I want to encourage you: what God does through pressure is to make us realise who we are trusting – is it Him or not? Do we trust a man or the church, rather than Him? “My God has supplied, is supplying and will supply all my needs according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.”
We read the background to Elijah’s appearance in Israel in 1 Kings 16:29-33. It was bad news. Ahab, the king at the time, had rejected the true God and taken Baal, a foreign god. Things were looking bleak.
1 Kings 16:29-33
The pressure in your life has caused you to see things bleakly if you’ve let your heart get to a point where you cannot see a way forward. I have a word for you this morning: God is sending the solution for you, and it’s on its way. There is no way He’s forgotten you or has somehow slipped up and not been on time to provide the solution. Who do we trust? In what is our faith?
Ahab had chosen how he wanted to rule but then Elijah, a true servant of God, turned up. God provided for Elijah in a miraculous way. God’s ways of provision do not go along the same lines of thinking as ours. He delights in surprising us with how He makes provision. You’ve been trying to figure things out so much that your faith is more in what you’re trying to work out, than in Him.
1 Kings 17:1
It was a word from God that there will be famine and drought, and it will continue for several years. When Elijah said that, he didn’t know how God would provide for him during the drought. But the priority of his life was to deliver what God had for him to say to Ahab. If you’ve been trying to get priorities right in your own life and it’s been as though the enemy has been saying, “It’s a waste of time. Look at what’s happened,” we’re going to turn that round.
Matthew 6:24-29
There’s a principle here. I need to have the priorities right and put God first: I genuinely want to do and say what pleases Him, I want to outwork what He wants for my life. I’m not paying an insurance policy to guarantee that God blesses me.
1 Kings 17:2-5
When Elijah delivered the words to Ahab, and walked out of Ahab’s presence, he was facing the same famine and drought. He had no idea how God would provide for him. Note the verb in what God said, “I have commanded the ravens ...” God tells him to stay by a brook where there would be water, and says he has commanded the ravens to feed him.
When I look at the bird table in our garden, I know we feed the birds. Here it was the complete opposite. Elijah was to be in the middle of nowhere, and God had commanded the ravens to feed him. When God brings His solution for your need, it will be the opposite of normal thinking.
God is saying, “Trust me. Take no thought for your life. Get your priorities in order – look unto me, communicate with me, read my word, hear as I speak through the preaching – and I will provide the solution.”
1 Kings 17:7
Elijah had been sent to the brook and it had provided water. The ravens had fed him, and now at the very place he was told to go to, the water ceased. What would be your reaction? What’s your reaction with what’s happened in your life? Has your heart turned to bitterness, where you can’t see how this can go on any longer?
Elijah now witnessed God speaking to him again, with the next solution. There is no way that what has happened in your life has caught God unawares. God is in control.
1 Kings 17:8-14
Elijah came across a woman who was preparing her final meal. She only had enough meal for her and her son one last time and Elijah asked her for food. It was God’s plan for providing for Elijah. Elijah told her to make a meal for all three of them, as God had told him to. Humanly speaking it was impossible.
God will bring people across your path to provide a solution you haven’t thought of.
1 Kings 17:13-15
The widow was going to collect the sticks for the last meal and then they would die. Elijah turns up at exactly the right time. And he tells her to make two meals, and then the word came to say that the food would be maintained until the rain came. There is nothing finite about God. His provision is limitless. He doesn’t have to reset or change debt programmes. He is the provider, the one who loves you and is communicating to you this morning that the barrel of meal will not fail. He is your loving heavenly Father.
1 Kings 17:17-18
She didn’t anticipate this. It was a further pressure even in the miraculous provision of the meal. Her son died.
1 Kings 17:19-24
God provided the answer again. She knew the word God spoke was truth. God wants to convey to you the truth, Jesus – “I am the way, the truth, the life.”
James 5:16-18
When you pray, God hears you. Three and a half years Elijah was with the ravens and the widow. He was just an ordinary fellow, so James says, but look what happened when he prayed. Pray. Be open before your loving heavenly Father. “I’ve prayed,” you say. Right. When did you pray, and what about? The answer is in Him, and that answer is coming.
Matthew 6:30-34
If you don’t have a job at the moment, keep knocking on the doors and the job will come because God has already provided the answer. He will provide it. If you get made redundant, you were made redundant because God has something better. God is our provider and he is our loving heavenly father.
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