I’m moving my slides. Okay? Alright. So here’s a question for you. Have you ever been in a situation where you just didn’t know how you were going to get past this problem?
Whatever it was, sometimes those situations can be financial. Sometimes they can be health problems. Sometimes they can be relationship problems. Sometimes work issues. Sometimes, you know, just all at once.
It seems like they all come on you at once. And almost every single one of us can say, yeah, we’ve been in that situation. We’ve been in a situation where we wondered how how are we gonna move forward from here. What are we gonna do? How does this I can’t find a solution.
You know, that’s the way we’re built as human beings is we try to find our solution. We search for it. If we aren’t new to a problem, the very first thing we try to do is we try in our own strength and our own knowledge to solve the problem, to get past whatever it is that’s going on. We try to do that. Probably many of us have been in situations that were dire, a place where we just didn’t know what was going to happen.
I’ve been in situations where, you know, most of the time, through my own fault, I got in a situation where there was a whole lot more months left than there was money. How am I going to get to the end of the month when there’s no money left? I still have to pay the bills. I still have to buy food. I still have to eat the you know, the still have to put gas in the car.
There’s all these things that have to happen, and and there’s just nothing there. How am I gonna get to the end of that? I’ve had people that I know that have come, and they’ve we’ve talked, and they said, you know, we had this disaster happen. All these things occurred in our life, and all of a sudden, everything we had saved is gone, and we still can’t make ends meet. What what are we gonna do?
How are we gonna get to the next step? There are those that say, I’ve tried everything to resolve an issue with my spouse. We’ve been to counseling. We’ve done everything. We’ve tried all that there is, and we just don’t see how we can get to the next step, how we can get past this.
All of these things are huge in our life, and all of these things most every person in this room has probably been in a place where when you looked around in the situation you were in, all you could see around you was darkness, and it felt like the room was closing in on you. It’s just closing in. How do we handle this? How do we move past it? We don’t know.
We don’t understand. So for you, how did that get resolved? What happened? For some, maybe you had friends or family and you called them up and said, hey. Here’s the situation.
Can you loan me some money to get through to the next month? And maybe they were able to help you out. Maybe, the friends and family said, I don’t have any money, but you know what? I got a lot of extra food. I’m gonna bring the food over to you, and that way, make sure you have something to eat for the next couple weeks till you get the paycheck.
Maybe, you know, you need me to take the children while the 2 of you try to talk and work things out and figure out what exactly going on. I can do that. Maybe you just need somebody outside of your normal circle to talk to for a little bit, and so you talk to somebody. Maybe you talk to a counselor. Maybe you had somebody that helped you through, a doctor that helped you with a situation that was happening.
Maybe that all those things happened. Maybe you got through all of that by calling upon other humans. Other humans are good, and and other humans help, and they do a lot of things, but they can’t resolve everything. Sometimes there are issues that go beyond that. The friends that I was telling you, I talked to them and they said, you know, I don’t know what we’re gonna do.
Literally, we’re we have this bill. They told us if it’s not paid by this day, the next day, they’re gonna turn off our power, and we’ve we don’t have any way to do it. We don’t know what we’re gonna do. Hours later after praying, I get a phone call. Hey, pastor.
We don’t understand exactly what happened. Did you tell anybody specifically about what was going on with us? I didn’t. Well, I went out and opened the mailbox, and there was a letter that didn’t come from the post office. There was no stamp on it.
I opened it up, and I pulled it out, and there was a check for the exact amount of the bill that I owe. How would anybody know? It wasn’t it was a cashier’s check, so there was nothing I I couldn’t tell where it came from or who gave it to us or any of that. It was just there, and it was the exact amount. How would anybody know?
I said, were you praying about it? Yeah. We were praying about it. I said, well, God answered your prayer. God answered your prayer.
He took care of it. I had issues where I couldn’t figure out what I’m gonna do. All of a sudden, I go out the mailbox, open it up, and of all things, I had a, insurance, refund. I wasn’t expecting enough money to cover what I needed. There all these things that go on that you can’t say there was a human being that did that.
It was a miracle. How did that happen? Where did it come from? But we get to that problem and we all go, I don’t know. What are we gonna do?
