Friday, August 15, 2014

What's In Your House?

“‘How can I help you? Tell me, what do you have in your house?’ ‘Your servant has nothing there at all…except a little oil.’ ‘Go, sell the oil and pay your debts. You and your sons can live on what is left’” 1 Kings 4:2-7.
This is an amazing story tucked away in 2 Kings to which all of us can relate. This woman has approached God’s messenger with a dilemma. Her husband was a mighty man of God and has now passed away. She and her two sons have drained all of their resources, and can no longer pay their debts. Her creditors are coming to take the only thing she has remaining, her two sons who will be taken as slaves. She is desperate and looking for an answer from the Lord’s representative. Believing she is destitute, she must reassess what it is that she is overlooking. He asks her to consider what she already owns which is a little bit of oil. He instructs her to use that resource and fill up some empty jars borrowed from neighbors. A beautiful thing happened as she was pouring the little bit of oil into the empty jars, she kept pouring…and pouring…and filling…and pushing jars aside. When all the jars were full she had enough to pay off her debts and live on the remaining. The success of her provision was recognizing what she already had, surrendering it in faith and allowing God to multiply the resource.

What are you running out of? Is it time, money or patience in your current set of circumstances? What is your little bit of oil that God can use to multiply your provisions? Like the widow we must seek help from the counsel of God. Like the widow we must consider the blessings that are already in our home. Like the widow we must be willing to part with what is precious. Like the widow we must have faith that what we surrender will be multiplied by God in our time of need.

In this powerful little story that none of us heard in our Sunday School classes I am sure, we are given the Christian principle of focused faith.  Through our focus on God He will bring despair to deliverance…spiritual blindness to sight…a little bit of something to more than we need.

Tell me, what do you have in your house?

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