STOREHOUSE FAITH. CONNECTING TO GOD'S BLESSING

2 Kings 4
1 Now there cried a certain woman of the wives of the sons of the prophets unto Elisha, saying, Thy servant my husband is dead; and thou knowest that thy servant did fear the LORD: and the creditor is come to take unto him my two sons to be bondmen. 2 And Elisha said unto her, What shall I do for thee? tell me, what hast thou in the house? And she said, Thine handmaid hath not anything in the house, save a pot of oil. 3 Then he said, Go, borrow thee vessels abroad of all thy neighbours, even empty vessels; borrow not a few. 4 And when thou art come in, thou shalt shut the door upon thee and upon thy sons, and shalt pour out into all those vessels, and thou shalt set aside that which is full. 5 So she went from him, and shut the door upon her and upon her sons, who brought the vessels to her; and she poured out. 6 And it came to pass, when the vessels were full, that she said unto her son, Bring me yet a vessel. And he said unto her, There is not a vessel more. And the oil stayed. 7 Then she came and told the man of God. And he said, Go, sell the oil, and pay thy debt, and live thou and thy children of the rest.

There are several lessons we can learn from this but I will pick out two for our present discussion.

Firstly, this woman was in trouble because of the poor stewardship of her husband who was a prophet. This husband had borrowed money and staked his family as collateral. (This was normal practice). However, the prophet sadly died without paying off his debt.

The creditor therefore came and demanded to take the two sons of this prophet as indentured slaves to pay off the debt. An indentured slave was an indebted person who did not have the money to pay off a debt and instead worked it off as a slave. They would be set free after working off the debt. Sometimes this would take a life time of work if the debt was big.

So this man of God gets a loan (obviously he had no savings) and leaves his wife and children to suffer the consequences of his poor financial stewardship.

There is a good lesson for us to learn from here. Christians and especially preachers are some of the worst financial stewards out there. Our money management is very bad and keeps us and our families in perennial poverty. This needs to stop. We need to be an example to the world of how to make money and build wealth.

Your family shouldn’t struggle financially when you die. They shouldn’t go hungry and lack because you are no longer around. They shouldn’t lose all the family property because you left debts. That is not a great testimony to God and to His blessing. We need to be the richest people in the world. Christian families should be the wealthiest families in the world. Not muslims and unbelievers as is the case today.

Secondly, Elisha the prophet solved this woman’s problem by teaching her the stewardship principles of multiplication and storehouse. Multiply what you have, save and invest.
Elisha could have given this woman money, he could have paid the debt and set her sons free but he didn’t. Even though it most likely that this is what she expected and wanted him to do. From her perspective, this was the only solution to this problem. Instead he asked her what she had in the house. He knew that whatever she had, however little could solve her problem if she went about it God’s way.

Many of us in situations of lack see things from this widow’s perspective. We see only one way of getting out and it usually involves God or someone giving us something. Money, a position etc. We are unable or unwilling to consider the thousands of possibilities and ways that God can solve a problem and help us.

The woman answered that she had nothing, but a pot of oil. To her this pot of oil was nothing. It was insignificant, it wouldn’t solve the problem. And this is how most of us think. We think what we have is too little, our salary is too little, our income is too little and cannot solve our problems. However, we are wrong. Just like her.

Luke 9
12 When the day began to wear away, the twelve came and said to Him, "Send the multitude away, that they may go into the surrounding towns and country, and lodge and get provisions; for we are in a deserted place here." 13 But He said to them, "You give them something to eat." And they said, "We have no more than five loaves and two fish, unless we go and buy food for all these people." 14 For there were about five thousand men. Then He said to His disciples, "Make them sit down in groups of fifty." 15 And they did so, and made them all sit down.

Little with God in it is a lot. If we apply God’s principles of stewardship and have faith in His blessing, our little can go a long way. Jesus demonstrated this when he multiplied the five loaves and two fish to feed tens of thousands of people. When He asked the disciples what they had, they said a small boy had only two fish and five loaves and they knew that it was nothing among so many. They saw it from only one perspective. Like the widow and us, there was only one way to solve this problem. They needed more.

16 Then He took the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up to heaven, He blessed and broke them, and gave them to the disciples to set before the multitude. 17So they all ate and were filled, and twelve baskets of the leftover fragments were taken up by them.

But Jesus had a different perspective. He knew that they didn’t need more bread and fish. They simply needed to multiply the bread and fish they had. And for this to happen, all he needed was to have faith in the blessing of God. So He took the bread and fish, lifted his eyes to heaven (put His focus on God), blessed it, broke and gave to the disciples to take to the people. As the disciples took the bread to the people, it multiplied in their hands. Their baskets weren’t running out of bread and fish. As they took out of the basket, more was multiplied in the basket. This was faith at work. Not magic.

So Elisha reading from the same script of faith in the blessing tells this woman to borrow as many pots as she can, lock herself and her sons in and pour oil from her one pot into these pots. She probably thought this was silly, just like Jesus’ disciples and us. But she obeyed. Borrowed some pots, locked herself in and started pouring. The oil never stopped pouring until she had no more vessels to pour into.


Only she limited the amount of oil she could get by the number of vessels she had. Her vessels were the storage for the oil. They were the storehouse for her increase. The more vessels she had the more oil she would have got. Your storehouse is the limit of your prosperity. How many storehouses do you have? Do you have faith in the storehouse principle?

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