GOD IS MAKING ROOM FOR YOUR DREAMS
Despite the season, God has made room for you to increase! God makes room for every promise and dream He has placed in His people. God has not forgotten what He said to you.
Many feel distressed, squeezed & limited right now, but God is enlarging you & making room for you despite the season.
“God, you are my righteousness, my Champion Defender. Answer me when I cry for help! Whenever I was in distress, you enlarged me.I’m being squeezed again—I need your kindness right away! Grant me your grace, hear my prayer, and set me free!” Psalm 4:1 TPT
WHEN I’M IN DISTRESS, YOU ENLARGED ME
I love this verse. I think it’s for now. I particularly love that it says “whenever I was in distress, you enlarged me”. Or as the Passion Translation explains, it could be translated, “you made room for me”.
Many feel distressed, closed in and limited by circumstances, and wondering how (or if) the God dreams and promises they sensed at the beginning of 2020 will ever manifest. I think many are crying out, “I’m being squeezed” and I need your kindness God right now!
CHAMPION DEFENDER
What a beautiful description of our God… “Champion Defender”!
Jesus, the one who hears our cry and sets us free, the one who gives grace when we’re squeezed, and kindness to those feeling weary. God sees. God hears your cry. God is our Defender Champion! Nothing is unseen, and God will defend you and fight for you. I love that this verse also says in the the midst of distress, that God “enlarged me”. That seems like it doesn’t make sense. How can I be enlarged in the middle of distress, or seeming attack on every side, or from being squeezed? And yet, God is saying there’s an enlarging taking place in the very season of “squeezing”.
RECALIBRATION AND DIVINE RESET
Much is being said about recalibration lately. I think one of the great silver linings of this season is that we have had opportunity to refocus our hearts on what matters most, and allow God to strengthen our resolve and build us up on the inside. We truly have had opportunity for a recalibration to the purity of God. Those who have pursued God’s heart above the noise, have experience their connection to God has grown deeper and never stronger. New surrender and divine reset of our personal relationship with God has prompted spiritual journeys to “create in me a clean heart”. This has forged new passion for authentic, sold-out faith, and has led us to the depths of God’s kindness.
THERE ARE DOORS TO COME THAT WILL NOT UNLOCK FOR THE LUKEWARM. FIRE IS THE KEY.
Our faith has been re-calibrated and “normal temperature” has been re-set to “boiling hot”, as lukewarm tendencies were set on fire! There is an urgency to set our hearts to “hot”, as there are doors ahead that will not open to lukewarm. The key to the coming season is “fire”!
YOU’RE BEING ENLARGED IN THIS TIGHT PLACE TO CARRY MORE
What is the hope of this seemingly restricted and pressured time?
God has, and is, enlarging your capacity in this season!
YOU’RE NOT THE SAME AS YOU STARTED 2020. You’ve been forged in the fire and grown. You can carry more… more glory, more compassion, more courage, more strength to walk out this God dreams and promises you’ve held on to. Not only that, God himself is making room for you! God is making space for your promises and God dreams He put in your heart. God has enlarged you, and will make space for what you carry.
THE SQUEEZING HAS NOT DIMINISHED YOU, IT’S PRODUCED OIL
God is the not just a door opener, He is a giver of room, or “space”, to dream, build and establish His promise in you once you’ve stepped through the doors He’s opening. God has grown you as you’ve leaned into Him through this season of squeezing! Consequently, you’ve not diminished through the squeezing, you’ve grown in capacity… you’ve been enlarged!
NOT ONLY HAVE YOU INCREASED, BUT JUST AS AN OLIVE WHEN PRESSED PRODUCES OIL, SO YOU HAVE PRODUCED OIL TO BURN
The oil that has come from the pressing, will enable you to burn and sustain the fire when other lights go out. Well done faithful one for surrendering to the divine reset and pressing into God. As you’ve answered the invitation of deeper intimacy and repentance from the Lord, this season has been extremely productive! You’ve produced oil for the journey ahead.
GET READY AND STAY READY
Get ready to push out the tent pegs (Isaiah 54:2) faithful dreamer. This era needs courageous, forged in the fire, pure hearts. God has used this season to not just “ready the harvest”, but ready you, His harvester! You have been made ready, so get ready, stay ready, and be ready.
I pray great grace to your heart in the middle of squeezing and what many have described as distress. Lord we need you! Lord we thank you for your kindness in the midst of great challenge. We ask for freedom. And thank you for growing us ready for what is ahead. Despite the squeezing, we have been fortified by God and made stronger, not weaker.
