Hope, Healing & Freedom Podcast: Episode 137
TRANSCRIPT
Have you ever been in a situation where you felt like you were hanging by a thread? You don’t believe that your situation is completely hopeless, but you don’t have much hope left. You would be in good company. God does some of His best work when we are hanging by a thread, and He is our only hope. In this week’s podcast we are going to look at some people who were hanging by a thread and see what we can learn from their lives.
I’m Lee Whitman from Restoring the Foundations and I welcome you into this Hope Healing and Freedom podcast. There is a fascinating story in 1 Kings 17 about the prophet Elijah. Let me start off by saying that when I read stories like this about the great prophets of old, I have to keep reminding myself that they were humans like you and me. So, when they encountered the situations that they had to face, they were not some sort of superhero who did not have doubts and fears. No, they were just ordinary people like you and me who trusted God in the midst of their doubts and fears.
Back to 1 Kings 17 and the story about the prophet Elijah. God gave Elijah a prophetic word for Ahab the king. God told him to tell the king that there was going to be a drought with no rain for many years. God then told Elijah to head east and settle by the brook Cherith where he would find plenty of water to drink and God would send ravens to bring him bread and meat in the morning and in the evening. I’m thinking if I was Elijah, I would have made the assumption that since God sent him to the brook Cherith, that this miraculous provision of food and water would continue for a long time.
Lesson #1 – The way God works in one season of your life may not be the way He will always work. I think we assume that the way that God has moved in our lives in the past is the same way He will move again in the future. This causes us to look to methods or manifestations to verify God’s presence. For example, there was a time not long ago when people would get touched by the Holy Spirit they would shake uncontrollably. It became apparent over time that some people thought that to experience a touch of the Holy Spirit then they must shake like they had in the past. I am sure that some people shake because it is a true manifestation of the Holy Spirit, but I also believe that some people shake as an attempt to recreate something they experienced in their relationship with God. They are sitting by the brook Cherith waiting for the ravens to bring them their food and water like in the past.
Then in 1 Kings 17: 7 it says, “But it happened after a while that the brook dried up.” We see here an example of God changing the way in which He was going to provide for the prophet. Did God let Elijah down by letting the brook dry up? No, and we will see as part of this story that God was working miracles for not only Elijah but for a precious widow as well. After the brook dried up God told Him to go to the city of Zarephath where he would find a widow who would provide food for him. He found the widow and asked her to bring him some water and a piece of bread. Here is where both of their miracles begin. In verse 12 the widow says, “As the Lord your God lives, I have no food, only a handful of flour in the bow and a little oil in the jar; and behold I am gathering a few sticks so that I may go in and prepare for me and my son, so that we may eat it and die.” This sweet lady is so poor she is preparing to eat her last meal before she and her son would die. The prophet says to her to make him a loaf of bread first. On the surface his request looks like a pretty selfish thing for Elijah to say. Take care of me first with the last of your flour and oil. This lady and her son were hanging by a thread. They only had a little left and the prophet told her to make him a loaf of bread before she makes herself a loaf. Watch how her miracle is tied to his miracle. Then the prophet says in verse 14, “For this is what the Lord, the God of Israel says; The bowl of flour shall not be used up, nor shall the jar of oil become empty, until the day that the Lord provides rain on the face of the earth.”
Lesson #2 – Where God guides, He provides. The prophet needed a miracle provision of food, and God provided it through a poor widow who hardly had enough to feed herself. The widow needed a miracle so she and her son would not starve to death, and God provided by having her give away her last flour and oil to the prophet. It doesn’t make sense in the natural, but God is not natural. He is supernatural.