Some people have miraculous stories of how they got through it. Others have friends and family that got them through it, but almost every one of us have been in those situations. So I wanna share with you today the passage of scripture that I shared with the children. Today, it won’t be on the screen for you, so I’m gonna ask you to get your Bible and turn to 2nd Kings, 4 1 through 7. 2nd Kings chapter 4, and we’re gonna read verses 1 through 7.
Alright. It says, now a certain woman of the wives of the sons of the prophets cried out to Elisha, your servant, my husband, is dead, and you know that your servant feared the Lord, and the creditor has come to take my 2 children to be his slaves. Elisha said to her, what shall I do for you? Tell me. What do you have in the house?
She said, your maidservant has nothing in the house except a jar of oil. Then he said, go borrow vessels at large for yourself from all your neighbors, even empty vessels. Do not get a few. In other words, get a lot. And you shall go in and shut the door behind you and your sons and pour out into all these vessels, and you shall set aside what is full.
So she went from him and shut the door behind her and her sons. They were bringing the vessels to her as she poured. When the vessels were full, she said to her son, bring me another vessel. And he said to her, there is not one vessel more. And the oil stopped.
Then she came out and told the man of god, and he said, go, sell the oil, pay your debt, and you and your sons can live on the rest. Now the thing I want us to see here is this woman was in a dire situation. In that day, if husband passed away, the no money to pay the debts, they could come in and either you could sell yourself into slavery, or they could come and take your children into slavery, Whatever it was to pay your debts. The debts had to be paid. Now God was telling them don’t be so harsh on people, but, you know, society.
Right? So this woman who had lost her husband, they they’re going to take them into slavery because they want their money. What are we gonna do? Well, in that day, she went to talk to the prophet because that’s how they communicated with God, and the prophet gave the woman a directive. Get a bunch of vessels, get all these vessels, anything that can hold the oil, and bring them into your house.
Don’t get just a few, get a lot. Get as many as you can get. Borrow them all from your neighbors. Bring them in. Get all that you can, and bring them into your house.
Now he didn’t say, hey. I understand you’re in a in a bad situation. Let me get out my wallet, and I’ll just take care of your debt. He didn’t say, well, let me go talk to the the creditors and see if I can get them to forgive your debt. He didn’t say, let’s start a GoFundMe page and see if we can get enough money to pay your debt.
He didn’t do any of those things. He didn’t resolve her situation immediately. He gave her a directive for her to follow in order for her situation to be resolved. You see, it wasn’t just an easy fix. She needed to have faith.
He needed to show her that she needed to have faith, so he gave her a directive and said, go and do this. Go and do this. The reality is when he said that, for you and I, I’m I’m like the children. I’m I’m looking at this ball. I’m going, there’s only this much.
Now look, Elisha, I know this oil is expensive, but there’s only this much. How is that gonna provide for our needs? How is what am I gonna do with all these vessels? There’s only this much. That’s my human side thinking.
But we don’t see where she ever argued. He gave her a directive. He didn’t give her money. He didn’t go talk to her creditors. He didn’t do anything to just make her problems go away, but he told her to do something very strange.
We, as human beings, we just love to have a quick resolution to anything that happens. Oh, I got a problem. Let’s get it fixed. Something quick, something easy, something that’s gonna make it go away. No problem.
Boom. I I have a problem. I can’t pay a bill. Boom. Somebody give me some money.
It’s good. Took care of it. Thank you. You know, whatever it is, we wanna make it easy. But Elisha didn’t make it easy.
He said, listen. This is something you’ve gotta do. You’ve gotta work through this, and you gotta trust god in it. And so here, go and get these vessels, and then pour them and fill them up. And we’ll figure out what to do at that point.
Well, she wasn’t necessarily probably understanding that he was saying trust God at this point. She was just doing what he told her. Okay. That’s what you’re saying. I will go and do that.
I will go and do that. I’m not sure why, but you told me, so I’m gonna go and do that. God tells us things sometimes, and we wonder why would God have us do it that way. Why would that be the situate? That just doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense.
Why would we do it that way? I just don’t wanna do it because it doesn’t make sense. We read about a blind man that was told to go and wash in the river, and he said, this river’s dirty. Why would I wash in this river and be healed? Actually, it was a I think it was a leper.
Why would I wash in this river and be healed when I could wash in a clean river? God gave him a simple directive. Just go wash. You’ll be healed. But instead of doing it, he won’t argue about it.
