Reflections On Pocket Change And Living By Faith (1 Kings 17)

The Price of Obedience (17:1-7)

1 Now Elijah the Tishbite, who was of the settlers of Gilead, said to Ahab, “As the Lord, the God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, surely there shall be neither dew nor rain these years, except by my word.” 2 And the word of the Lord came to him, saying, 3 “Go away from here and turn eastward, and hide yourself by the brook Cherith, which is east of the Jordan. 4 “And it shall be that you shall drink of the brook, and I have commanded the ravens to provide for you there.” 5 So he went and did according to the word of the Lord, for he went and lived by the brook Cherith, which is east of the Jordan. 6 And the ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning and bread and meat in the evening, and he would drink from the brook. 7 And it happened after a while, that the brook dried up, because there was no rain in the land.”

Perhaps it was Wolfgang Simson who said it best when he observed, “Most Christians today don’t live by faith; they live by faith in their planning”.  Perhaps that’s one of the characteristics which distinguish contemporary believers from someone like Elijah. Elijah didn’t have a plan. He simply chose to obey God, regardless of where that obedience might lead him. Where that obedience to God led Elijah was two-fold. First, it led him to one of the most profound demonstrations of prophetic power and ministry in all of Scripture - the proclamation of a prolonged drought which was nothing less than a declaration of spiritual warfare against the local “baal gods” which were thought to rule the weather. Second, it led him into the wilderness where he became the “victim” of his own spiritual success and the object of God’s special instruction.

My impression is that Elijah had no plan for what he would do or how he would live following his pronouncement of the coming drought. He obviously couldn’t stay in Israel, hunted and persecuted by an irate King Ahab. But God had a plan, one which probably had not crossed Elijah’s mind. He would send Elijah off to the wilderness of Trans-Jordan, beyond the reach of human help, and provide for him there. We are not told how long Elijah sojourned east of Jordan by the brook Cherith (or Kerith). Probably for several months. But he was there long enough to experience the “consequences” of his own obedience and success. With no rain (just as Elijah had declared), the brook dried up, and Elijah became a victim of his own success in ministry. God’s promised provision came to an end, and it was soon time to trust God and move on.

There are lessons to be learned through all of this. If you choose to obey God and live by faith - and not faith in your ability to plan - several things will happen. First, God Himself will assure your success, just as He did for Elijah. Second, God Himself will provide for you in unexpected ways, ways you could never have planned on your own. Do ravens providing food morning and evening figure prominently into your plan for how God should provide for you? Didn’t think so. God’s plan usually isn’t our plan. That’s why it requires faith on our part to embrace it. Third, your obedience and success will come at a personal price.  If you walk by faith in public ministry for any length of time, and should you experience any degree of success, you will eventually experience this lesson. God will work overtime to test our faith and to conform our character to match our gift and our calling. The price of obedience is the tests and trials necessary to transform our character. F.B. Meyer summed it up this way:

“The education of our faith is incomplete if we have yet to learn that God’s providence works through loss, that there is a ministry to us through failure and the fading of things, and that He gives the gift of emptiness. It is, in fact, the material insecurities of life that cause our lives to be spiritually established. The dwindling brook at the Kerith Ravine, where Elijah sat deep in thought, is a true picture of each of our lives. “Some time later the brook dried up” - this is the history of our yesterdays, and a prophecy of our tomorrows. One way or the other, we must all learn the difference between trusting in the gift and trusting in the Giver. The gift may last for a season, but the Giver is the only eternal love. The Kerith Ravine was a difficult problem for Elijah until he arrived at Zarephath, and suddenly everything became as clear as daylight to him. God’s hard instructions are never His last words to us, for the woe, the waste, and the tears of life belong to its interlude, not its finale. If the Lord had led Elijah directly to Zarephath, he would have missed something that helped to make him a wiser prophet and a better man - living by faith at Kerith. And whenever our earthly stream or any other outer resource has dried up, it has been allowed so we may learn that our hope and help are in God, who made heaven and earth.” F.B.Meyer, From “Streams In The Desert”.

