Enlarging Your Tent
Part 2
Isaiah 54

By Iverna Tompkins
Transcribed by Jane Vaughn

Remember if you will, in Part 1 of this message we discovered the key of learning to sing the praises of God in a strange land! 

So, we must ask: What prevents us from singing?  The first obvious thing we read in Isaiah 54 is that they were focused – on their captivity.  If you listen to the conversations of too many Christians – they are so negative.  We fret: “Oh, I tell you – don’t you just wonder what’s going to happen in the world next?”  No, I don’t – not really.  What God wants me to know He wrote – I read it – the rest I’m glad I don’t know. 

This has been a difficult year for me personally – one of the most difficult of my life.  I’ve been a fairly healthy and well-cared for woman most of my life.  2004 started out with a torn meniscus in my knee and an operation.  Then, it just seemed as if one thing after another after another after another hit me – all year long – and all physical situations.  I felt a little like a child’s “knock ‘em-sock ‘em” toy clown that kids punch.  The toy topples over then bounces right back up again for more hits.  Well, I felt like God’s “clown” all year.  I’d bounce up, declaring in faith my healing, and BAM!  I’d be down again, trying to get back up.  I went through all the “religious antics.”  I did everything anyone told me.  I claimed it.  I named it.  I stepped on it – “He’s under my feet!  He’s under my…”  Ouch! That knee still hurt.  Everything I knew to do, I did.  I exhausted everything I had ever preached about healing!  :-)   And everything I had believed for years!  I went back through it all and did it – and I explained to the Lord what a woman He had!  :-)

This has been such a hard time for me and none of it was actually related to my age.  To be honest, I suppose if I compared my circumstances with many other people, my life was, as we say in our slang, “a piece of cake.”  Just because someone has it worse than I do doesn’t necessarily make me feel better!  :-)   If I ultimately learned anything through this year, and let us all pray reverently that I have, if I was carefully paying attention, there has been a demonstration of the faithfulness of God!

When I bawled in self-pity, He faithfully – was silent.  :-)   When I pounded on His door in prayer, demanding certain things (“in Jesus’ Name!” of course), He faithfully – was silent.  I experienced weeks, no, months of His silence.  Oh, He spoke to me in the Word – and I did read the Word – searching for His voice wherever I could find Him.  In fact, I even threatened Him with the Word!  “Your Word says!”  :-)   Oh, you have too?  I do understand I’m not alone in this!  :-)  And in His merciful kindness and gentleness – He didn’t say a thing!  :-)

Through it all, I came to realize if I never feel His presence again – and that is a horrendous thought! – but, if I never feel that joy, that jubilation, that excitement, that thrill, that delight – followed by the love that comes – and absolutely floods over you when you know you’re in His presence and He could ask you anything you would do it!  “I’ll go anywhere!  I’ll do anything!  I’m Yours, Lord!”  You know that kind of feeling – if you never feel it again, it changes NOTHING!

Some of you have been through equally difficult things this past year as well.  When life’s circumstances hit you in an area that you feel faithful or, full of faith – when you’re not like the Israelites that deserved what they got – when you’ve paid your tithe and still have financial problems – when you give above and beyond what you really feel you have to give – when you make a sacrifice to do it – when you fast and you’ve never fasted before – and you can’t turn things around – there’s a temptation to hang up your harp!  (see Ps.137)   “Don’t ask me to sing until God does it!”  “I’m no hypocrite.  If I don’t feel like singing – I don’t sing!”  But Church, we do not have that option. 

The whole Key to this entire passage in Isaiah 54 is in the first word of the first chapter – “Sing.”  Sing.  Why?  Why is it so important to Him that we sing?  Because it causes my focus to change when I sing unto the Lord!  No matter where you are, focus on Him.  No matter what you’re experiencing – if your home is broken and you feel as if your life is falling apart – no matter what is occurring in your life, concentrate on Whose you are!  Think of the worst thing that could happen to you – it never changes God’s faithfulness and/or His loving care!

How can a loving God turn to a nation like Israel, that has just come out of captivity, and they are so few  in numbers compared to who and how many they were when they first came out from captivity from Egypt!  When they came out of Egypt, there were millions (Ex.12:37,38), but now they’ve come out of Babylon and there are so few of them returning to the Promised Land.  How can He command them to sing?

It would be like this today.  When every seat in your sanctuary was filled, it was easy for you to rejoice.  “Oh, we go to the greatest church.  I’ll tell you!”  When every seat in the choir was filled – (and it used to be here until the pastor started talking about holiness as a way of life!).  When everything was success in our eyes – in our thinking – we thought we were big!  We were proud, “One of the largest churches in this part of our city!”  We weren’t big.  We were being positioned to get big!  Not numerically – only.

If you don’t have a need – if everything seems to be exactly what you want it to be – there’s no cry to grow.  There’s no pulling up a stake!  “I’ve served the Lord nigh on this number of years and He’s always been there for me.  God’s good and I serve Him – my kids serve Him – my home’s never broken up.  Everything is good and I see no reason to change a thing I’m doing.”  It’s easy to sing in the good times but even that is a kind of captivity!  Trapped in the past successes of life and seeing no need to pull up those old stakes, seeing no reason to stretch and grow.  That’s bondage.

Then, when our circumstances change toward the negatives of life, God comes on the scene and says – you’ll see it all through Scripture – “Sing and praise.”  “Sing and praise.”  “Sing and praise.”  Why?  I mean, how does He, if I may say it this way – dare – to say that to us when we are at the lowest places in life?  When He knows what we’re going through!  Have you ever wondered that?  Tell the truth.  Of course you have.

