You Already Have an Abundance by Milo Briscoe

 One day the widow of a member of the group of prophets came to Elisha and cried out, “My husband who served you is dead, and you know how he feared the Lord. But now a creditor has come, threatening to take my two sons as slaves.” “What can I do to help you?” Elisha asked. “Tell me, what do you have in the house?” “Nothing at all, except a flask of olive oil,” she replied. And Elisha said, “Borrow as many empty jars as you can from your friends and neighbors. Then go into your house with your sons and shut the door behind you. Pour olive oil from your flask into the jars, setting each one aside when it is filled.”

So, she did as she was told. Her sons kept bringing jars to her, and she filled one after another. Soon every container was full to the brim! “Bring me another jar,” she said to one of her sons. “There aren’t any more!” he told her. And then the olive oil stopped flowing. When she told the man of God what had happened, he said to her, “Now sell the olive oil and pay your debts, and you and your sons can live on what is left over.” 2 Kings 4:1-7 NLT

When the woman pleaded her case to Elisha, his first response was, “what can I do to help you?” Normally, when someone gives that response to a request like hers, they expect to get something to meet the need. In those days it was commodities, like the olive oil in this story. But, before she could respond to the first question, he asks another. “What do you have in the house?” If it was me, I may have responded out of my flesh. If I had something in my house of value, I would not be asking you for help. Her response was from a place of despair. “Nothing at all, except a flask of olive oil.”

 What she did not realize was, what she had in her house was more than enough with God. But isn’t that how we see things as well? We tend to look at what we have in the natural and put our limits on it. We reason from the natural, not the super-natural. In the natural, we will always be limited, but in the super-natural, there is an endless supply, abundance. In Matthew 14:17-15 Jesus fed over five thousand people with five loaves of bread and two fish, (a two-piece fish dinner). There was so much super on that natural that the disciples picked up twelve baskets of leftovers.

One thing to note: in both instants, there obedience triggered the abundance. With the widow and the disciples, when they did not try to figure it out, but followed the direction of the Lord, it opened heavens gates and abundance poured out.

So, my question to you. What do you have in your house?




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