God tells us so many times, trust me. Give everything over to me, and I will take care of it. My way is easy. Give it to me. But we wanna hold on to it and say, no.
No. I got it. Just give me what I need. Give me what I’m asking for. God said, let me do it my way.
Go get vessels, fill them up with oil. Start pouring the oil. She didn’t really understand that he was telling her to trust God, but she trusted him. She trusted Elijah as a prophet of God. She trusted that he was in communication with God, and so, therefore, she decided to do exactly what he told her.
Can you imagine her astonishment as the oil just kept flowing? As the oil just kept on pouring out. Now look. I know there’s only this much in here. And I pour it out.
And all of a sudden, it fills something this big. I’m going, how is that possible? And it just keeps flowing, and it keeps going, and it keeps going. And then it’s almost like, well, let’s just see how far it’ll go. Let’s fill as many as we can and just keep on going and going and and amazing.
How is that possible? How did God do that? She’s just pouring. What Elijah told her to do, she just continued to do it, and, obviously, she was overwhelmed at what was happening. But she didn’t stop.
She didn’t go. You know, this is crazy. This can’t be. I got 10 things full of oil right now. That’s enough.
That’s plenty. No. She just kept going. Well, if I’m I’ve gone this far, I might as well keep going and finish what I’ve been told to do. I might as well keep on going.
I don’t know what I’m gonna do with all this, but I’ll just keep going. We have a tendency to even when we see God do something amazing in our life, we have a tendency to cut it off and go, wow. That was awesome. Thanks. But But what if God wanted to do more?
What if there were more blessings that God wanted to pour out upon you? What if there was something else, but we stopped it because we said, oh, that’s all I need. How do you know? We don’t know what we need. We think we know what we need, but we don’t know.
What if God wanted to pour out more blessings? Why would we stop him? If the woman stopped pouring after 10 vessels and said, this is plenty to pay my debt. Well, her debt could have been paid with that. But now what are they gonna do?
She couldn’t get a job, her own property. She couldn’t make a a living because she was a woman. In that day, that wasn’t allowed. We’re not told how old her sons were, but they must not have been grown men yet. Now what was going to happen?
They would have been in in a bad situation again, but god said just keep pouring. When she poured it all out, not only did they have enough to take care of all the debt, they had enough to live on after that. So God gave them what they needed and poured more out on top of it because they were obedient in what God said to do. They were obedient in what God said to do. She didn’t stop doing what she was called to do.
She just kept doing it. So how’s all that possible? People tend to act too proud. Like I said, here’s the thing. We’re so proud, we only need this.
That’s all I need. So once I get this, stop, god. That’s good. I don’t need anymore. God may have more.
Why stop him? Maybe God’s gonna show you that he’s gonna give you more in order for you to bless somebody else. Maybe he’s gonna take care of you in ways you never expected. Why are we so proud that we think we have to do it on our own, or even if God gives us a blessing, we only want this much blessing. Why are we so proud that we have to do that?
Sometimes people just want somebody to give them something. So instead of being having to work for it, just give it to me. Just give it to me. You know, I’m I I don’t have any money, and I’m hungry, and, you know, I need some help. Yeah.
I’m I’m strong, and, you know, I got plenty of energy, and and I know how to use a lawnmower or a weed eater. I know how to do all that. So, look, you come and cut my grass and do what needs to be done, and then I’m gonna give you some money so you can go get some food. Don’t do that. I just want you to give me the money.
I don’t wanna have to go work for it. Just give me the money. I don’t I don’t wanna have to worry about following what you want me to do, god. I just want you to bless me. You just don’t just bless me.
I know I haven’t been in church in a while. I know I had opened my bible. Hadn’t even prayed to you in a while, but just bless me right now because I need it. Just give it to me. Just because.
Sometimes people are in situation where you have to just give, but I’m talking about when you’re in a situation where you could do something. Instead of doing that, you just want it to be given. You don’t even wanna be bothered. God’s people are the same way. We could do something.
We could spend time together with God. We could further our education with God. We could get our relationship closer with God. We could do all of that, but instead, we just want somebody to just give us what we need when we get in trouble and then go away. I don’t want you to tell me what to do the rest of the time, God.
Just right now, give me what I need, then get out of the way because I know everything else. We’re we’re proud. Sometimes we’re just lazy. Sometimes, we just don’t wanna trust. Sometimes, we turn to everything else but God.
