TRUST THROUGH TRAGEDY

When God told Elijah to stay with the widow and her son, God provided the food they needed during the famine. God was performing daily miracles with the jar of flour and the jug of oil. But just when everything seemed to be going the widow’s way, tragedy strikes. Her son dies, the boy whom God was keeping alive with the miracle of food everyday dies.

You place your trust in God who provides for you, but then somewhere along the way you’re blindsided by tragedy, some unexpected loss. How do we trust God through the tragedy and come to know His power, even during those difficult times? We must make some choices.

1. CHOOSE TO CONFRONT YOURSELF.

Do you ever think that because you’ve served God that He owes you? Maybe you think that if you live right you’ll be exempt from problems. The truth is that the obedient are not exempt from troubles and tests. Accepting this truth will keep us from making wrong decisions that would cause us injury. It also guards us from the erroneous thinking that it doesn’t pay to do right, or that troubles always indicate sin in our lives. We can be enjoying God’s miracles everyday and still not have our heart right with Him. In tragedy we have the opportunity to confront who we are and where we are in relation to God.

2. CHOOSE TO GET BETTER INSTEAD OF BITTER.

When we see tragedy from a temporary humanistic standpoint it’s easy to get bitter.
Then I realized that my heart was bitter, and I was all torn up inside. Psa. 73:21 (NLT)

Bitterness will only eat away at you. It does nothing good for you. Instead it tears you down and tears your insides into pieces. The good news is that we don’t have to let bitterness have its way.

3. CHOOSE TO GROW FROM IT.

“Give me your son,” Elijah replied. He took him from her arms, carried him to the upper room where he was staying, and laid him on his bed. 1 Kings 17:19

The widow chose to give her son to Elijah. In doing so she took a step of faith because she was really taking a step to place her faith in God. She took a step to grow in faith. God prepared the widow to give up her son by first giving up her food. She learned from giving up her food first to Elijah that God could provide when she trusts Him. Now she must trust Him with the thing she cares more about than anything else in her whole world.

Before David faced Goliath, God prepared him by defeating the lion and the bear that attacked his flock.

Take the small steps of faith because God is growing your faith. We all face loss and tragedy, but when we’ve been prepared by the Lord because we’ve taken steps of faith to grow – then we will be prepared. When we see through the eyes of faith we know our God is bigger than our problems, even bigger than something as devastating and as final as death.

4. CHOOSE TO PRAY INSTEAD OF PANIC.

“Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?” In all this, Job did not sin in what he said. Job 2:10

Job recognized that God also allows pain into our lives. And it’s the opportunity to choose to pray to Him and learn to trust He knows what He’s doing, even though we don’t like it or we don’t understand it or we’re upset about it. This is our journey of spiritual growth, step by step, gradually growing our faith in the Infinitely Wise, All-Knowing, Almighty, Merciful, Loving God.

When we pray according to God’s will, it results in God’s action.
This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him. 1 John 5:14-15

5. CHOOSE TO CELEBRATE THE LIFE GOD GIVES.

Elijah picked up the child and carried him down from the room into the house. He gave him to his mother and said, “Look, your son is alive!” Then the woman said to Elijah, “Now I know that you are a man of God and that the word of the LORD from your mouth is the truth.” 1 Kings 17:23-24

How is it that the very same God who provides enough oil and flour everyday to keep the widow and her son alive, one day allows her son to die? The upside is that her son’s death provided the opportunity for her to experience the power of God to a greater degree. It brought her to salvation in the Lord. And that’s the life to celebrate.

When tragedy strikes, it’s not the end. It’s part of the journey to trusting God more. God wants you to know He can be trusted through the tough times. It’s our chance to grow a little more in our faith in Him. The beauty of it is that He gives us “real life” through it and “lasting life” through death into an eternity spent in Heaven that will cause all of our troubles and tragedies to pale in comparison.

WHO TO TRUST

We tend to take matters into our own hands and try to manipulate circumstances to meet our own desires. The problem is that many times it backfires on us. Before we can enjoy the fulfilled life God has for us, we must learn to rely on Him.

