This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

Welcome back to day four together of our third week of looking through 1 Kings,
chapter 17 of 1 Kings. We're looking at the life of Elijah and how we can learn
to depend on God. One of the things that significant servants have to learn is
that we are dependent on God for every need.

How does God teach us this? We walk through this process with Elijah and the
first way he teaches us is he reduces life to basics. He allows us to see what
we don't have and that we are totally dependent on him.

The second thing that happens in this process is you have to renew your
confidence regularly. Regularly renew your confidence that God is the one who
will supply your needs. It's an interesting thing that you see God do in your
life many times.

First God reduces the resources and then he magnifies the need. Now you'd think
he'd reduce the resources and then immediately show you how he's going to meet
the need, but before he does that he usually magnifies the need and when that
happens I can either worry or I can worship. Listen to what happens, how God
magnifies the need in Elijah's life, verses seven to twelve.

"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 of Sidon and
stay there. I have commanded a widow in that place to supply you with food.

' So he went to Zarephath. They came to the town gate and a widow was there
gathering sticks and he called to her and he asked, 'Would you bring me a little
water and a jar so that I might 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 oil and 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.

'" Well this doesn't seem like it's supplying Elijah's needs. I mean first the
brook runs out of water. Why does the brook run out of water?

Because there was no rain. Why is there no rain? Because Elijah had prayed for
it not to rain.

God commanded him for him to pray for it not to rain. He does that and now
there's no water. Now by the way, the reason that Elijah prayed for it not to
rain, one of them is that the Baal, the false god that they were serving, was a
nature god and God was showing his power over nature, that he's more powerful
than this Baal god.

That's why it wasn't raining. It wasn't to punish the people, it was to show the
power of God. And so God says, "Go to Zarephath and talk to this widow.

" So he does. "Can you give me a piece of bread? " "No," she says.

"I only have enough to make for my son and then we're going to die. That's all
the food we have left. " Why would God send Elijah to a starving widow?

Why in the world would he do this? What do you do when the supply runs out?
That's the place that God was putting Elijah in.

First he reduced life to its basics. This is all I've got. And then he
multiplied the need.

No one else has anything either. In your life, in my life, the supply of money
or the supply of energy or the supply of support, it seems to just run out. And
then you look for more somewhere else and it seems like it's not there at first.

And you think, "Where is God in all of this? " What's happening is you're
learning, "Okay, I'm not trusting the widow. I'm trusting God.

I'm not trusting myself and the fact that I'm going to find this other place.
I'm trusting God. " And Elijah faces this choice in this moment when it doesn't
work out, when the need is being magnified.

It faces the worry or worship choice. When you come to this place where God
magnifies the need, you can either register your complaints or you can renew
your confidence. You've got that choice.

You can register your complaints. You can become a complainer, bitter, negative,
feeling cheated out of life's best. You can start the complaint department for
God.

I'm going to open one up and God, I'm just going to take them in for me and for
everybody else. I'll listen on social media to everybody's complaints because
everyone's got to complain about God. But God, when he sends Elijah to this
widow, he's asking him really, "Where is your confidence?

Is it in the supply or is it in the source of the supply? " God didn't want
Elijah's confidence to be in that widow. He wanted it to be in God.

He didn't want Elijah's confidence to be in that brook. He wanted it to be in
God. What do you do when the brook dries up?

You go to where God wants you to go, not where you want to go, where God wants
you to go. And when you go there, you may not immediately see the need supplied.
It may take some time, but God will supply the need.

God gives us these kinds of opportunities to renew our confidence on a regular
basis. I don't like this. I don't want my faith to be stretched in that kind of
way.

I just like my needs to always be met. But whether it's your physical needs or
emotional needs or spiritual needs, this regularly will happen in your life. If
I want to be a complainer, there's going to be plenty of opportunities to
complain in life.

But that's not what's being invited in that moment. If I want to be a man of
faith, if you want to be a man or a woman of faith, God is giving you
opportunities to have faith in those moments. And by the way, this isn't the end
of the story.

There comes this moment where the basics are clearly seen in Elijah's life. This
is all I have. The need is magnified.

