Making room for God in our lives

I want to share what God is saying this week. I shared this on Facebook live, so there’s a video here if you prefer that to reading.
This is very strong in my heart, and I don’t think that I’m the only one that He’s saying this to. I know that this is for me personally, but I think it’s for plenty of us.

Has anyone ever had a room or a closet or some part of your house that got so cluttered that there was hardly any room for anything else?

Then something else becomes important enough to you that you want to make room for it. So you go in there, and—depending on how bad the clutter is—you sort through, you weed out, you get rid of stuff, and you work through things to make room for what’s now become important to you.

A lot of times, you get rid of stuff that was important to you at one time. You pick it up, and you say, “Oh, I remember when I got this, I loved it because—” But now the importance of that thing has changed. It gets put in the trash or sent to a thrift store to see if someone else might have a use for it.

One of the ways that the Lord speaks to me is through songs. (I’m not talking right now about the new songs that He gives me and that I’m recording; I mean other people’s songs.) So when I wake up in the morning, very often I hear a song in my spirit, and I’ll listen to that song. I’ll listen to what line of the song is echoing in my spirit the loudest or hitting me the hardest. It’s sometimes hard to explain how God speaks, but it’s like His finger is on a particular line. Or sometimes it’s a whole song, and sometimes I’m not even sure what it is in the song. But I always listen to what He’s trying to tell me, because for me personally, this was perhaps the first way that I learned to hear the voice of God in my life. I have many, many stories over the years of ways that He’s used that to speak to me.

Yesterday morning, I woke up with a song called “Make Room,” and it was the line “I will make room for you” that was strong in my spirit over and over again. Again this morning I woke up with the same song, and it’s been echoing in my spirit all day long.

This is what I know God is saying to me personally. (And like I said, I feel like He wants me to share this because there might be other people who aren’t sure if they’re hearing the same call, and maybe if I share what I know God is saying to me, it’ll help them identify that He’s saying it to them too.)

In the modern world, one of the biggest things that gets in the way of a rich, beautiful, powerful, peaceful, glorious walk with God is our busy-ness. And just like that room or that closet that got so cluttered, our lives get very, very cluttered. They’re cluttered with Facebook videos and YouTube videos and TV shows and To Do lists and so many things.

Many of those things in our lives are indeed important. But just like when we have a new item of importance and we go through our room or our closet to clean out the things that are no longer important to us, God is calling me to do this again… and again and again. This isn’t the first time He’s called me to do this, but this is very strongly what He’s calling me to do this week—to make more room for Him. To look at my life. To look at the things that I spend time doing—just like that cluttered room—and look at them and identify the things that are of lesser importance than Him. To get rid of them and make room for Him. To make more room for time with Him.

This to me is what God’s using that song to call me to do and remind me to do, and to show me the glory of it. Yes, glory! When you’re cleaning out the clutter to make room for something new and precious, you’re not doing it because somebody told you that you have to. It is a chore—work—and sometimes it’s difficult to figure out what you need to get rid of. Sometimes it can be difficult to get rid of something that you know it’s time to get rid of. It meant something to you at one time, and sometimes it’s a little hard to let go of.

Sometimes the things in our life that we need to let go of are the same way. Sometimes there’s a wrench and a a tug of “Oh, I need to get rid of that—I even want to get rid of it—but it’s not easy.” And sometimes that’s the way it is. Other times we find stuff and we look at it and laugh once we realize what we’ve held onto and is taking space in our room or in our life because we suddenly realize. We think, “Oh my, I didn’t realize this was taking up so much room!”

So it’s not always easy, but when we’re doing that to make room in our home for something new that’s coming in, we’re generally excited about it! The excitement of making room for that new piece of furniture or that new artwork that’s going on the wall—or whatever it happens to be… the excitement of making room for that thing that we’ve received overwhelms the wrench that we feel at getting rid of the old.

That’s the way it is for God, when He says, “Make more room for Me.” It’s because the brand new thing that He wants to bring into our life is above and beyond the things that we’re gonna have to get rid of to make room.

If that’s what God is calling you to do, then be excited about it! The things that He’s pointing out that you can let go of, they don’t even compare the smallest bit to what He wants to bring into your life. It’s glorious and amazing!