FOUR LESSONS FOR RELYING ON GOD:

1. CONFRONT YOUR FEARS SO YOU CAN TRUST GOD.

Often, the life of faith will lead down difficult paths. God never promised that the way of faith would be an easy way. In fact, just the opposite is true. God has promised us that life will be filled with trials and troubles, (Job 14:1; Job 5:7; John 16:33). Yet, that is the path of faith. But God also promises that He will take you through it.

2. ACCEPT THE UNEXPECTED.

God does a lot of things we may not expect. We think He would supply our needs and reward our faith the way we think He should. But He does the unexpected. Why? Because He is teaching us what it means to really trust in Him.

3. LIVE BY GOD’S GRACE ONE DAY AT A TIME.

Don’t buy into the false teaching that God always wants you to have lots of money and material things and wealth. The Bible doesn’t teach that. Elijah, the “man of God”, someone at the center of God’s will wasn’t led to a place of plenty.

The Apostle Paul teaches us the principle in Philippians 4:12-13, I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through him who gives me strength.

The issue is not whether you have much or little; the issue is trusting God. And He will supply everything you need. Learn to trust in the “Gift-Giver”, not the “gifts.” Put your trust in the “Provider”, not the “provision.”

How long can you go without going to the grocery store before starving? Most of us could probably go for a long time. That’s because we live in America and we have a surplus. We have pantries and refrigerators and freezers to store our food. We have drive thru restaurants, so the family can eat in the car on the way to wherever we’re going.

We consider “storing up” to be a blessing, but the only danger with storing up is we may not learn to depend on God. We just simply depend on our selves and our surplus and hardly consider God to be our Provider and Guide in life.

The Bible does teach us to prepare for the future and to plan ahead, but there is a danger of depending on ourselves more than on God. We may take our eyes off of God and look more at what we can do to supply for ourselves, and then when things don’t go our way and circumstances upset our plans, we become frustrated, worried, and angry. But that’s because we weren’t trusting God. We were trusting in ourselves instead.

4. BE WILLING TO TRUST GOD WHEN YOU DON’T SEE THE ANSWERS.

The prophet Elijah said to the widow who only had one meal left for her son and herself, "Don't be afraid. Go home and do as you have said. But first make a small cake of bread for me from what you have and bring it to me, and then make something for yourself and your son. For this is what the Lord , the God of Israel, says: 'The jar of flour will not be used up and the jug of oil will not run dry until the day the Lord gives rain on the land.'" She went away and did as Elijah had told her. So there was food every day for Elijah and for the woman and her family. For the jar of flour was not used up and the jug of oil did not run dry, in keeping with the word of the Lord spoken by Elijah. 1 Kings 17:13-16

When Elijah hears the widow’s sob story, he makes what appears to be the coldest demand in the Bible. He tells her to go ahead and fix her last supper, but to feed him first. On the surface this appears harsh and cruel, but it was really an appeal for faith and surrender to the will of God. When this widow heard the word of God, she went and did as Elijah had commanded her. It must have taken great faith to use the last little bit of meal she had to prepare bread for a total stranger. Yet she did it by faith. And because she took God at His Word and prepared bread for Elijah, God blessed. For years, until it rained again and the famine ended, every mealtime was a miracle. God worked a miracle in that jug and in that jar every single day.

We serve a God Who specializes in doing the impossible. It may look hopeless to us, but we must never count God out. He can take the little that is dedicated to Him by faith and multiply it to enormous proportions.

Hudson Taylor, the great missionary to China in the nineteenth century said, “God’s work, done God’s way, will receive God’s supply.”

God is able to turn hopeless situations around and give hope. He’s able to take death and give you life. He’s able to turn impossible into possible. He is able to take your faithlessness and give you faith – if we’ll really rely on Him. We should make our plans but trust God to lead us and provide for us. God wants us to look to him for strength to get through today, and not to worry about tomorrow. Jesus said in Matthew 6:33-34 (NCV) “Seek first God's kingdom and what God wants. Then all your other needs will be met as well. So don't worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow will have its own worries. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” He’ll take care of today, today, and He’ll take care of tomorrow, tomorrow.

GROWING FAITH

The Bible says of faith, Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. … And 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 11:1, 6

What kind of faith does it take to trust what God says with confidence and assurance?

