Not a time to be tentative: Is 54:2-3

"Enlarge the place of your tent; stretch out the curtains of your dwellings, spare not; lengthen your cords and strengthen your pegs. For you will spread abroad to the right and to the left. And your descendants will possess nations and will resettle the desolate cities." (Isaiah 54:2-3)

This word is not for the tentative! The command to stretch out is given without any regard to caution or care. God commands us to "spare not!" We are to give ourselves whole heartedly to the expansion of the Kingdom. We are not to hold back but to move forward with an almost reckless abandonment.

God does not want us to withdraw from His attempts to stretch us. God stretches us that we might grow in Him. His desire is that we never stop stretching and growing in Him. There are no "time outs" in this walk. There are no vacations from the Lord. We should always be pressing in, reaching for the higher calling. This is not a time to be couscous.

The call to stretch out is not only a personal calling but also a corporate calling. We have been called together as the church that we might extend His kingdom. The gifts and the blessings of God are not for us alone, but they are to be shared with those around us that they to may come under the shadow of His tent of covering. In the story of Jesus feeding the 5000, Jesus broke the bread and gave it to His disciples. They understood that the miracle bread they received from the Lord was not for them alone, but for the people. They did not horde the bread but rather gave it away to the crowd. "Then He took the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up to heaven, He blessed them, and broke them, and kept giving them to the disciples to set before the people. And they all ate and were satisfied; and the broken pieces which they had left over were picked up, twelve baskets full." (Luke 9:16-17) God does not want us to become inward focuses but rather outward focused. We must not sit in our churches and wait for the sinners and the needy to come in. We must take the gospel to them. We need to leave the confines of our comfortable Christianity to go to the world with the message of hope and life.

David Robison