MY PRAYER
I ask for grace, and breakthrough, in the places of distress. I ask for surprise kindnesses from You God that bless our homes, and melt our hearts with Your great love of us. Give us supernatural hope, that You are making space for us, and for the promises you’ve placed in our hearts. We are coming out of this season “enlarged” and ready to carry the dreams put in our heart.
PRATICAL ACTIVATION: Read this verse again and SAY is out loud, claiming it as yours:
“God, you are my righteousness, my champion defender.Answer me when I cry for help!Whenever I was in distress, you enlarged me.I’m being squeezed again—I need your kindness right away! Grant me your grace, hear my prayer, and set me free!” Psalm 4:1 TPT
Bless you friends.
I’m praying great grace & supernatural hope for you today. May you know and experience the realness of our Champion Defender right where you need Him.
Amen!! I’m holding fast to this!! I needed to hear this so much! Thank you Papa God! Thank you Jodi for your devotion to Papa God and His people! May God continue to bless you and make ways for you over and over!
This is just where I am at and I had read this a while back but came back to it again for more encouragement; it’s true!!!
Wow. That’s all I can say. Your post has just spoken to questions I’ve had for two years now. Almost as soon as my husband and I got pregnant with our second son, we faced pressure to abort. He was diagnosed with Downs Syndrome and a life threatening heart condition. I almost miscarried. He was born premature, but with a fighting spirit you can only imagine.
He’s spent 86 days in hospital for open heart surgery, pneumonia, bronchiolitis, epilepsy, brain damage, sandifer syndrome etc. When I realised our neighbour was actively doing witchcraft against us, I stood up against it and prayed for God to remove her attacks. I prayed that God would remove the curses, and for every week lost in hospital that he would redeem our son’s development in a day. Suddenly our son turned around. He is now crawling, sitting, eating food again and his first tooth arrived. All in a month when before he was almost vegetative from brain damage from epileptic infantile spasms.
To say we’ve walked through fire is not a strong enough statement. We’ve walked through hell. I have questioned God, over and over, why He let us walk through something SO gut wrenchingly hard.
For two years God has given me the Scripture Isaiah 54:2 about englarging the place of my tent. My name also means ‘pure harvester’ and my whole life I’ve wondered about that too.
I can’t believe that God led me to your ministry (through friends, I had never heard of it) and that this blog post so incredibly speaks to our situation and the hope that the squeezing isn’t for nothing and nor is the incredibly painful process of enlargement. I love what you say about being squeezed producing oil. It’s been the toughest situation that you could imagine. May God bring fruit from all of this, as your post would declare. Amen.
WOW! WOW! WOW! Humble tears flowing…MOST GrateFULL for His Kindness, new mercies, faithfulness and utter trustworthiness to ALL His promises and FULLness of redemption and restoration…All Glory to our King of all kings, our Perfect Abba Father…forever & ever! Thank you for this rich & deep treasures from His pure heart Jodie…Praised of the Lord & Humble of heart…His Most Precious Masterpiece!!!
Such sweet timing and sweet encouragement. I claim Him as my Champion Defender! Hallelujah!
Today was my 30th birthday!
So when I saw that I received an email from Pour It Out Ministries, I couldn’t wait to read it 🙂
This was so on point.
How I’ve been feeling just this year alone is squeezed and a weighty/heavy feeling on me.
I’ve been praying/believing for breakthrough in my marriage and I think it’s finally here! 🙌🏼
It has been so hard to WAIT and pray and not screw something up because I’m just so tired! As a mom, and definitely as a wife of 4.
On top of marital issues, we’ve been dealing with an immigration battle For YEARS, in order to keep my husband In the US. He’s from the Philippines and he came over legally with his mom but they want to deport him.
But the LORD told me the word DEFENDER one day and I immediately saw a court room with the defense attorney (Jesus) on our side and father God was the Judge! 🙌🏼
So I’ve been standing on that word that He’s got us!
He’s taking care of us.
Even though I’ve wanted to leave my marriage at times because it’s gotten so hard, I didn’t.
I’ve been praying, praising, declaring and believing for years that God would make a way for us.
I don’t know how or when but I am so ready!
I am ready for breakthrough in my marriage, ready to impact the world with our testimony, and ready for more of God.
Thank you for blessing me with your Pour It Out page and YT videos! I am learning so much!