Isaiah Chapter 54
1 “Sing, O barren, You who have not borne! Break forth into singing, and cry aloud, You who have not labored with child! For more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married woman,” says the Lord.
2 “Enlarge the place of your tent,
And let them stretch out the curtains of your dwellings;
Do not spare;
Lengthen your cords,
And strengthen your stakes.
Barrenness is to be unfulfilled. Barrenness does not intimidate God. The solution to barrenness requires enlarging and stretching. Fasting and prayer is a great way to accomplish this. Jentezen Franklin in his book “The Fasting Edge” says this: “First we must reject smallness. Enlargement requires us to get out of our small boxes, our small routines, our small thinking and our limited view of God. When you get God’s vision for enlarging you get tired of talking about small stuff all the time. You get fed up with hearing what can’t be done.
Second, enlarging means making room for new people in your life. People will stretch you! Prepare to get some stretch marks, they are a sign that your barrenness has come to an end.
Third, something has to support all the expanding and stretching, do not spare! Lengthen the cords and strengthen the stakes. To lengthen the cords means to lengthen our reach. We also must increase stability and go deeper into the bedrock of God’s truths. Like a tree, if we want to go wider and higher the roots have to go deeper and deeper. Fasting helps our roots go deeper and deeper. There is both rewards and wisdom to be found when we tune out the noise of the world and come away to hear God’s heart through fasting and prayer.”