Sometimes we turn to everything else but God. We’ve done everything. We’ve tried getting a loan. We’ve tried, borrowing money from friends. We’ve tried, getting out and doing fixing something ourselves.
We’ve tried whatever it is. We’ve tried everything else but turning to God. Now I’m not talking about lost people here. I’m talking about believers. People who know Jesus as lord and savior.
Sometimes we will do everything else before we turn to god and say, help. God, I’m in a bad place. I need your help. We’ll do everything else, and then I know you’ve all heard this. Well, I guess there’s nothing else left to do but pray.
Well, it should have been the first thing. Pray. You’re in a situation. Pray. Wow.
I don’t wanna be selfish. God commands us to pray. He commands us to talk to him. He wants us to be with him. He wants us to have that relationship.
Well, I I wanna try everything out. Why? Because you know why? Because if God provides it, it comes with strings attached. You know, God pours that blessing out, then he expects me to go to church.
You know, he expects me to talk to him, pray, and do things. God, so I don’t wanna take it from God. Reality is we should be doing all that before then anyway. God, help me. Are we gonna pray?
We’re gonna really give it to God? Are we gonna really live for God? We call ourselves a Christian. We say we’re our believers, that we’ve accepted Jesus Christ into our heart and made him lord, meaning master, and yet he’s the last one that we wanna turn to. The last option.
I have no other option. I finally have to turn to God. He wants to be first in everything in your life. 1st, when you wake up in the morning, praise God. When you’re given that meal, praise god.
When your car cranks, praise god. Everything you do, praise god. He wants to be first. And if something goes wrong, call on god first. He says, I’ll never leave you or forsake you.
Never. I’ll never leave you or forsake you, so call on me first. Give everything to him. The reality is people have an overall lack of faith. So what can we do about it?
How do we change this in our life? Well, it starts with humility. It starts with humility. This woman in this passage had to humble herself. She was in a bad place.
It wasn’t her fault, but she had to humble herself and go talk to Elijah because she had no other option. And when she realized that she needed to be humble and go before Elijah, She humbled herself. You see, that’s part of the reason why we don’t turn to god first, is we don’t humble ourselves. Pile it all up on me. I can do it.
I can carry it. I can do everything. No. Humble yourself. God says, be humble.
Understand that apart from me, you can do nothing. That’s what the scripture says. Apart from me, you can do nothing, but you could do all things through Christ who strengthens you. So humble yourself first and realize that you are not god, that you are not Jesus, that you are not in charge, that Jesus is the lord of your life. Humble yourself before him.
The woman had to humble herself in order to ask for help in the first place. So the question today is, why is humility so hard? Why is that so hard? It seems to be one of the hardest things that we do. Humble yourself.
Man, I gotta go ask for help. Let let me try something else. Let me let me try something let me try one more thing before I ask anybody to help. We do it in everything. We do it in, say we’re working on something.
Right? We decided, I can do that. Then we get halfway through it and go, man, what did I get into? Well, I don’t know how to fix this. I’m gonna have to ask somebody to help me.
Wait. Let me try this. Oh, I got shocked. Why did I get shocked? I didn’t ask for help.
I didn’t know what happened. Instead of getting shocked, instead of getting hurt, instead of going through all those things, what if I just asked for help in the first place? Why do I have this idea that to ask for help is a bad thing? Because the world says so. The world says you need to be proud.
You don’t need to ask for help. You need to know how to do it yourself. You need to be strong. Don’t be humble. You gotta pour that out.
I talked to people before about being a believer in Christ. They said, you see, I just don’t think I can do that because Christians are such weak people. What do you mean they’re weak? Well, you know, they have to humble themselves and all of that, and I just I just don’t think I can do that. Man, Christians are the strongest people in the world because they gain their strength from God.
They take away the things that of the world, and they give it to God. The reality is humility is not a bad thing. It’s a good thing for you to realize you’re not God. That’s what it all boils down to, understanding you’re not God, and God is the one you turn to. He’s supposed to be first in your life.
The woman had to humble herself before anything else could be done. When you’re in those dire situations, the first thing you gotta do is humble yourself. Humble yourself and speak to God. Next thing it takes is faith. It takes humility, but it also takes faith.
