The Three Keys to Power Part 2: The First Key (Faith)

The Three Keys to Power Part 2

The First Key (Faith)

            1 Kings 17:8 begins the story of Elijah and the Widow.  It reads, “And the word of the Lord came unto him, saying, Arise, get thee to Zarephath, which belongeth to Zidon, and dwell there: behold, I have commanded a widow woman there to sustain thee. So he arose and went to Zarephath.  And when he came to the gate of the city, behold the widow woman was there gathering of sticks: and he called to her, and said, Fetch me, I pray thee, a little water in a vessel, that I may drink.”  

Notice here that God told Elijah to go to Zarephath and that He commanded a widow woman to sustain Elijah.  So right away we see that God had commanded the widow to take care of Elijah.  We also see that Elijah trusted God that if he went to Zarephath that this widow would have the means to take care of him.

            Let’s continue reading in verse 11. “And as she was going to fetch it, he called to her, and said, Bring me, I pray thee, a morsel of bread in thine hand.  And she said, As the Lord thy God liveth, I have not a cake, but an handful of meal in a barrel, and a little oil in a cruse: and, behold, I am gathering two sticks, that I may go in and dress it for me and my son, that we may eat it, and die.”

            So let me paint the picture here.  Here’s this strange man that shows up on this widow woman’s doorstep.  Now God has told her that she is supposed to take care of him.  However, she’s only got a little food in a barrel and a little oil to make maybe a small loaf of bread with and somehow she’s supposed to feed this other grown man whom she doesn’t even really know as well as herself and her growing son.  Then, on top of that, she has to give him water, which is scarce here because there is a drought in the land.

            Elijah hears the woman’s story and his response is, if you think about it, quite appalling.  In verse 13 he says, “Fear not; go and do as thou hast said: but make me thereof a little cake first, and bring it unto me, and after make for thee and for thy son.”

            Can you imagine this?!  Put yourself in this poor woman’s shoes for a moment.  There you are with next to no food and this strange man has the audacity to tell you to make food for him first?  Why did he do this?  How could he expect her to comply?

            Well the first thing we can say about this response is that Elijah was asking her to have faith in God.  Basically, Elijah knew that God had told the both of them that she was going to take care of Elijah, so they both had to have faith that God was going to use what little she had to accomplish it.  

            Therefore, we find that faith is the first key to power with God.  In other words, faith greatly influences God.  He is deeply moved by it.  This is why Jesus would say, “Your faith has healed you,” and other such things.  Jesus would often say, after a miracle or just before one, that faith was the catalyst that brought the miracle about.  Elijah also understood this, and that was why he told the widow woman to demonstrate her faith by first baking the bread and then giving it away to someone else.  It was so that she could show God that she trusted God so much that she would even take the last morsel of food she had and give it to another.  By doing this, she showed that she trusted God would still somehow provide for her even after she had given all her food away.

            This, though, is nothing new. We know that faith is necessary for just about everything in God’s Kingdom.  We know that we are saved by faith.  We know that we live by faith.  We know that we must have the faith of a mustard seed to move mountains.  There are so many times the Bible talks about faith as being necessary.  So to reveal that faith is the first key is not really any big revelation.

            One thing I will say about faith, however, is that I want to define it a bit more for those who struggle with what faith really is.  Notice the use of faith here.  First, you should know that faith is not necessarily destroyed by doubt.  The woman here was obviously doubting God’s words because she told Elijah her story.  If she hadn’t doubted at all then Elijah would have asked her for food and water and she would have simply given it to him without making any comments.  However, because she told Elijah her story she obviously was looking for him to give her an out.  So she doubted that she could accomplish God’s will in spite of God’s command.  She was having a moment where she was wondering, “How is God going to supply MY needs plus THIS MAN’S needs as well?  Surely, if I keep this bread for myself and my son, at least we might live a bit longer so that God could bring something else along to save us.  However, if I give it to this man then my son and I could die before more food comes along.”

            You see, this woman was literally starving to death.  This was not a case of a woman who had simply skipped a meal or two.  There was drought and famine in the land.  Food was scarce and she was a widow with a growing boy to feed.  She was dying and so was her son.  To them, that last bit of bread could be their last meal and they might starve to death in a day or so, if not sooner.

            Yet Elijah was asking her to give up this last possible hope for survival, and he was asking to give it to HIM first!  So naturally she tried to explain her position.  Naturally she was thinking, “Maybe he just doesn’t understand the situation here.  If I explain to him that this is all I have left, maybe then he’ll feel bad and give ME more to eat instead.”

            But Elijah did not let her get away with her doubt.  He trusted God would keep His word.  Therefore, he expressed to the woman that she should go and make bread and let HIM have some first.  In this way, the woman would display a great measure of faith.  Besides this, Elijah was reminding her of what God had commanded her.  If she trusted in God and obeyed His command, God would take care of her in return. 

