Blessings Proportionate to Faith - 2 Kings 1-5

Blessings Proportionate to Faith

2 Kings 4:1-7

Elisha and the Widow's Oil

Now the wife of one of the sons of the prophets cried to Elisha, “Your servant my husband is dead, and you know that your servant feared the LORD, but the creditor has come to take my two children to be his slaves.” And Elisha said to her, “What shall I do for you? Tell me; what have you in the house?” And she said, “Your servant has nothing in the house except a jar of oil.” Then he said, “Go outside, borrow vessels from all your neighbors, empty vessels and not too few. Then go in and shut the door behind yourself and your sons and pour into all these vessels. And when one is full, set it aside.” So she went from him and shut the door behind herself and her sons. And as she poured they brought the vessels to her. When the vessels were full, she said to her son, “Bring me another vessel.” And he said to her, “There is not another.” Then the oil stopped flowing. She came and told the man of God, and he said, “Go, sell the oil and pay your debts, and you and your sons can live on the rest.”

This is such a simple story.  Yet, it is a story of God power in our lives through faith in that power.  The widow was in a bad spot.  But, Elisha gave her a way out of that problem.   Her faith was enough to get a number of vessels.   She apparently had enough oil to sell to pay both her debts and to live on after that.   But, she did run out of vessels.   When she went to collect the vessels she had no idea how much oil Elisha would provide.   We would like to think we would have found much more than she did.  That is an easy criticism of the widow.   She did get enough to pay debts and live on the rest.   But, the lesson is very clear for us to understand.  The blessings we experience in life are proportional to our faith in God.   Faith is a gift we get from God.  With just a small amount we can do great things:

Matthew 17:20

He said to them, “Because of your little faith. For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.”

God is not asking us to do much. He simply wants us to gather empty vessels and have Him fill them.   They have to be empty.  We are empty vessels and God wants to fill us with oil, value.   He does that via faith.