, where a banquet held in his honor was attended by the lords and ladies and powerful people of the British Empire. Behind the speakers’ platform were huge blown up photographs of Mount Everest. When Hillary arose to receive the acclaim of the distinguished audience, he turned around and faced the mountain and said, "Mount Everest, you have defeated me. But I will return. And I will defeat you. Because you can’t get any bigger and I can."
My prayer for you is that you will realize that you need some room and you will get your own anointing and power that will remove everything that stands between you and growth.
-If you are here and you suddenly realize where you have been living is too limited.
-If you are here and you would say that I have been totally depending on someone else’s edge to remove the obstacle to my growth and I want to find my own edge.
