Thursday, November 5, 2015

Trust

Now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require from you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways and love Him, and to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the Lord’s commandments and His statutes which I am commanding you today for your good?  Deuteronomy 10:12-13
This week we have been talking about trust and how the wicked King Ahab trusted in the wrong people and the wrong things.  God sent the prophet Elijah with a message for Ahab that most likely upset him.  So God had Elijah leave the area and hide out for a while. 
God has Elijah hide near the brook Kerith down by the Jordan River and that’s where he lives for the next couple of years.  And while he was hiding there: “The ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning and bread and meat in the evening, and he drank from the brook.” 1 Kings 17:6
Elijah was hiding.  He could not go out and forage for food or go hunting.  He had to stay close to the hideout.  So God had Ravens deliver take-out to him twice a day.  He drank water from the brook.
Why would God use Ravens to supply Elijah with food when there are so many other simple and satisfying ways of getting the job done?  He is God – He could do anything! 
Now this is odd for several reasons:
  1. Ravens don’t generally like being around humans… they avoid us if at all possible.
  2. Ravens were unclean birds. God’s people were not allowed to eat them, nor offer them in sacrifice.
  3. The food of ravens has usually been dead for a while. They eat road kill. They were scavengers. They’re kind of like vultures. Who would want to share their food?
  4. Even if we wanted to share their food, Ravens would never share. They don’t even share their food with their babies.
So God has Elijah being fed by unclean, disgusting, anti-social, and notoriously cruel birds.  WHY?  Why Ravens? 
Elijah, a prophet of God, has to depend on some dirty, stinky birds to bring him his food twice a day.  You have to wonder if there might have been times when he was fearful of whether or not they would come back. God used this time in Elijah’s life to strengthen his trust in Him.  Elijah had to completely depend on God for every provision of his life.  He had his food delivered – not ahead of time – but only when it was time to eat.  There was no stocking up.  It was on an as needed basis.
Eventually the brook dried up and God told Elijah to move on.  He told Elijah to go to Zarephath to a widow and ask for help.  The widow was very poor with not enough food to share.  She was preparing her final meal for her and her son and Elijah had to ask her to share it with him because that is what God told him to do, with a promise.  God had said that her flour would not run out nor would her jug of oil run dry. The widow did as Elijah had asked and just as he had said, her jar of flour and her jug of oil did not run out.  Elijah learned that he could trust God. God had ordered birds to feed him and he never went hungry.  He showed Elijah that He could enable a destitute widow to meet his needs.  God knows that trust is earned and over and over again God trained Elijah in trust.  God knows the power of trust in our lives.  There may be unexplained ravens and dried up brooks in your life.  Pray and trust that God will use every moment of wavering faith in our lives to build our trust in Him. 


Scripture to Claim:
Without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists AND that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.” Hebrews 11:6

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