Know Where to Go When You Don’t Know What to Do.
II.
Don’t Seek an Earthly Messiah.
III.
Find Out What’s in the House.
IV.
Don’t Be Blinded by Negativism, but Pass on to the Positive.
V.
Faith Is Not Faith Until You Do Something — Action Is Required.
VI.
Don’t Put Limitations on God’s Ability to Provide.
VII.
Shut the Door on Doubt.
VIII.
Pour Until There Is No More.
IX.
Move Beyond the Miracle.
X.
Remember: There Will Always Be Enough.
Looking to God in the midst of your troubles means that you stop rehearsing your complaints and turn that inner conversation into upward prayer. That’s when faith begins.
2. Don’t Seek an Earthly Messiah.
Elisha gives the widow a surprising answer when she tells him her plight. “What shall I do?” Elisha asked. His reaction to the widow at first seems to suggest frustration that she had come to him. He seemed to be saying, What do you want me to do about it? I believe he was simply refusing to let her put her trust in him, insisting she keep it in the Lord.
Unfortunately, Christianity is very celebrity oriented.
“If I could just talk to Pastor Jones.”
“If I could just get Prophet Smith to pray for me, I know God would meet my need.”
As Christians we should seek to touch the hem of Jesus’ garment — no one else’s.
Elisha knew he could not help the widow with his own limited resources. But he did help her keep her faith properly focused.
A man in the church came to me one day in a difficult situation. Before he was saved he had committed a felony and was about to go on trial. He could plead innocent, as his lawyer recommended, and easily get off. Or he could face the consequences of admitting his guilt. He desperately wanted me to make the decision for him. Of course, I could only point him to Jesus.
He got the direction from the Lord firsthand and was shown what to do. He pleaded guilty. But God turned events around so that, instead of spending the next five years in prison, he became one of the most successful businessmen in the church. God’s grace and plan were worked out because he heard for himself and obeyed.
Elisha was pointing the needy widow to the source of
her miracle. God’s wisdom and God’s help far surpass anything anyone else can do for you. So always seek Him and put your trust in Him.
Like the needy widow we get so caught up in what we don’t have that we do not see the possibilities in what we already have. Elisha, after redirecting the widow’s faith, asks, “What do you have in the house?” She did not need a new vision of her need. She was well aware of that. What she needed was to recognize that God had already given her the beginnings for her miracle, even though what she had seemed so small.
When I went to Davenport I had no idea the seeds of a miracle resided in that little, lackluster church. But God had put Mrs. Stottlemeyer there as a seed lying dormant. Finally, He opened my eyes to see that mighty miracles were in that unlikely little house.
Our first reaction to crisis is always negative. Nothing is good or right, and there’s no hope. That was the widow’s frame of mind when she replied, “Your maidservant has nothing in the house except ajar of oil.”
The widow started out in the negative but quickly passed to the positive. Nothing could be more important! When you look to the God of possibilities you suddenly pass from the natural to the supernatural. It would have been very easy and very natural for the woman to have simply said, “Your maidservant has nothing in the house — period, paragraph and end of story. Now what are you, Mr. Prophet, going to do about it?”
It’s easy to say, “I have nothing.” But it takes faith to go on and say, “Nothing but a jar of oil, one small possibility,
Tell Me — What Do You Have in the House ?
one small asset, one insignificant thing I can offer for God to use and multiply.”
Faith does not deny present reality. It just acknowledges that all things are possible with God. It serves no purpose to say a problem does not exist or that the miracle has happened when it has not. You only deceive yourself.
Faith in God does, however, change how you see things.
“Nothing hut ajar of oil.”
“ Nevertheless , at Your word we will let down the net.”
These statements were made by people who looked the problems square in the face. But it was their faith that enabled them to see beyond the difficulties to the possibilities. Doubt will cause you to say: “We have nothing.”
Or maybe: “We’ve already tried that, and it didn’t work.”
Miracles begin with faith, and it takes faith to break through the negativism and see the seed you have to cultivate. If you don’t look with eyes of faith, small blessings are too little to recognize. So you say, “There’s nothing in the house.”
During those first few weeks in Davenport when I went to the board and to my dad, suggesting to them that I had missed the will of God, they wisely held my feet to the fire until I passed from the negative to the positive. I shudder to think what would have happened to me and the direction of my life if I had stayed in my negativism refusing to see the possibilities in that little river town. Thank God for the “Elishas” in my life who helped me move from the natural to the supernatural.
The fact is that we always have far more available to us than we think. Pass on to the positive.
Diagnosis is no cure although it is the first step toward health. There must be follow-up treatment if wellness is
to come. Thus, Elisha told the widow she had to take some action to get out of her fix. She was to go out and borrow as many vessels as she could find. Remember twothirds of the word God is go. And there is always a go in the gospel! She had to get active if she was to experience a miracle.
Most people want God to act on their behalf, but first they must act by faith on their own behalf. Israel wandered forty years in the wilderness because the people failed to take action when God instructed them to move forward.
Unbelief is not expressed so much by what people do as by what they do not do. Every supernatural victory won by Israel when they finally did enter the promised land under Joshua was accompanied by some corresponding action on their part — some faith offering of their own resources that God anointed and blessed.
“What’s that silly widow woman going to do with all of those pots?” her neighbors must have said. “She’s finally lost her mind.”