We whine to God – “How can You say to me, ‘Sing.’  I can cry!  I can suck thumb!”  :-)  “But don’t tell me to sing – and praise – when people are talking against me.  Or when I don’t know my future and I can’t…” this and this and this…  “Don’t tell me to sing!  Well, if you hit a minor key – I could, maybe, sing a dirge!”  :-)

I can answer this question or I would not dare to ask it.  God Almighty dares to tell us to sing in our lowest positions because He knows what He’s going to do for us!  He says to them, “Sing, O barren.”  Let me paraphrase:  “Sing.  You have been unfruitful – unproductive.  You haven’t done diddly pooh!”  It’s worded a little different in the King James… :-)    “You’ve been a failure.  You haven’t done what I told you to do and so I let you get a good lickin’ for it.  Now, sing!”

They wailed, “I have no song!  I can’t sing!  Everything’s gone wrong.”  And we start whining like the lyrics of most western cowboy songs, “Ahhh, she done me wrong!”  That’s the way some of our prayers must sound, like this lament: “I’ve sacrificed a lot of things to walk this narrow way.  I gave up fame and fortune – and I’m worth a lot to Thee!”  That’s a real song!  Can you believe that is a church song?  It goes on: “And then I hear Him gently speak to me – I left a throne of glory!”  I said, “Lord, You’re yelling.” :-)    He said, “You don’t get it!  You don’t even know Whose you are!  I do dare to say to you, ‘Sing!’ because of Who I am.”

We must not stay focused on failure.  We absolutely are not to stay in a barren and desolate position – unless we choose that!  Now that truth really takes away your self-pity!  “Well, I sure didn’t choose to be in this situation.”  No, but you chose to stay there!  There’s a key to opening that door of desolation.  And that key is obedience to what God says.  It isn’t just tithing – it isn’t just offerings – it isn’t just fasting – it isn’t just praying – it isn’t just praising.  It’s obedience to the Word of God, and standing firmly on Who God really is, knowing that all of His resources are our resources!

In the midst of your nighttime – He says, “Sing!”  Ours is a whine: “But I don’t have a song!  I don’t know any words to say that would be truthful!  ‘You’ve been so good to me?’” :-)   We may chuckle now, but too often that is exactly the way we are with God when our “things” simply don’t go smoothly or work out how we want.  We seldom bother to put a tune to it.  It’s just a wail.  And when God says, “Sing!” He is saying, “This is an admonition to you (a caution, warning, mild rebuke), because if you will sing – now – in your nighttime – I’ll give you songs in the night.”

All through the Psalms, it always amuses me (it used to upset me) when I’d read, and half a psalm is open complaining to the Lord.  “O why hast thou forsaken us?”  “Why hast Thou turned Your back on us?” (e.g. Psa.22; 28; 69)  The only thing that saves a psalm like that is that they speak in King James!  :-)   “Why hast Thou done us so?”  “Why?”  “Why?”  “Why?”  And then at the end of the psalm we’ll see – “My soul shall yet praise Him!”  And I think, “WOW!  That’s a song?”

But you see, when the Lord gives us a song in the night, the words change. The words no longer depict what we are feeling or seeing or hearing.  His words reveal – Who.  “Why art thou distressed, O, my soul?  Hope thou in – God!”  My hope is not in a change in my situation or circumstances.  “Hope thou in God” (Psa.42:5,11; see also Psa.103).

If this is a place where you find yourself today, and you’ve been nursing that negative situation in your life saying (wailing, whining, crying), “Lord, I want joy again.  I want to praise You – and I will – as soon as You do what I tell You to do!”  If that is your cry, you are missing the key to growth!  You (and I) speak from experiences.   As I’ve already shared, I know what it is to reach down and pull up those old tent stakes.  They’re deep and they’re stuck and they’re often filthy and they usually don’t come up (and out) easily!  It’s hard to uproot things that you’ve fastened onto for years!  Especially because at the moment, you don’t know where you’re going to put them next!  But they have to move out and the tent has to stretch – and I’m the tent and don’t know it!  Hello?

I pull that thing up – that old habit – that old way of thinking – that old whatever (when you’re my age, it’s all old!).   :-)   You may have to “jerk it up” before you can start walking forward.  And then, where are you going?  “Alright, Lord, I’m no longer locked into tradition.  Now what?  What am I going to do with them?”  Scripture says, “Stretch them out!”  “Where?” we demand.  “How far are You going to go?  I mean, now they’re dancing in the church!”  :-)   “How much are You going to let them get by with?”  Oh, I hope you’re hearing me.  The humor and laughter is anesthetizing.  It allows us to step back and take a more objective look at ourselves, trying to see what God sees.

Throughout this past year, probably the most difficult part of it all was “people.”  Too often, they would see me and inquire, “What is God saying these days, Iverna?”  When God is being silent and someone says that – you just want to cringe.  Everyone expects you to be hearing a “now” thing from God.  No one wants to admit the truth and say, “He isn’t saying anything to me.”  The temptation is to lie.  :-)   “Well, He’s saying ‘Yea’ and ‘Thus…’  But through this year, Hallelujah! I learned to be honest enough to say, “I don’t know what He’s saying.  I’m not sure He’s saying anything deeply profound at this moment.  Maybe, ‘Hold on.’ or ‘Hang in there.’” But that is not what people want to hear, especially from a preacher!  They’re looking for direction and all I can say is, “Just hold fast to what you know.” 

In my Daddy’s church, we used to sing, “I’m going through, Jesus, I’m going through.  I’ll pay the price whatever others do…”  It’s through those dry years or months that we absolutely realize that without God, we are nothing.  I have nothing – I am nothing – I have not gotten this far in life because I, in myself, had anything.  During those times, or, as some have written in wonderful books, during those “barren seasons,” we find that God is real!  He is what He says He is and everything He says He is!  He is ever-faithful!