Last year, I took 4 interns to Colorado to climb Pikes Peak. It is a 13.1 mile hike where you gain over 7,000 feet in elevation. At about the 10 mile mark you go past the tree line. Not much grows here so it is mostly rocks. In the distance, there looked to be some clouds that might turn into a storm. My interns look to me and say “you are our leader we trust you.” It is 10 miles to go down and 3 up. The hardest 3 at that. Now if the storm comes above the tree line lightning bounces in the rocks and people die every year on this mountain because of this. No pressure. Parents are looking to me to bring their kid home. We get 2 miles up and sure enough it is getting darker and it is starting to snow. I am desperate to get up the mountain. We are out of water, food, and one member has a person pulling her with a rope and another pushing their lower back.
Before we started the last 3 miles we were at a crossroads. As I was praying for you, I sense many of you are at a crossroads. Whole heartedly go after something greater or stay in the comfortable place.
Elisha is an old testament prophet. One day a widow shows up. Her husband is dead and she is in so much debt, the people she owes money to want her sons for slaves. This woman is desperate and she goes to Elisha for help. Elisha asks a strange question, “what do you have in the house?”
I think often we believe that to get where need to go we need what we do not have. What if God wanted to use Moses’ staff, David’s sling, Samson’s jawbone, Elijah’s cloak to accomplish something great? All this woman had was a jar with a little oil. What if our greatest limitation was God’s greatest opportunity?
2 Kings 4:3 And Elisha said, “Borrow as many empty jars as you can from your friends and neighbors.
Asking for help for many of us is out of the question unless we are desperate. What if God wants us to be desperate for something more than we are currently experiencing? Are you desperate? Are you too proud for desperate?
4 Then go into your house with your sons and shut the door behind you. Pour olive oil from your flask into the jars, setting each one aside when it is filled.” 5 So she did as she was told. Her sons kept bringing jars to her, and she filled one after another. 6 Soon every container was full to the brim!“Bring me another jar,” she said to one of her sons. “There aren’t any more!” he told her. And then the olive oil stopped flowing.
This woman used what she had, acted desperate, and responded in faith. What do you have? Is it a gift of playing an instrument, teaching, making people feel special, building, leading? Are you using it for His Kingdom? Are you desperate for God to move on your behalf? Or are you just costing in dead religion? Are you responding in faith? What is the last thing God told you to do? Are you doing it? Go use what you have, act desperate, and respond in faith!
Recklessly, obsessively following Jesus
Brandon Sereg
