Photo by Abhishek Mishra on Unsplash
When you have left undone something that you know you should’ve been doing (in my case, sharing what God has laid on my heart via this blog), there isn’t much to say in defence, however legitimately sounding, but to jump right to doing what you were supposed to be doing. So, whether this is your first time on this site, or you have been here before, welcome back! Or perhaps, I am the one who needs to be told, welcome back 😊!
At any rate, let’s dive in.
A couple of Saturdays ago, I was having my devotions when I heard the Holy Spirit say, “there is hard work involved to build or create capacity. It takes effort and it is hard work to increase capacity. Capacity – the ability to hold or produce a particular thing. The instructions to create the capacity has not been given in vain, the hard work required is not pointless because, abundance cometh! The capacity will be rewarded”.
As I turned those words over in my mind, He began to break it down this way.
The widow with the jar of oil was told to go and borrow vessels. (Her story is found in 2Kings 4:1-7) She heard the instructions given by Elisha and she believed the instructions. She told her sons what the prophet said. As she went about to carry out what Elisha instructed, she must have constructed in her mind, the pitch to be delivered to her neighbours.
She was in dire straits – no doubt about that. Her husband had died, she and her sons were now indebted. In fact, the creditors were coming to take her sons away to service the debt. This desperate situation caused her to cry out to Elisha, the prophet of God. And now, she was on her way to her neighbours to borrow a lot of vessels. How do you come up with an appropriate ask in that scenario?
What she was going to ask for was counter intuitive. Wasn’t it borrowing in the first place that led her family to this point?
She would have had to prepare a response in case she came across a neighbour who grilled her with questions. Ok, so why do you need these jars? Do you know something that we don’t? Have you got visitors from other nations who have brought you grain or oil. Some neighbours might have even mocked her. Look at prophet so and so’s widow, she is going around borrowing empty jars! Who does that?!! Considering that she is poor, isn’t she supposed to ask people for jars or vessels with things in them?
The widow would have decided ahead of time, I’m going to borrow vessels, and not a few, as Elisha directed. Obedience and faith often go hand in hand. At the time she was working on increasing her capacity – the borrowing of empty jars in her case – what Elisha had told her to do with them had never been done before. At least in recorded history!
Elisha said, ‘Go round and ask all your neighbours for empty jars. Don’t ask for just a few. Then go inside and shut the door behind you and your sons. Pour oil into all the jars, and as each is filled, put it to one side.’.
As I was reading this verse, I was struck anew by Elisha’s directive. Intrigued, then I said, “Holy Spirit, why did Elisha ask the woman to put the jars to one side. Almost immediately I hear the answer back in my spirit. Because He’s a God of order! As she put the jars to one side, she was able to look and see what the Lord had done. An efficient system was put into place. Her faith would have increased when she looked at the many filled jars of oil.
Imagine a scenario where the woman and her two sons were surrounded by borrowed jars, then she starts to walk around them and pour into the jars without a system or structure. Soon enough, there would be confusion when she notices some empty jars. How come those jars are not full? Had she missed filling those jars? Doubt may start to creep in, does this thing actually work?
Obediently, she followed Elisha’s instructions. Pour oil into the jars and as each is full, set it to one side. As the widow looked at the filled jars, her faith must have increased all the more. She saw the capacity she had created filled with abundance. She would have been excited that all that hard work was not in vain. You could tell in that space of working hard, she was in a rhythm, and she was in flow. “Bring me another”, she said to her sons, but they replied, “there is not one jar left”. “Then the oil stopped flowing.”
I could see the trend the Lord wanted to highlight in this story. No capacity, no infilling. No capacity, no abundance. I felt a prayer bubble up in my spirt as a result of that revelation. Father, increase my faith, increase my capacity. Please help me to put in the effort and hard work required to increase the capacity I need for the future I desire. For the future , you have for me.
You see God is a God of order. When he created the heavens and the earth, there was an order to His work. When God brought the animals to Adam to name them, I’m sure there was an order to that. Noah building and filling the Ark was according to God’s instructions. There was order at play. When Jesus fed the 5000 with two fish and five loaves, there was order. He asked the disciples to have the people sit down. In Mark’s account of this story, the people sat down in groups of hundreds and fifties, and then they were fed.
Where might you need order in your life? What is the order that is required, in my life and my family so that God’s plans to prosper me, His plans for our welfare may unfold without hindrance. Dear Lord, teach me the order I need to put in place in my thought life, my personal life, so that I may be person of abundance.
You see, God has a rhythm, that rhythm is contained within the instructions He has given you or wants to give you. If you follow His instructions, you will find that that you come into flow, and that flow will lead to abundance.
What does coming into agreement with God’s rhythm for your life look like for you? Abundance is waiting for you on the other side of that.
Thank you for reading x
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