STOP POVERTY IN YOUR LIFE IV
2 Kings 4:1-7
In continuation of our study on how to overcome poverty, today we consider another critical factor which is the need to establish a structure. In the story that we read, in 2 Kings 4:1-7, the Bible speaks about a woman who was the wife of one of the sons of the prophet who had been left with a lot of poverty because her husband was late. Some of the debts that her husband had acquired before he passed on had now become a huge burden upon her and her two sons. She even recorded that the creditors were already preparing to come and take her sons as bondmen which led her to cry unto God’s servant asking for help. The Bible says God gave her an instruction through his servant of how to overcome the poverty that was confronting her.
The servant of God said to her ‘what do you have in your house’? to which she said she had nothing but only a pot of oil. Then the servant of God said go ahead borrow vessels, not a few. We know from the story that she went ahead and borrowed the vessels, and then obeyed the instruction of the servant of God by starting to pour from the oil into the borrowed vessels. The Bible says as soon as she filled the last vessel the oil stayed. Afterwards, she came and reported the miracle that she had experienced to the servant of God and the servant of God said go sell the oil, pay the debt and live you and your children with the remaining of the proceeds. One key lesson is from the fact that the oil stayed after the vessel that she had borrowed were all filled up.
One thing about God’s provision is that the extent to which you have a structure to retain and maintain what God blesses you with determines how long you enjoy the blessings that God have provided. The question that every child of God need to ask himself is: am I prepared to preserve the blessing that God is bringing my way? Do I have the structure to receive and hold what God is bringing towards me? There are many Christians who lack the structures to preserve God’s blessings by living and ‘eating with ten fingers’. Everything that comes to their hand goes to their belly, no savings, no investment nothing to preserve against the rainy day. Such Christians often experience lack when they are not supposed to.
Note that for every human being there are different seasons, some of plenty and some of not so much. God’s expectation is that we maintain the structures that allows us to take from the season of plenty to use it to deal with the requirements that we have in the seasons of not enough. Even in the natural state of life there is a harvest season and there is a planting season. During the planting season after a farmer has planted he still needs to eat something before the harvest comes. Therefore a structure to store, to keep, to preserve is required for a man to live in sufficiency all the days of his life. The Bible says wisdom is profitable to the man.
PRAYER: LORD, grant me the wisdom to be able to arrest the season of plenty to take care of the needs in the period when there is shortfall in the name of Jesus, Amen.