It takes:

• A TRAINED FAITH

To be able to trust God and what He says through His Word, you must go through times of preparation. And many times that preparation requires a time of solitude and isolation for preparation of the heart.

Moses is an example. In forty years in Egypt Moses had learned the skills of worldly leadership, how to be a leader of men. In “God’s School of the Desert” he was taught for forty years the qualities of spiritual leadership: patience, maturity, and sensitivity in listening to the voice of God.

Years later Joseph spent a number of years in an Egyptian prison because he was unjustly accused. But those years of obscurity prepared him for promotion to Prime Minister of the Egypt.

The Apostle Paul, following his conversion spent 3 years in obscurity in Arabia. While he was there God was preparing him to be the great missionary to the Gentiles.

Abraham’s “faith training” gave him confidence in God. Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God. Romans 4:20

It takes:

• AN OBEDIENT FAITH

Don’t expect God to give you further direction in life until you follow the directions He’s already given you. If you’re confused over the will of God for your life today, it may be the result of not obeying what He’s already told you to do. Do what God has already told you to do and He will direct you life.

The road the righteous travel is like the sunrise, getting brighter and brighter until daylight has come. Proverbs 4:18 (GNB)

It takes:

• A CHALLENGED FAITH

God told Elijah to go to the Kerith Ravine and stay there. God caused the ravens to bring him bread and meat twice a day, and he drank from the brook. Then in 1 Kings 17:7 it says, Some time later the brook dried up because there had been no rain in the land.

What do you do when your brook dries up? What do you do when your supply starts to run out? When this happens to us sometimes we cry out, “Lord what happened?” Where did I go wrong? Didn’t you tell me to come here and wait and you would provide for me? How can I be in the center of your will and my brook is drying up?”

The reason we think that is because we tend to think that we are in the center of God’s will as long as everything is going great. Have you ever thought that maybe you’re still in the center of His will when the brook dries up? When our brook dries up we’re tempted to think that God’s power has stopped. But “drying brooks” are not an indication of God forsaking us. It’s only an indication that God is changing the source of His supply. God always knows what He’s doing and you’re always in His care. When you’re serving the Lord, you are often called to sit by “drying brooks.”

F.B. Meyer says, “Many of us have had to sit by drying brooks; perhaps some are sitting by them now –the drying brook of popularity, ebbing away as it did from John the Baptist. The drying brook of health, sinking under a creeping paralysis or a slow decline. The drying brook of money, slowly dwindling before the demands of sickness, bad debts or other people’s extravagance. The drying brook of friendship, which for long has been diminishing, and threatens soon to cease. Ah, it is hard to sit beside a drying brook…. Why does God let them dry? He wants to teach us not to trust in his gifts but in Himself. Let us learn these lessons, and turn from our failing Keriths to our unfailing Savior. All sufficiency resides in Him!”

Put your dependence, not in the gifts, but in the Gift Giver. Be willing to trust God even when your daily provisions fail. Our trust is not in the “daily provisions.” Instead our trust is in the Lord, The Provider. He’s going to provide for you, but He may change the source of His supply for you.

IN THE WORLD BUT NOT OF THE WORLD

When the prophet Elijah appeared on the scene there had been sixty years of bloodshed, intrigue, immorality and idolatry in the nation of Israel. When Ahab came to the throne the Bible says that he was worse than the kings who came before him. How bad where things? The altars of the Lord God had been dismantled. His prophets were in hiding. His worshippers were a mere handful, scattered and intimidated into silence by the scope of the evil all around them. The believers in God had been so silenced that their existence was known only to God. And behind all of this evil was a diabolical duo – King Ahab and his Queen, Jezebel.

In America today we are living in what has been described as a post-Christian era. It is post-Christian not because there are no longer any Christians living in this country. There are probably more Christians than there ever has been, but it’s post-Christian in the sense that the Christian faith no longer plays a major role in shaping the values and morals of our society or in how we relate to one another.

The reality of this forces us to face some tough questions: Who or what is my God? Do I claim faith in the God of the Bible, but then live my life like I don’t really believe Him?