Daily Pocket Change (17:8-16)

8 Then the word of the Lord came to him, saying,9 “Arise, go to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and stay there; behold, I have commanded a widow there to provide for you.”10 So he arose and went to Zarephath, and when he came to the gate of the city, behold, a widow was there gathering sticks; and he called to her and said, “Please get me a little water in a jar, that I may drink.”11 And as she was going to get it, he called to her and said, “Please bring me a piece of bread in your hand.”12 But she said, “As the Lord your God lives, I have no bread, only a handful of flour in the bowl and a little oil in the jar; and behold, I am gathering a few sticks that I may go in and prepare for me and my son, that we may eat it and die.”13 Then Elijah said to her, “Do not fear; go, do as you have said, but make me a little bread cake from it first, and bring it out to me, and afterward you may make one for yourself and for your son.14 “For thus says the Lord God of Israel, ‘The bowl of flour shall not be exhausted, nor shall the jar of oil be empty, until the day that the Lord sends rain on the face of the earth.’”15 So she went and did according to the word of Elijah, and she and he and her household ate for many days.16 The bowl of flour was not exhausted nor did the jar of oil become empty, according to the word of the Lord which He spoke through Elijah.

I suspect that when Elijah headed for Zarephath in Sidon (a hotbed of baal worship) he genuinely had no idea what to expect. All he knew was that God had a plan to provide for him through a widow who lived there. What he found was probably a step down in his mind - from ravens providing twice-daily meat to a widow and her son, out of food, on the verge of starvation and out of hope. I also suspect that Elijah had two immediate “revelations”. God quickly revealed that  in His economy, He often uses those who have the least as instruments to provide for His work. The widow and her son, the widow and her mite (Mark 12:41), the Macedonians (2 Corinthians 8:1). You get the point, and I think Elijah did, too. In the process God also revealed that in His Providential ordering of all things, He planned to provide not only for Elijah, but for the Widow and her son as well. God’s work in our lives often resembles a multi-layered Chess game in which one move affects many others on many levels. God’s withholding in your life is intended to touch many others as they witness your response to His dealings. And His provision to meet your needs it intended to demonstrate His faithfulness not only to you, but to all those who see and hear. Your provision is, in many ways, their provision as well.

In case you haven’t figured it out yet, this particular newsletter has been birthed out of my own current experiences. Regular victims - eh, readers - of this newsletter already know that for the past ten years or so God has called Gale and me to live by faith. God provides, and we never know how. After providing a wonderful writing sabbatical in Hawaii last summer we came into this past Fall not really knowing what God was up to. Then, in November, a health crisis with Gale’s mom required us to move in with Gale’s parents to help them through four months of medical procedures, rehab, recovery, etc. Interestingly, in our own situation during that same time we watched the brook dry up in terms of ministry resources.  As we were reflecting on our situation last week, God reminded Gale of this passage about Elijah. Gale commented that, for the past four months, like the jar of flour that never ran out, we have watched God provide what we have come to joke about as “daily pocket change”. He provided our larger needs as we helped meet her parents’ needs. But on a daily basis, just when we thought our “pocket change” would be exhausted, God would provide again. It has genuinely been a daily walk of faith. We now sense that this season, too, is about to change. Elijah eventually left the widow and her son. The seasons of life and of God’s dealings change for all of us, but more importantly we are forever changed by them. And so are the people we leave behind.

I have received enough e-mails from people on this newsletter list to know that we are not alone. The purpose of this letter is to say, “You’re not alone, either”. Some of you have shared heart-wrenching experiences of financial loss, bankruptcy, foreclosure, debilitating health problems, and more. Some of you feel like the widow and her son - out of provision and out of hope. Others of you are in ministry and you’re wondering why God has you parked in a wilderness, withholding His provision as you live on what both you and I can only describe as “pocket change” while wondering what comes next. Be encouraged. The days of “pocket change” will come to an end. In the mean time He is using your faith in the midst of the wilderness as a testimony to others. Soon, He will vindicate your faith through a provision that meet your needs while  teach others about His faithfulness to those who put their trust in Him.