Some time later the brook dried up because there had been no rain in the land. Then the word of the Lord came to him: “Go at once to Zarephath in the region of Sidon and stay there. I have directed a widow there to supply you with food.” So he went to Zarephath. When he came to the town gate, a widow was there gathering sticks. He called to her and asked, “Would you bring me a little water in a jar so I may have a drink?” As she was going to get it, he called, “And bring me, please, a piece of bread.” “As surely as the Lord your God lives,” she replied, “I don’t have any bread—only a handful of flour in a jar and a little olive oil in a jug. I am gathering a few sticks to take home and make a meal for myself and my son, that we may eat it—and die.” (I Kings 17:11-13)
Don’t you hate it when you go to get something from the cupboard you know you have, but you don’t really have it….it’s gone? (In my house, I just find an empty cereal box in the cupboard…why would you throw it away?) Or when you need to pay a bill, and the checkbook is empty? Or you get in the car and the tank is empty? What do you do when there’s a whole lot of nothing?
I’m not one of those people who has weeks and weeks of posts written out ahead of time. I kind of know what He wants me to say, and usually the night before, I write it. I tweak it in the morning and up it goes on my page. I sat down to write yesterday, and…..NOTHING. I went to bed last night with nothing. I got up this morning and said, “Lord…whatcha’ got, because I got nothing!” Clueless. The cereal box was empty……And that isn’t like me…I’ve got 23 years of studies waiting to make their way out of my heart… I usually always have something!
I almost just posted “I got nothing today…come back tomorrow!” Then I asked myself, “What do you do when you have nothing?” And I started to think of all the people in the Bible who had nothing and what they did. And then I had WAY too much for one post.
Elijah is right up there with Joseph as one of my favorites. They were in a drought and the source of God’s provision dried up, and Elijah had nothing. If God didn’t provide soon, he would starve. Then God directed Elijah to a new place of provision – a widow was supposed to feed him now. He finds a widow and asks her for food….but she has about as much as Elijah. She basically told him, “We are going to eat our last meal today and then we plan to die because we got nothing.”
If I’m Elijah….I’m asking if there are any other widows in town because surely God has a wealthy widow tucked away here somewhere. Surely the Lord did not lead him to someone with nothing. But He did. Elijah, who has nothing, meets a widow with next to nothing, and together, they have a whole lot of nothing. Nothing but the Word of the Lord. And if God said she would feed him, there had to be SOMETHING there. And there was…..
The story ends with a miracle. Elijah tells her to make the bread but feed him first and her flour and oil would last through the drought. And she did. And it did. God provided and they ate through the entire drought. They had an impossible situation that would not have changed without a supernatural intervention of the power of God. Ever have one of those? Have one right now?
What do you do when you have nothing? There are 4 key ingredients to any miracle:
- An impossible situation.
- The Word of the Lord comes.
- Obedience to the Word.
- The intervention of the power of God! Miracle!
We face impossible situations every day. And God has already made provision in His Word. All His promises are yes and amen! So what do we need to do? We find what the Word says. We obey…..then we wait….and we trust. It is our job to obey. It’s God’s job to intervene. Does it always happen immediately, like in this story? No…..sometimes it takes time. It takes waiting. It takes trust. But if we don’t stop and we keep trusting, we will see our miracle! Hold onto the Word. Hold onto Him! He still performs miracles!
So do not throw away this confident trust in the Lord. Remember the great reward it brings you! Patient endurance is what you need now, so that you will continue to do God’s will. Then you will receive all that he has promised. (Hebrews 10:35-36)