Is God really God in my life from the standpoint of what I treasure, what my attitudes are, what my priorities are, and what determines my behavior? What is really important to me? How committed am I to my relationship with God?

If you’re a believer in the Lord God here are some things we can do to live out a genuine faith:

• Decide to let God be God of everything in your life.
Rom.6:13 (NLT) Do not let any part of your body become a tool of wickedness, to be used for sinning. Instead, give yourselves completely to God since you have been given new life. And use your whole body as a tool to do what is right for the glory of God.

• Ask God to use you for His great purpose through your life.
Jer. 29:11 “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

• Study the Bible thoroughly and be strengthened in the truth of one God.
2 Tim. 2:15 Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth.

• Be courageous enough to identify with Jesus always.
Prov. 28:1 The wicked man flees though no one pursues, but the righteous are as bold as a lion.

SERVE GOD WITHOUT RESENTMENT

Have you ever witnessed a child throwing a temper-tantrum in the middle of a department store (hopefully it was not your own). The child may do any number of things. They may pound on the floor with their hands and feet. They may lie on the floor and scream at the top of their lungs. They may throw things or swing their arms about. Or they may be very creative and do all of these things at the same time. But in all of this the child has a purpose - he is demanding that he get his own way.

Jonah became angry with God because he didn’t get his own way. He had obeyed God (finally). He was doing what God wanted done, but God had not done what Jonah wanted done. The Bible says in Jonah 4:1, Jonah was greatly displeased and became angry.

If we obey God with an attitude of unwillingness and anger then on our account it’s no better than disobedience. To act obedient while in your heart you resent it, doesn’t count as obedience. We may go through the actions, apparently obeying God. We are doing what we think we should be doing, living the kind of life we think a Christian should live. But secretly we are unhappy and angry with God for telling us to do it. We need to recognize that resentment does a lot of damage to us.

WHAT DAMAGE DOES RESENTMENT DO?

1. Resentment destroys your peace.
Then everything in life is seen through the lenses of our anger and resentment.

2. Resentment distracts you from your purpose.
Some people, deep inside their hearts, hold a grudge against God. They carry around resentment towards God. Why? They think He’s not interested in their lives or problems.

They’re convinced he doesn’t care because He hasn’t answered a particular prayer or acted on their behalf.

3. Resentment diminishes your productiveness.
It is hard to be productive when we keep our abilities to ourselves and use them for our own advantage instead of using them to benefit others and serve God.

4. Resentment distorts your perspective.
God may send us a blessing and we in our resentment may think to ourselves, “After all the things God has done for other people He is at last doing something for me.” And we act selfishly. An angry and resentful person loses his or her sense of perspective. And they begin to pick at little things.

HOW TO CONQUER RESENTMENT

• Confess it and release it.
  Take your hands off of it. Let it go. Give it to the Lord.

• Surrender the control of your life to the Lord.

• You don’t have to understand all that God does in order to obey Him.
Job 38:1-5 And now, finally, GOD answered Job from the eye of a violent storm. He said: "Why do you confuse the issue? Why do you talk without knowing what you're talking about? … I have some questions for you, and I want some straight answers. Where were you when I created the earth? Tell me, since you know so much! Who decided on its size? Certainly you'll know that! Who came up with the blueprints and measurements?”

• Choose to serve God joyfully right where you are.
Psa. 100:2 Serve the LORD with gladness.

AN URGENT CALL TO GOD CHANGES EVERYTHING

Abraham Lincoln wrote: “We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us. It behooves us, then to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.”

Lincoln proclaimed a “National Day of Fasting and Prayer” on March 30, 1863.

Spiritual renewal is always accompanied by repentance. To understand what repentance is we need to first know what it’s not.

What repentance is not:

• Remorse is not repentance.
Being sorry for our sin is only the beginning of repentance. You feel remorse. It leads us to really repent. The rich young ruler who came to Jesus went away sorrowful but he did not repent.

• Regret is not repentance.
Regret is wishing that our sin had never happened. We can regret it but never repent of it. Pontius Pilate regretted his decision concerning Jesus. But did he ever repent?

• Resolve is not repentance.
We can decide that we’re going to do better in the future, and that may lead to reform but it’s not repentance.

