Obedience >> Self-Sufficiency

The sermon at church yesterday was the start of a series on Elijah. You may know Elijah from his showdown with the prophets of Baal, which was more of a smackdown than a showdown, or his time hanging out in the desert during a famine being fed by ravens. Yesterday, however, Pastor Jeff focused on another incident in Elijah’s life, a smaller story that occurred just after the thing with the ravens.

The brook that kept Elijah hydrated during that famine dried up, so God told Elijah to head to a small town. There he met a widow and he asked her for food and water. She said she’d be glad to help, but she only had enough flour and oil for one last meal for her and her son. The famine was bad, and it was particularly bad for a widow. She expected to die.

Elijah told her not to be afraid, to go home and make that meal, but to first make some bread for him. He told her that God would not let her flour and oil run out until the famine ended. 1 Kings 17:15 says, “She went away and did as Elijah had told her.”

Pastor Jeff said that faith always involves obedience and that obedience usually has to come before the blessings that God has in store for us. What Elijah asked the widow to do didn’t make a bit of sense. She had just enough flour and oil for one last meal, but Elijah asked her to give him that meal and, if she did that first, her flour and oil would never run out. Here she is, doing her best in a very bad situation to take care of herself and her son, and Elijah wants her to step out on faith and do something audacious, something that requires her to trust God over her own self-sufficiency.

She does. As crazy as Elijah’s words were, she followed them. And thanks to God, her jar of flour and her jug of oil replenished themselves. God blessed her obedience.

I’ve titled this post “Obedience >> Self-Sufficiency.” You’re probably familiar with the “greater than” sign, >. You may not know that mathematicians sometimes use a double “greater than” sign, >>, to indicate that one quantity is really, really greater than another. Orders of magnitude bigger. We use it when a single “greater than” sign just doesn’t do the difference justice.

I work very hard to take care of myself and my girls. I’m not facing a famine in the land, but being a single parent, remaking my life after ten years of marriage–that isn’t easy. But I’m smart and I’m resourceful, and I’m good at tackling challenges. But when I look at this widow and consider how her life–and her ability to care for her child–would have been so much worse had she not let go of her desire to be self-sufficient, had she not been obedient… I’m reminded that obedience to God is way, way greater than relying on myself.

Six years ago, I was in a small men’s Bible study. There were four of us in the group for the first year or so. I was reminded this morning what the other three guys have been up to in the last five years. One has launched Sodium, a place where families can go and spend time together. Another started the Father and Son Bowl, an event designed to encourage fathers to spend time with their sons that’s grown from 15 players to over 750. The third committed to being a missionary and was very close to going overseas when his wife was diagnosed with cancer. (She’s doing great now. Thank God!)

These three men stepped out in obedience, even though they knew they couldn’t accomplish on their own what God was calling them to do. What have I done in the past six years? I got divorced. Sure, there’s been other stuff, but while my friends were letting God work through them in amazing ways, I was leaning on God to help me get through the hardest thing I’ve ever experienced. It makes me sad to think what I could have been doing these last six years had my marriage not ended. But I also wonder, if my marriage had been fine, would I have stepped out in obedience like these three guys?

I can’t change the past, but I can change the future. When it comes to parenting (and the rest of my life) I can follow God’s lead, even when it doesn’t seem to make sense. I could be self-sufficient, but I know that God wants more for my life. And I do, too.

Image: “Don’t Look Down,” Mattman4698, Flickr (CC)