Becoming a Kingdom Single Part 6
How to Handle Crisis
Sunday, August 6, 2023
I.Becoming a Kingdom Single
A.How to Handle Crisis (2 Kings 4:1-7 AMP)
v1. We meet the now single mom, widow
a. This certain woman, wife of a prophet has a multifaceted crisis:
~financial crisis (debt, loss of income, creditors are calling);
~maternal crisis (children’s services is coming for her sons);
~physical crisis (no food);
~relational crisis (her husband has died, widow, single parent);
~emotional crisis (her emotions are everywhere);
~spiritual crisis (her husband was a son of a prophet who feared the Lord)
b. She goes to the master prophet Elisha for answers.
~Explain the prophets position in the OT.
~She needed a “rhema word” a personal word for a specific problem from God; a divine word for a desperate problem.
~(Jas. 1:5-8) Go to God!
v2. “Tell me, what have you of sale value in the house?”
a. When we’re desperate for help, God wants us to look to Him and not to man, within and not without, at what we have and not what we don’t have. (ex. Moses/staff, David/slingshot and stones, disciples/boy with 5 loaves/2 fish)
b. The widow thought she had “nothing except a jar of oil.”
~God likes to take our little and make it much!
v3-4. Elisha’s instructions didn’t seem to make sense but she acted on it anyway! She acted in faith!
a. God resolved her problem by user her to help others with her same problem. She became the oil shortage solution for others in her community.
v5-6. She followed Elisha’s instructions but not exactly and it limited God’s blessing.
a. She sent her sons out to get the vessels and they should have gotten more, but she didn’t go out herself with them. The miracle was limited to how many empty vessels they brought.
v7. Sell the oil, pay your debt and live on the rest.
a. Sell the oil – do the work!
b.Pay your debt
c.Live off the rest!
[Pastor Lee Stokes]