So if you humble yourself but you don’t have faith that God can do it, then how are you gonna make that next step? You gotta have faith. Once she humbled herself, she had to have faith. Elisha said, gather up all the pots and do this. She didn’t really know why she had that faith, but, okay, I’ll go do that.
I will do what you said. In her situation, perhaps she had more faith than Elisha because she had not been able to have that 1 on 1 relationship like we have today because that was before Jesus came. Right? But now we have that 1 on 1 relationship. And so when we know this is what we’re supposed to do, even if we don’t understand why, have faith.
She had the faith that I’m gonna go do what he said, and it’s gonna be taken care of. Faith that God would take care of her somehow. She didn’t really know how. She didn’t understand. I only have this little bit of oil.
What’s that gonna do? But he said do this, so somehow it’s gonna get taken care of. I don’t know how, but I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna follow in that faith. That’s the reality for us is we’ve got to have the faith.
People say, well, how can you have faith in something you’ve never seen? Well, I may never have seen God face to face, but I’ve seen what God has done in my life. You know, the argument is always this. Well, how can you believe in something you can’t see? Do you see the wind?
Yeah. You do. You’re the only one. How did you see the wind? What do you mean?
I see it rustling through the trees all the yeah. But you didn’t see the wind. You saw the trees moving. Well, that’s true. But I know it’s there because the trees are moving.
I could feel it blowing across my face, so I know the wind is there. I can’t see God, but I feel him moving in my life. I see the things he’s changing around me. I know what’s going on, so I can have faith in God because he’s present in my life. But you gotta have that faith.
You gotta have the faith. Trust him. Trust him. There’s something else you need. What?
Charity. Charity? Wait a minute. We were talking about I had a problem, and and and I’ve talked to God. And now I’ve had to be humble, and now I’ve had to have faith, but now I have to have charity.
What what do you I don’t understand. How do I need charity? Well, because charity is something that every one of us need in our life. Some people think of charity as this, somebody giving them stuff. That’s charity.
That’s that’s the only way they think of it. Well, I don’t want charity. I don’t want that because I don’t want people to just give me something. I want it, you know, I I can do it myself. I don’t want charity.
But there’s another definition of charity. It’s another form of charity. It’s helping people to help themselves. Elijah gave charity to the widow by helping her help herself by saying, trust God. Go get the pots.
Fill the pots. This is what God said. Help her help herself. Offer to let them mow the grass and give them some money. That’s charity because you didn’t just give them the money, you helped them help themselves.
You see, charity is something that we don’t do enough of. Give them the tools and the means to improve their situation. We need that in our lives to help other people. When people come to you and you just give them money, is that charity? Well, yeah, it’s charity.
But can you do it differently? Can you give them more than just the money? Can you help them to help themselves? Can you give them the tools to do things better? Can you do that?
We need that in our lives. We need all forms of that. Sometimes you just gotta help them out with the money in the situation. Sometimes you gotta do more than that. Sometimes you need just money.
Sometimes you need more than that in your life. And in this situation, Elisha gave them what they needed, and he said, go get all these pots and do this, and then I’m going to help you once that’s done. So we’ve gotta have that charity in our life. Now this you may think this is the same word, just different, but it’s a little different. The next word is the other thing is, we have to be giving.
We have to be giving. Why? God multiplies what people give him. God multiplies what people give him. What did the widow give?
The loyal. Did God multiply it? We don’t even know how many times over. So much so that she could sell the oil, pay off all her debts, and still have money to live on. She gave that, and God multiplied it.
And he multiplied, and he multiplied, and he multiplied it, and he multiplied it. But you know what else he multiplies? He multiplies tithes and offerings. He multiplies the tithes and offerings that you give. You know, some people will say when you talk to them about giving, well, you know, I just don’t have it to give right now because I have all these bills, and I have everything, and I just don’t have the money to give.
Well, what if you give first and see what God does with it? Because God multiplies what you give to him. What if you give first and see what god does? I can give you testimony that there was many time in my life where I looked at and I said, on paper, I have all these bills, which I incurred on my own, by the way, more than I needed. I have all these bills, and I only have this much money coming in, and that only leaves, you know, 50¢ left over at the end of the month.
I I just don’t have any money to give God. Finally, I realized, god wants me to give to him first, and he’ll take care of everything else. So I started giving. I started giving. I started with a tithe.
