When Your Situation Looks Hopeless

 2 Kings 4:1-7 

 Have you ever felt like you were at the end of your rope?

What do you do when your heart is broken, your dreams are shattered and your hopes have been splashed to pieces?

Elisha the man of God asked the woman two very important questions:

1. What do you need? 

2. What do you have?

Often God will use the trials, heartaches and burdens of life to bring us to the place where we can honestly see our need and our own inability to meet it. Think about it, as long as we think we can handle things, why should we look to the Lord? If we have all the answers, why should we turn to Him with our questions?

The question: “What hast thou in the house?” was designed to teach this widow that it may not have looked like she had much, but in reality, she already had everything she needed to obtain what she wanted. She couldn’t see it, but God had already given her the very thing He would use to meet her need. Her answer to Elisha is to tell him that all she has is “a little oil”. That little insignificant bottle of oil would be the answer to her prayers.

What we fail to realize is that God has already given us everything we need to get our need met. That widow said that the only thing of value she had was a little oil. Yet you and I have so much more than a mere pot of oil.

Let us pause and think about it. If you are saved, you are a child of God He has promised to hear your prayers, Jer. 33:3. He has promised to answer your prayers, Matt. 7:7-11. He has promised to meet all your needs, Phil. 4:19; Matt. 6:25-34.

We look at our problems and they look so large. We look at our possessions and they seem so small. Yet, we always fail to factor God into the equation. So, He places us in situations where our faith in Him must be expanded.

The widow is told to go to all her neighbours and borrow all the empty vessels that she can get her hands on. That is a strange command. How do you suppose she explained this to her neighbours? Can’t imagine what the neighbours thought when they saw her collecting the pots and pans. Maybe they thought she had lost her mind as she went door to door collecting those vessels. But what a witness it would have been when the Lord met her need. God used her as a living sermon to her neighbours.

He does the same thing in your life and mine. We talk about how we love the Lord and it is just words until the Lord sends us into the valleys of life. When we are there and He comes through for us in a big way, it speaks volumes to those who are watching us. The widow obeyed the Lord; she borrowed the vessels and trusted God to do what He had promised to do. The widow and her sons learned that God was all-powerful and able to meet every need.

One of the lessons we can learn from this is that God will do exactly what He has promised to do. Elisha promised that the Lord would fill the vessels, in verse 4 of the chapter and He did.

 He will keep all of His promises to you too. Not a single word in a single promise will fall to the ground unfulfilled. God will do everything He had promised to do. His people will see Him come through for them time after time.

We read about Daniel’s experience in Daniel 6. The experience of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in Daniel 3. The widow of Zarephath experience, 1 Kings 18 and the feeding of the 5,000 with the loaves and fishes, St. John 6

You never know who the Lord is using your life to speak to. Let Him have His way in you. You are a work in progress. Your life is a commercial advertising the grace, blessing and power of God to a lost world Eph. 2:10; 2 Cor. 3:1-3.)

Posted by Fay-Ann Swearing