No one else has anything either. But then the third thing that happens is this
is the key moment of trusting God to meet our needs is you respond to God's
grace by giving. Somebody gives something.

Even though there are lots of needs, even though all my needs aren't being met,
somebody gives something. And when someone gives, it opens the floodgates of
heaven. When someone gives something in faith.

So starting in verse 13, Elijah said to her, "Don't be afraid. Go home and do as
you have said. But first make a small cake of bread for me from what you've said
and bring it to me.

And then make something for yourself and your son. For this is what the Lord,
the God of Israel says, 'The jar of flour will not be used up and the jug of oil
will not run dry until the day the Lord gives rain on the land. ' So she went
away and she did as Elijah had told her.

So there was food every day for Elijah and for the woman and her family. For the
jar of flour was not used up and the jug of oil did not run dry in keeping with
the word of the Lord spoken by Elijah. Because she gave that small piece of
bread to Elijah, her flour never ran out.

Her oil never ran out. Giving was the key to recognizing that God was going to
meet her needs. And through that Elijah's needs were also met.

If you're not a giving person, you don't understand this dynamic. You think I've
got to hold on to as much as I have because I only have so little. But when you
start to give, you recognize it is through giving that God meets our needs.

This widow at Zarephath, God uses her to teach Elijah, to teach us some
important truths about being a giving person. What does it mean to be a giving
person? It means you share what you have.

In one sense you might call this profit sharing, spelled differently,
P-R-O-P-H-E-T, sharing. She shares with the prophet. She shared just the one
small piece of bread that she had and that was more than enough.

Many times when it comes to giving we think I don't have enough. The most
honored gifts in scripture are when somebody gave out of what little they had.
This woman who gave out of what little she had.

The widow who gave out of the two mites, the two pennies that she had. Those are
the most honored gifts in scripture. Don't be afraid, Elijah said to her.

Don't be afraid. When I allow fear to control, I'm not going to share, I'm not
going to give. But when I draw back from my fear, I realize the way that God
meets my needs, the needs of the world around me, is by taking out of what
little I have and sharing what I can.

That opened the floodgates when she did that. You share whatever you have.
Second lesson you learn is you give and it will not be used up.

This is an incredibly wonderful story. She would have starved if she hadn't
given, but her giving spirit opened up a supply that could not be stopped. It's
interesting.

All this supply from this one little jar. They could not prove that the needs
for the next meal would be met from that little jar. They just had to trust day
after day after day after day.

You and I, we want proof. God, could you prove that my needs are going to be met
for the next 10 years? There's nothing wrong with financial planning, there's
nothing wrong with some certain security with our finances.

I understand those needs in our lives, but you're not always going to get proof.
You're certainly not going to get proof that your emotional needs, your
spiritual needs are going to be met even into tomorrow. So you have to trust
that God keeps refilling.

You go to bed at night, you have no energy. God, am I going to have energy
tomorrow? You have no proof of that until you wake up in the morning and God has
given His loved one their proper rest and you're ready to serve Him again in a
new day.

So you give and it won't be used up. And then a third lesson you learn from this
woman is you obey and God will work a miracle. Giving is an obedient response to
the grace of God.

Even though she had a lot of doubts, she gave. And because she gave, there is
this miracle of the flour, the oil that was never used up. You need to
understand that every miracle begins with an act of obedience.

You can study the life of Jesus, study the prophets of the Old Testament. Every
miracle begins with an act of obedience. So when you have a need, when you need
a miracle, the question isn't, "God, how soon are you going to bring this
miracle?

" The question is, "God, what do you want me to do? God, how do you want me to
obey? " Because miracles always grow out of obedience.

Now today, again, as yesterday, I want to pray a servant's prayer together with
you as we learn to serve from Elijah. Would you pray with me and just say,
"Lord, as your servant, teach me to give. Teach me to have a giving heart,
rather than holding on, help me to hold things with an open hand before you.

You are a God who gives to me. You are a God whom I can trust. Lord, I want to
live in the place of worship and not worry.

" And so I ask that this would be true of my life. I want to be your servant. In
Jesus' name, amen.

Tomorrow we're going to learn from Elijah the lesson of personal faith.