I started giving 10%. Okay, god. I’m giving you I’m a write this check first. I’m giving it to you. I give you that tithe.
There’s no way, based on my math, that if I give away 10% of my monthly income, that at the end of the month, I got enough money to pay all my bills. But somehow, at the end of the month, I had all the money to pay all the bills. Didn’t still didn’t have a 50¢ left over, but I had all the money to pay the bills and I tithed on it. I keep doing that. I keep doing that.
I still try to give the very first thing I do is try to give my tithe. God will multiply what you give him. As a church, when we give to God, he multiplies it. Whether it be in financial giving, whether it be in giving in service, whether it be in giving in love, whatever it is that we give, God will multiply. The widow didn’t know how this was gonna happen, but God multiplied it and gave her not only enough, but an abundance to take care of her son and herself and her sons for however long.
When we give, God multiplies it. He will give us more. He will give us an abundance to reach other people, to grow, but we’ve gotta be willing to do it upfront. We’ve gotta do that. God uses all the gifts to further his kingdom as well as helping people.
When he took that oil and he multiplied it, not only was that a miracle that the widow saw, it was a miracle that her sons saw. It was a miracle that Elisha saw. And you know that the neighbors knew there was no way she had that much oil, and if she borrowed all of the vessels, they saw it. God furthered his kingdom because people trusted him more after the miracle that they saw. When we give and when we do and we serve and and everything is extended, people see it, and God furthers his kingdom.
When we have the the people that can go out and knock on doors and tell someone about Jesus, you know what happens? People get saved. We have people show up and we go, we do that. Maybe we only have 3 the first time. But what if the next time we have 3 more that go, you know what?
I can’t do much, but I’m gonna do what I can. And they show up, and now we double the territory that we covered. There’s double the chance that more people would come to know Jesus. What if we increased our tithe? What if instead of giving 10%, what if we say, you know what?
God has blessed me. He’s really poured it out upon me. I’m gonna give as it’s been given to me, and I’m gonna give 15%. I don’t know how I’m gonna do that, but I know that I need to. I’m gonna do that.
I’m gonna give. I I haven’t been giving, but you know what? I’m gonna give. What if suddenly people that haven’t been giving started giving? People that gave gave more?
Suddenly, we’re not looking at red ink at the end of the month. We’re looking at positives, and now we’re going, hey, we can further God’s kingdom. We can we can do this and do that with things we can do. How incredible is that? That God can multiply what we give to him.
He multiplied everything that the widow had. He gave her more than she could even imagine, and he will multiply all the gifts that we give to his kingdom. We have those that sing. We have those that bake. We have those that make phone calls.
We have those that are prayer warriors. We have those that are leaders and teachers. We have those that can go out and knock on doors. We have people to do things. What if we give all those talents to God and let him multiply it?
How amazing would that be? Instead of saying, hey. We’d like for everybody to sit in the middle when you come in on Sunday morning. We could be saying, hey. Make sure y’all move over so we got enough room for everybody.
But the whole thing is we have to understand in all of this, God. God has a role. God’s role in every bit of it. God provides even when it seems your whole world is crashing down. God provides.
Does he give you exactly what you asked for? Not always. Your world’s crashing down and and you just say, you know what, God? Let me win the lottery so I’ll be okay. Probably not.
Your world’s crashing down and you’re asking for whatever, but instead, friends and neighbors and loved ones show up to help you, and they get you out of the situation. Maybe somebody calls you and says, you know what? I’m praying for you. And you can feel that strength that god’s given you through that. Maybe there’s other ways that it happens, but god provides even when it seems your whole world is crashing down.
He provided not only enough oil to pay off the debts, but enough for him to live on. Now here’s what I want you to understand today. It’s the gift that keeps giving. Jesus is the gift that God gave us. It’s the gift that keeps giving.
He gives in every way imaginable. Number 1 is love. God wants to pour out those blessings upon us. God delights in pouring blessings out upon us. He keeps giving and giving and giving and giving.
He pours out his blessings on his people when they turn to him, and he continues to give even when they don’t understand how. But are you accepting what he’s giving? Are you trying to limit it? Are you trying to do it on your own? Are you actually following God and paying attention to what he can do?
So the question today is, do you need to turn to him? Do you need to turn to him? Maybe you’re here today, and you know what? You’ve been here. Maybe you’re a guest here today.