Of course, when you are as desperate for a miracle as this woman was, you’ll do just about anything. The man of God said to her:
Go , borrow vessels at large for yourself from all your neighbors, even empty vessels; do not get a few.
2 Kings 4:3
Get as many as you can, and get them from everywhere, the prophet was saying. I wonder if the woman had any idea of what was about to happen. In any case she obeyed the prophet.
In the spiritual world we must attempt things so big for
God that unless He helps us we will fall flat on our faces. Only then will He get full credit for what is accomplished, and only then will this knowledge keep us humbly aware that but for His blessings we are nothing (John 15:5). It is His work and His success — not ours.
God works through our positive expectations. It seems as if Elisha was dealing regularly with people about this.
WHEN Elisha became sick with the illness of which he was to die, Joash the king of Israel came down to him and wept over him and said,
“My father, my father, the chariots of Israel and its horsemen!”
15 And Elisha said to him, “Take a bow and arrows.” So he took a bow and arrows.
16 Then he said to the king of Israel, “Put your hand on the bow.” And he put his hand on it, then Elisha laid his hands on the king’s hands.
17 And he said, “Open the window toward the east,” and he opened it. Then Elisha said, “Shoot!” And he shot. And he said, “The Lord’s arrow of victory, even the arrow of victory over Aram; for you shall defeat the Arameans at Aphek until you have destroyed them.”
18 Then he said, “Take the arrows,” and he took them. And he said to the king of Israel, “Strike the ground,” and he struck it three times and stopped.
19 So the man of God was angry with him and said, “You should have struck five or six times, then you would have struck Aram until you would have destroyed it. But now you shall strike Aram only three times.”
2 Kings 13:14-19
Elisha was angry with Joash because his response lacked faith and passion. You can’t do great things if you don’t attempt great things. Shooting the arrows was for
Joash what collecting the pots was for the widow. Again, God works with us according to our expectations or the lack of them.
When I was in Phoenix years later, the board of elders wanted the new church to seat ten thousand. I felt more comfortable with three thousand. They had much more faith than I. One day one of the deacons and I were watching Pat Robertson’s “700 Club.”
“You pastors are building your churches too small!” exclaimed Pat. “In fact, there’s one pastor listening right now who is planning far too small.” The deacon’s elbow was planted firmly in my side.
We settled on a sixty-five-hundred-seat auditorium. It was filled as soon as we finished it. The deacons were right. Ten thousand was the right size. God filled the vessel that we brought Him.
A key factor in this miracle story is what happened after the widow had borrowed the empty pots from her curious neighbors. Elisha told her, “And you shall go in and shut the door behind you and your sons.” There will always be plenty of naysayers — those who say, “Precedent is against it.” “We’ve tried before and failed.” Or, “We can’t afford it.” Elisha simply insisted she shut out the skeptics and be deaf to doubt.
The widow’s neighbors, who were fully aware of her plight, would think her actions were eccentric and would ridicule what she was doing. They would insist she was foolish to believe in something so impractical as what the prophet proposed. The fact is that many miracles are stillborn because doubt was invited into the delivery room.
Jesus cautioned, “Consider carefully what you hear” (Mark 4:24, NIV). He knew we act on and react to what we hear from those around us. Elisha also knew how quickly seeds of doubt grow in the soil of human deprav
Tell Me — What Do You Have in the House?
ity and despair. Therefore, he told the widow to go into her house and close the door to doubt. Like Mary, the mother of our Lord, we must ponder some dreams in our hearts rather than see them killed cruelly in casual conversation. Jesus said clearly,
Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and then turn and tear you to pieces.
Matthew 7:6, NIV
The widow provided the effort while God made the miracle. As she poured, the oil flowed. We can only surmise she had borrowed every available empty vessel in her little town. If there had been more vessels, there would have been more oil.
In Davenport where we began and now in Phoenix we are continuing to pour because the needs of the whole town have not been met. When all the vessels were full, the miracle ceased. Much of my time is spent looking for empty vessels to fill — hurting people to pour into. And the exciting thing is that provision continues to come as we continue to pour.
This does not mean we do not have money problems. There will always be the constant struggle against the god of this world. But, miraculously, the provision comes as we continue to step out in faith to reach out in love. I believe the oil of anointing will only stop when every empty vessel in our world is filled or when we stop offering up empty vessels. And I do not see that happening soon. We will pour until there is no more! The promise is:
NOW He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food, will supply and multiply your
seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness.
2 Corinthians 9:10 9. Move Beyond the Miracle.
Sadly, some are so mystified by the miracle that they get locked in place and fail to move on. A significant part of this story notes,
THEN she came and told the man of God. And he said, “Go, sell the oil and pay your debt, and you and your sons can live on the rest.”
2 Kings 4:7
It was not enough for her to witness the miracle. There had to be purpose in it.
God gives great miracles for divine purpose — not just for our entertainment. Clearly the widow was not to get so wrapped up in the wonder that she forgot the purpose.
Miracles are so mighty that we often are tempted to glorify them rather than get on with the work of the kingdom. Miracles are meant not to dazzle us but to facilitate the Great Commission of Jesus Christ.
One of the most comforting principles of this great story came when Elisha told the widow, “You and your sons can live on the rest.” God had given enough to assure that their family needs would always be met.
After I left Davenport I was to move on to another challenge. At first I thought what had happened in Iowa was a one-time occurrence. I didn’t expect that it would ever happen again. But what was to happen next made Davenport look small.
THREE
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