Make Room or Lose

Declutter your mental wholesale or risk losing life-changing moments. There are those groups of people among us who will always doubt with passion what God does in the life of others. To such people, I say, learn to ignore them. No amount of explanation will appease their biases about you. They have a preconceived picture of you and your abilities in their mind, and they form their conclusions from that mental wholesale of mockery.

A group of people were witnessing for the first time in history, an avalanche of supernatural encounters visibly. 120 devout people who had consecrated themselves to prayer began speaking over 15 different languages instantly. It was the first in history, and these onlookers were making history too, by observing, or in deciding to join. People confirmed this by testifying to hearing their native languages being spoken.

Yet, what should have caused bewilderment of minds, and aroused curiosity, only exposed the ingrained biases of some. A fraction of these history-makers sneered and said; “These are only drunk with new wine.” Their comment was a display of implicit bias and their failure to appreciate what God was doing in the lives of the 120 people. When people get drunk, do they speak new languages fluently and coherently? When people are drunk with wine, do they know how to put thoughts together to praise the name and works of God? However, some witnesses to this novel encounter failed to make room in their minds and chose this conspiracy theory as an explanation for God’s wondrous works among humankind.

I met two pastors who were raising funds for their temple. When they approached me, I asked them, how much money would they want? Surprised at my question and perhaps boldness, their faces could not mask their implicit bias. One said, what kind of boasting is this, while the other continued to weave through his mental wholesale for an answer. Meanwhile, I had opened my bank app ready to make a huge transfer to them. But the other prevailed, and motioned again, “Oh, please stop this boasting. What do you have?” They ended up leaving our meeting only with money enough for fuel for a 20-mile journey, while I was ready to donate what seemed to them an impossible feat. But why did it seem impossible to them? Why did they feel I was boasting, when I asked how much money in all they wanted? Was it because they had not made room for me in their mental wholesale? Their definite implicit bias of me, my abilities, finances, and what God could do with me was an obstacle to them.

Let’s learn to make room for greatness in the lives of other people, because your “savior” may be the very one you have pushed to the darkest place of that mental wholesale you carry around unconsciously. Regardless of what you become, achieve, or what God does in your life, there is that group of people who, by their biases, will ridicule the move of God. Learn to ignore them. Testify when you can, and welcome those who will convert in their thoughts. But those that mocked the 120 people continued in their disbelief and lost partaking in this great encounter, like these two pastors. Make room for people and welcome the power of God to do great things in the lives of others.