1. Creating Space For God

PROP: If you make space for God, He will fill that space with the resources we need for our faith to grow.

It’s so good to be with you this evening! Thanks for taking the time to be apart of our worship service today. It’s a really good day to be here because we are beginning a brand new teaching series called, Five Ways God Grows Your Faith. I know that in this room there are a wide range of faith levels. There are some of you here who have huge…big faith in God. Others of you here are trying to figure out if you have any faith in God or maybe you are just hanging on by a thread. For us as a church family, our faith has been and will be tested going forward. As we learned in our study through the book of James is that faith grows best when it is tested. This series is perfect for us right now because of the situation many of us find ourselves.

So, starting next Sunday we will dive into the first of 5 ways God helps you grow your faith. Today, however, there is a very critical starting point we need to talk about: If something is going to grow, you need to create space. For example, if you were going to plant a garden for example, a place to grow vegetables, what would be the first thing you would do? You need to create a space for the garden. We have a garden out on the back, and every spring we need to create the space, prepare that area to have seeds planted in the soil there. You can even take this analogy even further. For there to be a seed, there first has to be a space for the seed to go. You have to remove the dirt, create the hole (space) then put the seed in and cover it up. For growth to happen, you have to first create space. Got it?

Here is why creating space is so hard. For a lot of people in our culture, the norm is busyness, productivity. We set goals and work hard form them. We strive to build our resume, family, career, business, portfolio, or retirement. So we are busy, working towards goals that are applauded and encouraged in our culture. But to what end? In his book, The Rest of God, Mark Buchanan tells a true story about his wife’s grandma. She lived in British Columbia during a time when people were still coming into the wilderness looking for gold. This grandma was one day in her back yard sanding a large boulder that had always been lodged on her property. She had decided that since it was too big to move she would pretty it up and make it the centerpiece of her garden. So one day she was sanding some of the rough edges off with sandpaper, when she noticed some gold dust caking up on the rock. She started to get a little excited so she really started working it. The more she worked the more gold dust started showing up on the rock. All of a sudden this grandma had gold fever. She was excited pursuing more gold. So she pressed in even harder with the sandpaper…and the harder she worked the more gold came to the surface. She was working hard and she needed a break, all this gold digging was wearing her out. When she paused to take a break she noticed that something was wrong with her wedding ring. The top part was fine, but the bottom part, the part that sits in the crease of her finger had all but disappeared—it was as thin as a piece of thread. She had nearly sanded her wedding ring clean off. All that gold was merely filings. Her true treasure had been reduced to dust—fool’s gold.

In all of our productivity, goal setting, working overtime, and preparing for retirement is it possible that we have simply built a life pursuing fool’s gold? What if instead, we created space in our lives for God to fill? What if instead of searching for our own purposes and building our own kingdoms we instead, create space for God in our lives and allow him to shape our purpose? Instead of building our kingdoms we choose to pursue God’s kingdom. If that is something you want to pursue, then it all starts by making space for God.

Here is the first thing we want to know when it comes to knowing God and allowing him to work in our lives, it’s this: What do I have to do? We are wired to do something to get something. We think that if we do “A” we will in turn get “B”. Here is the tension point I want you to wrestle with today: God’s blessings, grace, and love isn’t dependent upon your productivity for him.

You have probably heard the saying, we are human beings not human doings. But that is precisely the problem, we are always doing. However, the best way to connect with God, the best way for him to grow your faith, it really starts by just being present with him. Stop doing, and instead be present in the presence of God and discover how he directs your life.

If you have a Bible or device, find the OT book of Psalms. The book of Psalms, though entirely poetry, is in fact telling a big story. In this section, we see this image of God being a fortress for his people. It talks about his power and strength. It points out that his people shouldn’t fear anything, because he is with them. Let me read it to you.

Psalm 46:1–11 NIV

1 God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. 2 Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, 3 though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging. 4 There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the Most High dwells. 5 God is within her, she will not fall; God will help her at break of day. 6 Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall; he lifts his voice, the earth melts. 7 The Lord Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress. 8 Come and see what the Lord has done, the desolations he has brought on the earth. 9 He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth. He breaks the bow and shatters the spear; he burns the shields with fire. 10 He says, “Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.” 11 The Lord Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress.

I literally means, relax, stop your activity, cease working at trying to fix everything…stop, be still and know. Not just know information, but know me, experience me, know me personally. How is this all going to happen? When we stop, when we let go, and just be, just let God into that space in our lives.

