Day 10

Story goes, Jesus was preaching in Capernaum as His ministry was getting started. Outside, laid a man on a mat, paralyzed, who couldn’t get in to Jesus because of the crowd surrounding Jesus inside. The crowd kept the man that needed to be healed from getting to Jesus. There was no space for the man.

It wasn’t that Jesus couldn’t heal him. It wasn’t that the man didn’t know that. It was that the crowed around Jesus limited what He could do. Think about that. Because of the crowd, the man had to make space in order to obtain what he knew was his and available to him. The man ultimately was brought in through a hole in the roof that his friends ripped open. He ripped open the roof to make space to get to Jesus.

Most times I like to imagine I’m the man, or maybe one of his friends, pressing my way, ripping open a roof, doing whatever I need to do in order to get to Jesus. This story has always represented tenacity and pressing– despite all odds.

It occurred to me, what about Jesus? What if I were in Jesus’ position? Do I ever have too much of a crowd around me that people that need me can’t get to me? This may sound pretentious–or egotistical–but I mean it in a very purposeful way. What type of crowd have I allowed to surround and block me from what I am really supposed to be doing? What voices? What images? What spirits? Attitudes? Some times this can refer to actual people or, nowadays, social media can represent the crowd, as well.

What crowd is taking up space in your life, mind, spirit from what you should be doing? What or who can’t get to you? What ideas, creativity, revelations, true friendships are being blocked outside because you have allowed too much of a crowd to surround you in other ways? How much of your energy, thoughts, emotions, or critical thinking is exhausted just by social media alone? Take an inventory. Be honest.

In this day and age, so much of our time and emotional energy is exhausted in a realm that doesn’t actually exist. Most cyber relationships and communication do not and will not ever translate into a person’s real life. Therefore, the energy we spend reading or scrolling thousands of peoples’ lives daily, is all energy that could be spend toward functioning in your purpose in real life. We fill up our spirits with emotions, attitudes, thoughts, words, images from peoples’ lives that we would never or will never actually ever spend time with in the real world. We spend time subconsciously comparing our lives to the lives of all these other people…I submit to you —the CROWD.

We have to purposefully make space. Make space in your time, energy, thoughts, emotions for the things God has created you to do. We were not created to scroll and input thousands of people’s lives into our daily routines. It is not healthy. Outside of just being a waste of time—you are living with a crowd of people everywhere you go. You wake up with the crowd, you go to bed with the crowd. Any moment of downtime is spent with this crowd.

In the meantime, you cannot seem to figure out your purpose, develop your gifts, establish disciple for anything, and you waste energy in every direction. You have effectively crowded out the Spirit of God and the purpose of God in your life.

Let’s not force God to have to rip open the roof in our lives because we have allowed our lives to be crowded out. No matter the cost, no matter the time, no matter the difficulty—make space. Abundant life depends on it.