            So God still performed a miracle here in spite of her doubt.  Why?  Because faith isn’t just believing.  Faith is acting upon your trust in God.  It requires some risk.  Basically, faith in God is taking an action where if God doesn’t come through for you then you will lose something.  It’s taking that blind leap into the dark hoping that there is something beneath you and trusting that something WILL be beneath you.  

            You see, the widow woman doubted, but Elijah told her to go back into the house and make for him and then for herself and her son.  In other words, he told her to trust God and do as He commanded, and THEN God would bless her and take care of her.  If she had not acted on Elijah’s words then she would have not received her blessing. However, because she acted in obedience in spite of her doubt…in spite of the fact that in her mind she was thinking it was crazy and insane…because she trusted the man of God and trusted God’s word enough to simply do as she was told….God brought her the miracle she needed.

            So faith isn’t just making yourself believe that something is going to happen.  Faith is trusting God enough to obey Him in spite of how much you may be doubting Him or how crazy you think His way might be.  This is true courage.  Courage isn’t the absence of fear but the ability to act in spite of your fear. The same is true for faith.  It is acting in spite of doubt.

            Let’s put this into more practical terms.  You only have one car, and you need that car to get to work.  However, your friend has just totaled his car, and you feel that God is telling you to go ahead and give him your car.  That’s crazy, right?  If you give your friend your car you won’t have a car to get to work.  How can God expect you to do this?  Giving your car to that friend, knowing that you will not have a way to get to work unless God intervenes, is a powerful act of faith!

            Here’s another example. Two co-workers are talking about whether or not the one co-worker should spend the night with their significant other.  You feel that God is urging you to say something about how the person shouldn’t do that.  In your mind, however, you say, “They won’t listen anyway, and all they’ll do is make fun of me.”  The risk is your pride may be hurt, but if you act in faith you will go against your doubts believing that God will help you say the right things and that those things that you say will have a positive impact on at least one of them.  They might persecute you, but you don’t know how much your words may affect them deep down.  Therefore, you have faith that, no matter how the situation winds up, God will bring good from it.

            One final thing to note before completing this point is that sometimes individuals do put their faith in the wrong things.  Again, notice how I pointed out that God was the one who told the widow and Elijah that the widow would take care of them.  Sometimes people put their faith in God that He will do something for them, but God never told them that He would.  THIS is largely why people lose faith in God.  They believe that He is telling them to do something, and when everything crumbles around them they wonder why God would do such a thing.  They also, then, tend to say, “Maybe God isn’t real.”

            God will not honor your faith if it is misplaced.  In other words, if you are saying, “I’m doing this because I’m trusting God will give me what I am trusting Him for,” then your faith may be misplaced.  Make sure that if you are doing something risky that you have prayed about it and you really, genuinely, feel that God has told you that He will honor your faith.

            Let me give you an example of what I’m talking about.  When my wife and I were going through unemployment, together, after 911, I was attempting to continue my education and get my degree as a minister.  In the beginning, I firmly believed that God was going to get my wife another job so that she could continue to support me while I was completing my schooling.  After all, I was going to school to be a minister!  Surely God would not allow us to go bankrupt and He would provide financially so I could continue such a noble pursuit.  Right?

            Wrong!  I was so certain that God would supply my wife with a new job that I believed that if I even tried to get a job it would be a sign that I doubted God.  I had so much faith that God would do what I thought He would do that I was destroying our family by sending us towards financial ruin.  After 911, my wife struggled A LOT to get another job.  It seemed like no one was hiring.  After all, it wasn’t just 911 that had destroyed the market.  There was also the Enron scandal.  Her credentials were even too good to get a temporary job because employers knew she wouldn’t stay long at a job making as little as they wanted to offer.

            But I had lesser credentials.  I could have and should have tried to get a job.  Wisdom was screaming in my ear, “Get a job!  Your family is going to go bankrupt if you don’t!”  I, however, was saying, with full conviction, “If I get a job I will only show that I’m not trusting God to bring about our future goals of me being a pastor and such.”  And so, I continued to just trust God to take care of everything, and I prayed so hard that God would come through for us.  I asked and asked and begged and begged and just kept saying, “God’s going to do it.”  I was scared and worried and fretting all the time, but the thought of getting a job was the last thing on my mind because I had decided in the beginning that God would get my wife a job so I could continue in my schooling.  Right from the start, I was so sure that this would happen that I thought no more of me getting a job.  I was just that certain of it.

            But God never told me that He would get my wife a job and that I shouldn’t get one.  In fact, I know it wasn’t God, looking back, because there were so many ways He kept trying to tell me that I should get out there and try to get a job.  He had pastors stand up on pulpits and preach, “If a man isn’t working then he is worse than an infidel,” and so on.  Multiple times this had happened.  There were other things screaming at me too.  Bills, needs for our children, expenses of various kinds hitting us from different directions.  Looking back, I should have seen the signs around me that God was trying to get my attention and get me out there to get a job.