God called Cindi and I to come to the RTF training in a supernatural way. We had completed the first level of RTF training where we learned Issue Focused Ministry (IFM), which is ministering to all four of the ministry areas to one issue. For example, in an IFM we might minister to a single issue like insecurity, or anger, or rejection. It is very effective to set people free from that one issue. We went back home to Tennessee following that training and began to minister IFM to anyone who would let us. Toward the end of that year God had us invite five pastors/leaders from our city to come to our house for lunch and share with them what we sensed God doing. We talked about our experience with RTF and a vision we had to build a retreat center on our property for people to come and receive ministry. One of the people at that lunch was the prophet, James Gall. At the end of our lunch James looked at Cindi and I and told us we needed to apply for the next level of RTF training that day. This was at a time when we were hanging by a thread. We had been on an obedience journey with God for that whole year and had seen our savings account go from pretty comfortable down to zero. So, when James told us to apply for the next level of training I sort of blew him off because I knew we had no money. Our brook had dried up. He in turn went prophet on me and put his finger in my chest and said with a prophetic intensity, “No, you need to turn that application in today.” So, we called the director of training at the RTF headquarters which was in North Carolina at the time and told him we believe we are supposed to attend this training but oh by the way, we don’t have any money. He said that we were already two weeks past the cutoff for that year’s training, but he would hold registration open for us for two more weeks. And oh, by the way, we needed to have all of our money at that time to pay for the training.
So, we did what you should do when you are hanging by a thread: We began praying and declaring that if God called us to attend this training, then He would have to provide. So, every day I would go to the post office box to see if anything was there. For the first thirteen days there was nothing but junk mail in the box. But on day fourteen, at the last minute while we were hanging by a thread, there was a check in the box for ten thousand dollars. This money came from someone who had never given that gift to us before and has not given to us since. That money got us to the next level of training at RTF. We had no idea at that time that five years later we would become Chester and Betsy Kylstra’s successors and become the executive directors of RTF.
Lesson #3 – God is seldom early but He is never late. I borrowed that line from a greeting card someone sent us. I think God loves to work in those moments when we are hanging by a thread and have nowhere else to turn. When our human resources are inadequate and we must rely on God’s power and provision, we realize that He really is good at taking care of His children.
I can’t help but think about the story of Peter walking on the water when talking about hanging by a thread. If anyone was hanging by a thread it was Peter. One false move and he would sink and probably drown in the sea. There was nothing he could do to stay afloat. He was totally dependent on Jesus which is a really good place to be.
Lesson #4 – If there is any other option besides total dependence on Jesus we are likely to take it. Why is it that many believers are drawn to escape into things like alcohol or food or sex, or even more acceptable behaviors like TV or social media? Could it be that’s because total dependence on Jesus is really hard. It takes a lot of courage to follow Jesus. Jesus said in Luke 9:23-24 “If anyone wants to come after Me, he must deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow Me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, this is the one who will save it”. When you are hanging by a thread your best option is to make the hard choice to abandon yourself into the arms of Jesus.
I know many of you listening today are hanging by a thread in some area of your life. You have been trying your best to experience the life that Jesus came to give you, but something always seems to sidetrack you. As you have heard in some of our previous podcasts that Cindi and I have had some physical setbacks. These challenges have made it feel like we are hanging by a thread at times. No, it’s not that we are going to abandon our faith in Jesus, but these things have forced us to actually go deeper with Jesus. It is in those times of going deeper that we have discovered a faith that we did not know we had. It is where the lessons that I shared in this podcast have come from.
- Lesson #1 – The way God works in one season of your life may not be the way He will always work. We can’t live our Christian lives by looking in the rear-view mirror. We must live looking to Jesus the author and finisher of our faith, the Jesus that is at work right now, not the Jesus that did something for us years ago.
- Lesson #2 – Where God guides, He provides. God’s provision is not only financial. He will provide all that you need to hang by that thread until you get beyond that season.
- Lesson #3 – God is seldom early but He is never late. All I can say is don’t give up. Try not to live by what you are experiencing instead of living by what is really true about God. In other words, try not to get your theology from your experiences. Get your understanding of God from God Himself.
- Lesson #4 – If there is any other option besides total dependence on Jesus we are likely to take it. It may seem like the easy way at the time, but it will not be the best way.
Prayer
Father God, I declare that you are not caught off guard when we are hanging by a thread but that you are still the God of all power and provision. I declare that you meet us when we are hanging by a thread, and You bring your hope into every situation. You are so good to us all the time. You meet us at our lowest points and lift us up. I declare that our situations of life do not establish our concepts of You, but that the Truth found in Your word is what is true no matter what we see in the natural. Would you continue to blow wind into our sails so we will experience the abundant life that Jesus came to give no matter what our circumstances.
Amen.