So how do you need to “be still”? What are the time wasters we need to remove. For you really driven people, who always need to be busy, you need to find a routine where you say “no” to good things so you can connect with the greatest thing. It’s a matter of being brutally honest with our lives, and taking out the unnecessary so we can find life in the necessary.

What are things that you need to stop doing to create space for God?

1. Social Media? No social media until you have created space for God.

2. Entertainment? No Netflix until you have created space for God.

3. Working Too Much.

4. Too Focused on Making More Money/Pursuing the American Dream

5. Staying Up Too Late.

What things in your life need to stop. What things in your life need to come out so there is space for God. Now, I know there may be some push back from this. None of what I’m talking about is easy. But here is the truth: Who you are right now is a result of the choices and habits you have made. If you want that to change, if you want your faith to grow, then there are things that have to stop, there are things that have to come out.

And here is one more truth to add to that: “If you don’t prioritize your life, someone else will.” There is always going to be someone or something that will prioritize your life for you. But here is the thing we forget, we have the ability to choose. Will you choose to created space for God. If you want your faith to grow, you need to create space for God.

Once the space is created, then what? When life get’s confusing or we don’t know what to do, we focus on Jesus. Jesus is the best way to live life, and he has a lot to say about not only creating space for God, but also about how God wants to fill that space. In John’s Gospel, Jesus teaches his disciples about creating space and what to do to allow God to fill that space. It’s just hours until his arrest and trail and Jesus has these last few hours to pour into his disciples. This teaching here is so fundamental to our lives as followers of Jesus. Listen to what Jesus says about creating space.

4 Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.

5 “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” ~ John 15:4-5

Just to make sure we are clear on the metaphor here, Jesus is saying that he is like a grape vine that comes up out of the ground. He then compares his followers to branches which come off of the vine. We can’t forget this point either, the vine and the branch are working together to produce---grapes! The branch isn’t in the business of producing apples or oranges, the branch and the vine work in unison, together to produce grapes. What does the branch have to do to make this happen? Remain or as some translations may read, abide. The branches main job in producing grapes is to remain connected to the vine. Other words you could use would be like stay, wait, exist, or reside. Jesus is teaching his followers that if they want to grow and produce fruit, they must remain connected to him, create space and then hang around, wait, hold on to, exist in that relationship.

But it’s in the abiding or remaining, that creating space, we see that Jesus wants to fill that space with the energy, the nutrients, the water, whatever it is going to take to…grow grapes. So as we open up space for God in our lives, and as we remain with Jesus, he will fill that space with exactly what we need to grow. Are you tracking with this? As we make space for God, as we remain with Jesus, he will pour into that space everything we need to grow.

What specifically will he pour into that space? Look at verse seven.

7 If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.” ~John 15:7

1. His words. Jesus is going to pour into our lives the instruction we need to grow our faith. Now, immediate response to this is just reading the Bible more so we know the words of Jesus. This is true for sure. But there are a wide variety of ways we receive the words of Jesus in our lives. Over the next five weeks we are going to study five of them. They are based off of a book by Andy Stanley called The Five Ways God Grows your Faith. If you have RightNow Media, you can access the Bible Study which goes in depth into these. If you are not, go to our church website and sign up today. Here are the five ways we allow the words of Jesus to remain in us:

1. Practical Teaching

2. Providential Relationships

3. Private Disciplines

4. Personal Ministry

5. Pivotal Circumstances

As we make space for God, he pours his words of wisdom, truth, and instruction into our lives and our faith grows. I would challenge you to make a commitment to be here for the next five weeks. Let’s make space for the words of Jesus to remain in us.

2. Communication through Prayer. He said to ask whatever you wish and it will be given to you. He is referring to prayer. Now, some of you might be scratching you head on this one. You’re like: “I believe in Jesus, I asked for a new car and I never got it!” What we are forgetting is the context! Jesus is talking about how the vine and the branch work together to produce grapes. When we pray for a new car it’s like asking Jesus to help us produce a banana. Does that make sense? When we pray for growth, when we pray and ask God to make us fruitful, he always answers that prayer.

So instead of asking for a new car or a new job as ask God for wisdom to understand better his word. Ask him how we may serve him. Ask him who we could love on his behalf.

Here is the challenge I have for you. We started this challenge two weeks ago, and I want us to tweak it just a bit.

6:25 am/pm we all pause and pray. Add this to our prayer. Heavenly Father, may you grow my faith and the faith of our church.

Tuesday is our day of fasting. As we skip food, or a meal or entertainment—in that space ask God to fill it with the resources we need to grow our faith.

Who can you share this information with?

If you make space for God, He will fill that space with the resources we need for our faith to grow.