Seeking the Spaciousfeatured

Recently I read David’s words in 2 Samuel 22:20: “He brought me out into a spacious place; he rescued me because he delighted in me.” I began to wonder about what David meant by a spacious place.  Was he speaking only about a specific physical location or was he thinking about a spiritual experience with God?

Spacious implies ample room to move freely as opposed to a small space that is crowded and cluttered. In Exodus 3:8 God made a promise to the Israelites: “So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey.” God’s promise of spaciousness was not limited to land. Proverbs 15:32 (MSG) reveals the spiritual side of spaciousness: “An undisciplined, self-willed life is puny; an obedient, God-willed life is spacious.”

The Israelites had difficulties experiencing the spaciousness of their promised land. They repeatedly abandoned their relationship with God and filled their lives with the clutter of false gods and the culture around them. David describes the problem in Psalm 36:1-2: “There is no fear of God before their eyes. In their own eyes they flatter themselves too much to detect or hate their sin.”

Through Christ Jesus, we are promised a spacious place. “Those who trust God’s action in them find that God’s Spirit is in them—living and breathing God! Obsession with self in these matters is a dead end; attention to God leads us out into the open, into a spacious, free life” (Romans 8:5 (MSG)).

Like the Israelites, I find it difficult to consistently enjoy the spacious life offered to me. I am learning that living a spacious life is a choice I must make daily (often hourly!).  My life gets cluttered with competing priorities, busyness, and most of all, with me focusing on me (aka sin!). I forget the beautiful words of Psalm 37:39-40 (MSG): The spacious, free life is from God, it’s also protected and safe. God-strengthened, we’re delivered from evil—when we run to him, he saves us.” 

Running to God is active and intentional. In this painting I tried to portray both a spacious place but also the feeling of intentional movement and seeking – moving towards the one who loves us perfectly.

We seek him in Scripture and in prayer.  We seek him in worship and in community with other who desire the spacious life. When we honestly confess our sins and gratefully accept his forgiveness we run to him. We seek his spaciousness when we ask the Holy Spirit to clear the clutter from our minds and heart and to rearrange our priorities. I would like all of this to happen in just a few minutes during a morning quiet time. Most of the time, those few minutes don’t quite do the trick.  We must choose to make ample space for God in order to experience the spaciousness that he promises. 

I think Psalm 23:2 gives us a picture of a spacious experience with God “He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he refreshes my soul.” This is a picture of a leisurely quiet time where our spirit is nourished by his presence. During these spacious times he slowly rearranges our priorities, helps us to get rid of the clutter of sin, and reveals his delight and love for us.

Ultimately, we will experience eternity in his spacious place. In the meantime, with the help of the Holy Spirit, I’m going to try to seek his spacious place more and more frequently.  I hope you will join me.