I may not know what you’re going through, but I know fear has been knocking on the door of your heart and threatening to overwhelm your mind. Fear renders us incapable of taking the next steps of faith. Fear leaves us stuck. Fear keeps us in darkness. Fear robs us of the opportunity to see God’s faithful hand at work right here in our situation.
Fear makes us say no. Fear makes us shut down. Fear makes us tell stories in our head that grow bigger and bigger while our ability to do anything about the situation seems to grow smaller and smaller.
But that fear you feel does not come from God. 2 Timothy 1:7, “For God has not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.” And if fear doesn’t come from God, where does it come from? Two places: Fear comes from either a troubled mind that has gone untethered from the truths and promises of God … or the fear you battle comes from the enemy of your soul who woke up today with a mission to kill, steal and destroy.
Where does this fear come from, my friend?
God has been preparing your heart to serve him. He has been aligning your opportunity to grow in faith and step into a greater calling on your life. But before you step and before you serve, you’re going to have to tell that fear that it will not keep you from taking positive actions again today. That fear will not orchestrate your thoughts and create the stories in your mind again today. That fear will not overwhelm you, sideline you, keep you in bed, detour you, or discourage you.
Remember, it’s not that we have no fear, it’s that we tell fear NO. You will still have fear in hard times, but honey, in these hard times you can’t let fear have you. You can’t operate from a place of fear. When we come from a place of fear, we become control freaks who suck the life out of everything and everyone, or we walk down hallways of opportunities and miss the open doors aligned for us by God because we’re hyper focused on the door that closed instead.
Hear God as he says to his girls today, “Do not be afraid. I am with you. I see all of this. And I can work through this. This is not the end.”
Do you hear that … this is not the end. I don’t know what you’re about to give up on because it’s getting way to hard and you feel way too hopeless, but listen for God’s Spirit hit you in just the right spot and say, “This is not the end.”
This is bad. This is hard. This may even be unfair. This may feel really stupid. This may be totally ridiculous. But this is not the end.
Scripture tells us the story of a woman who was in desperate need, and in the middle of her desperate need, she was asked to give. How absolutely ridiculous! But let’s read the story, see God’s faithful hand in it, and apply it to our lives today.
1 Kings 17: 8-16: The word of the Lord came to Elijah, “Get up, to to Zarephath and stay there. Look, I have commanded a woman who is a widow to provide for you there.”
First, widows were known to be poor. In this culture, if the husband died, survival for the wife became a known struggle. For Elijah to go expecting a widow to provide for him is absurd. But he goes in obedience, trusting God.
“So Elijah got up and went to Zarephath. When he arrived at the city gate, there was a widow gathering sticks.” To be out gathering sticks confirms this woman is not only poor, she is desperately poor. The land was in a famine and had a shortage of food, not a shortage of wood. Gathering sticks shows she didn’t even have what others had. She was the poorest of the poor. Yet this is who God instructed Elijah to go to for provision.
What an odd choice for God. If I were choosing someone to provide for you, I would choose someone who wasn’t so desperate. I would choose someone who had a surplus. Someone, somewhere, had to have extra food. Yet God said, no, it’s this widow, the one gathering sticks in desperation, she’s the one who I want to use. She’s the one who will give and serve.
Elijah called to her and said, “Please bring me a little water in a cup and let me drink.” As she went to get it, he called to her and said, “Please bring me a piece of bread in your hand.” But she said, “As the Lord your God lives, I don’t have anything baked – only a handful of flour in the jar and a bit of oil in the jug. Just now, I am gathering a couple sticks in order to go prepare it for myself and my son so we can eat it and die.”
Literally, this woman is preparing the very last of the food she has for her and her son’s final meal, knowing there is absolutely nothing more. This is desperation. There’s nothing left for her to do. Nothing else she can scrounge together. Nothing she can beg for. Nothing she can make work. This is it. And now this man has asked her to give him some bread to eat.
It doesn’t seem God has prepared her to serve at all. It doesn’t seem God has even clued her in on her role in the story. Yet, remember, God had told Elijah in advance that he had commanded a widow to provide for him. Could this be the wrong widow? She has nothing to give.
But Elijah’s words in response to her desperate circumstances are precisely what we need to hear too. He says in verse 13, “Do not be afraid.”
This is where you have fear, but you don’t let fear have you. You don’t let fear make your choices. You don’t let fear harden your heart. You don’t let fear build those walls. You don’t let fear freeze your next obedient steps of faith.
Is that where you are? You feel like you have absolutely nothing left to give and this is absolutely the end, and now you’re being asked to give? You’re being asked to believe you actually have something to give? I know that’s the way it feels sometimes … as if you have nothing more to give, but God is saying something different. He’s saying right here in your desperation, there’s something you can do. There’s something you can give. This is not over for you!
Elijah says to her, “Don’t be afraid; go and do as you have said. But first make me a small loaf from it and bring it out to me. Afterward, you may make some for yourself and your son, for this is what the Lord God of Israel says, “The flour jar will not become empty and the oil jug will not run dry until the day the Lord sends rain on the surface of the land.” So she proceeded to do according to the word of Elijah. Then the woman, Elijah, and her household ate for many days. The flour jar did not become empty, and the oil jug did not run dry, according to the word of the Lord he had spoken through Elijah.”
This was not the end for this woman and her son. It looked like the end. It felt like the end. Every bit of reality said it was the end. But God is not confined by reality. he’s not limited by measurements or amounts. He is infinitely powerful, and the mind blowing thing is, he has offered that power to his children! He has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, of love, and of a sound mind!
Fear doesn’t have to overwhelm you. Fear doesn’t have to cause you to make harsh rules and mandate control. Fear doesn’t have to build walls to keep everyone else out. Fear doesn’t have to create negative stories in your mind that run wild and turn everyone into the enemy.
Fear doesn’t have to do that, but that’s what unchecked fear does. Fear will have you gathering sticks, preparing for your final meal before everything ends. But faith will have you giving what little you do have, then seeing God supernaturally refill your jugs so you never run out!
My sister, do not be afraid here. Do not operate out of fear. Don’t run in fear. Don’t shut down in fear. Don’t control others in fear. Don’t let your mind be ruled in fear. Trust God here. God is saying, “This is not the end.”
What would God have to do to get you through this? I don’t know … but I know whatever it is, it’s not bigger than God. If God can fill the jugs of the desperate widow who responded in faith, he can fill your jugs with whatever you need when you respond in faith.
He can bring supernatural energy. He can bring supernatural healing. He can bring supernatural provision. He can bring supernatural restoration. He can bring supernatural help.
You bring him your most desperate, most far gone, most absolutely hopeless situation … you know, the one you have kind of given up on because believing God can save it creates such fear in you … and let God do what only he can do. What exactly will he do? Gosh, I don’t know … but don’t you want to find out?
This isn’t the end for you. He has more for you.
Fear will keep you from ever seeing the miraculous work God could and would do. Fear will make you into someone you were never created to be. Fear will cause your purpose to be stopped short of it’s full potential and hurt others in the process.
But honey, it doesn’t have to.
God has not given you a spirit of fear, but of power, of love, and of a sound mind! Remember that. Gather your sticks. Pour out your oil. Bake that bread in faith today.
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