What repentance is:

• Repentance is a change of mind which leads to a change of heart which leads to a change of action.

This is what happened with the people of Nineveh. In Jonah 3:8 the king plainly stated…
“Let man and beast be covered with sackcloth. Let everyone call urgently on God. Let them give up their evil ways and their violence”. 

Verse 10 gives the results: When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he had compassion and did not bring upon them the destruction he had threatened.

Dr. A W. Tozer suggested the following for personal spiritual renewal:

1. Get thoroughly dissatisfied with yourself.
Complacency is the deadly enemy of spiritual progress. The contented soul is a stagnant soul.

2. Decide on transformation of all areas of your life.
Timid experiments are tagged for failure before they start. We must throw our whole soul into our desire for God.

3. Put yourself in the way of blessing.
It’s a mistake to expect God’s help to come as a windfall apart from conditions known and met. To desire spiritual transformation, and at the same time to neglect prayer and devotion, is to wish one way and walk another.

4. Have faith in God.  Begin to expect.
Look towards God. All heaven is on your side. God will not disappoint you. Spiritual renewal and a changed life are possible if the conditions are met.

In a well-furnished kitchen there are not only crystal goblets and silver platters, but waste cans and compost buckets—some containers used to serve fine meals, others to take out the garbage. Become the kind of container God can use to present any and every kind of gift to his guests for their blessing. 2 Timothy 2:20-21 (Mes)

GETTING THROUGH THE CRISIS

Sometimes we find ourselves in a crisis that is beyond our control and all we have left is prayer. It’s beyond our control. There is nothing else you can do but pray. What can we learn in situations like that?

God uses crises to teach us 3 truths:

1. DON’T HESITATE TO PRAY.

When Jonah was swallowed by the big fish he prayed. From inside the fish Jonah prayed to the LORD his God (Jonah 2:1).

It was “from inside” the fish. He prayed from within the fish. It’s when we’re “inside” the crisis that we cry out to God with all our heart. It’s when we are under water, trapped, and in the dark. Sometimes that’s what it takes for God to get our total attention, our whole heart.

Abraham Lincoln once said, “I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go.” Jonah was totally exhausted and at the end of his rope. He had no where else to turn. Only then did he cry out to God for help.

When Jonah had turned his back on God, it didn’t bother him to be separated from God.  But suddenly, when Jonah was thrown over board, as he faced death, he found that it bothered him tremendously to be separated from God.

The most terrifying aspect of Jonah’s crisis was when he realized that God had almost given him what he wanted – to be free of his presence. Jonah wanted to run from God. Now the implications of that separation bring Jonah to repentance.

2. PRAY FROM ANYWHERE BECAUSE GOD WILL HEAR YOU.

Jonah recorded in Jonah 2:2, “In my distress I called to the LORD, and he answered me. From the depths of the grave I called for help, and you listened to my cry”.

How do you pray in the middle of a crisis? IMMEDIATELY and SCRIPTURALLY.
I don’t think Jonah waited. As soon as he cleared his throat he was praying. As he was sinking deeper in the sea inside the fish, he was praying. He prayed immediately.

What do you pray when you don’t know what to pray? Jonah prayed back to God what God had already said. He prayed God’s Word back to God. He prayed Scripturally. He quoted from the book of Psalms in his praying. He counted on the promises of God and prayed through Scripture.

In your crisis, pray God’s Word back to Him. That’s how we stand on what He says. That’s how we express our belief in Him. That’s how we claim His truths and promises.

3. GROWING IN FAITH IS NOT ALWAYS PRETTY.

And the LORD commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land (Jonah 2:10).

Growing in faith may not be a beautiful emotional experience. It may not be a spiritual high. Most of the time it’s not.

Jonah left on a ship bound for the city of Tarshish, but he didn’t return in the same way. He spent 3 days and 3 nights in the digestive system of a big fish only to be vomited up on the seashore.

The good news is that no matter how much we mess up, or how disobedient we’ve been, or how far away we get from the Lord, or whatever uncontrollable crises we’re going through – there is always a way through it when we trust and obey the Lord. And the journey through it leaves you a changed person from what you were before.