Maybe you’ve been coming here for years, but there’s one step that you’ve missed. You’ve never actually given your life to Christ. You show up on Sunday, and you sing, oh, how I love Jesus. You wear your clothes. You go to Sunday school.
You carry your bible, but you don’t know him. You’ve never given your life to him. You’ve never surrendered to him. If you don’t surrender to him, then when these things come, you’re on your own. You’re trying to figure it out.
No wonder he’s not answering. You’ve never given your life to him. You’ve never given your life to him. Do you need him today? Understand he is the gift that keeps giving.
It is not one time. You come down the aisle, and and we talk, and and you pray, and you accept Jesus into your heart. And then later, you follow a believer’s baptism, and and that’s not it. It doesn’t end there. It just begins.
God continues to pour out blessing after blessing when you follow him. But you gotta keep on following him. It’s not a one time deal and then turn away and go back to doing whatever you want. You gotta follow God. He’s now the one that’s in charge in your life.
Understand this, when you think there is absolutely nothing left, he pours out more blessing. Sometimes we think about it like this, and we go, you know, in all my life, God has given me so much. God has poured all this out on me. He’s done all these things, and now I’m in this situation. You know, I think I’ve probably exceeded my limit.
I’ve probably gotten everything that I was supposed to get. There’s probably nothing left. There’s probably nothing left for me to get, so you know what? I’m just gonna stop asking. Well, what you’re doing when you do that is you limit God.
You say, God, you’ve helped me all you can. I understand. Thank you. But, you know, I know you can’t do anything more. Why do you think that?
God has infinite blessings. God is greater than anything. He can pour out everything even when you think there’s nothing left. Why do we limit what god can do? Why do we limit trusting god?
Why do we limit seeking the gift that keeps giving? Why do we do that? God never said, this much, that’s all you get. God said, trust me. He said, apart from me, you can do nothing.
God wants to pour out blessings upon you. He wants to give you that love. He said, if you call on me with your mouth, you confess with your mouth Jesus is lord, and believe that God raised him from the dead, you shall be saved. And by saved, that means receive salvation. And through that salvation, he wants to give you that salvation and that sanctification all of your whole life.
It doesn’t stop. Oh, he knows you’re a human being and you’re gonna run into problems. He knows you’re a human being and you’re gonna do things wrongly. But he says, hey. Keep trying.
Keep turning to me. I’ll keep lifting you up. I’ll keep on lifting you up. I wonder sometimes if you had a little child and they they ran outside and they fell and scraped their knee, they came in, you cleaned it up, put a Band Aid on it. The next day, they ran outside and they fell down, they scraped their knee and they came back.
You cleaned it up and put it back. How many times are you gonna do that before you say, I’m not doing this again? You just keep doing it. Right? They need your help.
You’re gonna keep putting that band aid on. You’re gonna keep taking care of them, and that’s how we are for God. We’re his children. Whatever we get into, God just keeps on taking care of us, but he wants us to acknowledge that we need him. He is the gift that keeps giving, but we need to put him first in order to receive those gifts, in order to understand that we need them, in order to ask for them in the first place, in order to be used by him that not only will he pour out the blessings upon us to take care of our needs, he will probably pour out enough blessings that we can use it to take care of somebody else.
Maybe not financially. Maybe it’s maybe it’s love. Maybe it’s, the ability to do something. Maybe it’s food that we can give. Maybe it’s a a ride somewhere.
Whatever it is, but God gives us that we can give as well. Are you willing to trust him a 100% every day? The widow turned to Elijah. She said, I don’t know what to do. Elijah said, go do this, and then bring them back to me.
And then he told her how God was gonna bless it. God says, go do this. I don’t need you to ask a lot of questions. I don’t need you to really try to figure it out. You just do this, and I’ll show you how.
I’m gonna do it in your life today. Will you trust him? Will you put him first? Do you know him? Have you ever given your life to him?
In just a moment, we’ll have a time invitation. As we do, I’m gonna ask you if you’ve never given your life to Jesus and you want to come talk to me about it today, I’ll be here. Perhaps you know Jesus, but you know what? You have not been trusting him, putting him first. You have been limiting him in every way, and you just wanna come to the altar today and ask him to forgive you for that and to pledge to put him first every day.
The altar will be open. Whatever it is, you come as the lord puts it on your heart.
