November 12-22, 2015
I will be leading another ACT Missions Trips team scheduled to return to the same orphanage our July 2014 team visited!
I was typing a Facebook message to a friend. Every time I see her face pop up on my newsfeed, I hear this whisper to my heart. She’s one of MANY people I have asked about joining my team who makes absolutely no sense to my logical and ordered brain (I do have a left-side that operates occasionally!). As my fingers were flying across the keys, this story from 2 Kings 4:1-7 came to mind…
The wife of a man from the company of the prophets cried out to Elisha, “Your servant my husband is dead, and you know that he revered the LORD. But now his creditor is coming to take my two boys as his slaves.”
Elisha replied to her, “How can I help you? Tell me, what do you have in your house?”
“Your servant has nothing there at all,” she said, “except a small jar of olive oil.”
Elisha said, “Go around and ask all your neighbors for empty jars. Don’t ask for just a few. Then go inside and shut the door behind you and your sons. Pour oil into all the jars, and as each is filled, put it to one side.”
She left him and shut the door behind her and her sons. They brought the jars to her and she kept pouring. When all the jars were full, she said to her son, “Bring me another one.”
But he replied, “There is not a jar left.” Then the oil stopped flowing.
She went and told the man of God, and he said, “Go, sell the oil and pay your debts. You and your sons can live on what is left.”
I HATE asking for help!
Actually, I HATE asking for anything.
Recruiting and fundraising are killer for me, because I have to become vulnerable enough to be rejected, again. “No,” just hurts sometimes.
God has really ramped up this obedience thing He’s asking of me! It’s not like I’m sending out random requests to my entire list of contacts, but He is bringing very specific names and faces to mind. Even when I could help them write their long list of reasons why they are saying, “NO!” He keeps wanting me to obey and ask.
I loved this widow story since I first discovered it a few years ago. It’s not the prophet, widow, and oil story that I grew up hearing repeatedly. This story intrigued me most because the prophet Elisha instructed the widow to actively become a part of the miracle of God’s provision. She had to knock on door after door after door of all her neighbors and ask for empty jars. God filled every jar!
I often wondered if she questioned in reflection about the door she didn’t knock on and the jars she didn’t ask for? I’ve pondered how humbling this task must have been. Begging for more emptiness.
God required her to have expectant anticipation, hope and light in her darkness and despair.
The friend I was messaging today is in one of those empty places in her life right now.
Yet this is what God desires of us all, as leaders and team member volunteers who join us. He does not ask us to come to Him full of ourselves and all we can bring or give or do. He wants our empty vessels to come before Him. He will fill us, to be poured out for His glory, as we enter into His love story.
