Without
Faith it’s impossible to please him (Hebrews 11:6)
I wonder how you read this verse? Do you
read it, as “I don’t have much faith, so its impossible for me to please him
“or do you read it as” even though my faith is as small as a mustard seed it
brings him pleasure”?
This morning I was reading from 2 Kings: 4
and I was struck by how Elisha lived from a place of faith all the time so that
what he said or did came from a certainty that God was good. He looked through
the eyes of faith. Elisha must have brought God much pleasure.
When the widow came to him desperate
because her husband was dead and the ‘bailiffs’ were about to take her two sons
who were all she had, Elisha asked her what she had in the house.
She looked at what she had… and despaired
He looked at what she had, however small…
and saw it being multiplied!
When the Shunammite’s son lay dead Elisha
believed God and raised him from the dead and when the pot of stew was deadly
Elisha took flour and in faith purified it.
Faith must be more than words, it must be
realised through our imagination and then acted upon. When the widow told
Elisha she just had one jar of oil, he saw many jars of oil. She did as he said
and gathered as many jars as she could and started filling them. It’s
interesting that the oil stopped flowing when the jars ran out. If there had
been more jars, would there have been more provision?
What is our level of expectation?
The question needs to be not how big is
your faith but how big is your God?
The oil was enough to pay for the widow’s
debts and enough to live on. Whatever we have we can still ask for more so we
have enough to give away.
20 years ago, God called us as a family of
5 to go and serve a church in South Africa for 18 months and it required faith.
Faith for someone to rent our house to, faith for the airfare, faith to live
out there…
When we got there we soon realised that my
husband’s work as a decorator was not required as much because people preferred
to pay a lower wage to black decorators. This meant he only occasionally had
work.
There were days I looked into a nearly
empty fridge wondering how to feed 5 of us. Often I went to the supermarket to
see what I could get with what I had and somehow we were never hungry. Either
because carrier bags arrived on our doorstep or because God multiplied what I
had to make it enough.
When it was our daughter’s birthday I
wanted it to be special for her. I had made a card, made a cake and invited a
few of her friends but couldn’t afford an outing or a present. In faith I rang
the video store to hire a video for the party even though I knew I didn’t have the
money. Shortly after putting the phone down there was a knock at the door and a
friend’s child said “my mum told me to give you this” Into my hand she placed
an envelope in which was the exact amount of the hire of the video. She told me
later she had been driving past and felt God say to stop, empty out all she had
in her purse and to give it to me!
Another time our ‘jar of oil’ was some
bottle lids that could be taken to a store in return for a small amount of
cash. It was our morning to help serve tea & coffee at church and to
provide the milk. We didn’t have money to buy any milk but didn’t want to make
it known until the last minute. I was helping to lead worship that morning and
someone brought a word of knowledge in the worship time that there were people
in the meeting who didn’t have what they needed and challenged the congregation
to give an offering as an act of worship. I felt embarrassed knowing that God
might be speaking about us. It’s humbling to be in a season of receiving. By
the time we had left church that Sunday, a term’s school fees had been paid,
the boot of our car had been filled with vegetables, we’d been invited out to
lunch and later that afternoon someone brought us a box of food that even
contained smoked salmon, something we didn’t need but God blessed us with
anyway.
God wants to develop our faith and faith
takes us out of our comfort zone. When we step out of the boat we step into the
supernatural realm. That may be trusting him to meet your needs or the needs of
others or it may be praying for the sick or sharing the gospel in the street.
However small your faith it attracts God and brings him pleasure. The more we
expect of God who is good all the time, the more our faith will grow… and
without faith it is impossible to please him.
