Figuring Out What My Drought is About // Reaping God's Harvest in My Life, Part 2

Everybody wants to reap a harvest in life. You do, I do. But sometimes, our lives feel a whole bunch more like a drought than a harvest. So exactly what is my drought about? What exactly is your drought about? Why is God letting this, this drought happen, to you and to me?

 

Another Drought

This week on Christianityworks we are continuing with the series called, “Reaping God’s Harvest in My Life.” We all want to reap a harvest but sometimes, well, sometimes life is a bit more about drought than it is about harvest. Why is that? What’s going on when we are going through a drought? Maybe you’re going through a drought; a dry time; a difficult time, a time where things aren’t just going the way you’d like them to go and when that’s happening, it’s dry and there’s no rain and in a lot of countries there are famines when there are droughts. And when there’s a drought on, what everybody is hanging out for is what?

Well, of course we’re all waiting for rain when there’s a drought because we know to have a harvest we need rain. It’s a very simple cycle – you buy some seed, you plant it, you wait for the rain, the rain comes and then the seed grows into a harvest and then we send out the workers into the field and we gather a harvest. No rain, no harvest! That’s right isn’t it?

Well, let’s see. Let’s have a look. Last week we looked at Isaac’s experience when - if you have a Bible, you can go back and look at it in Genesis chapter 26 – he went and did some silly things but then he went and sowed some seed in the middle of drought and we’re told that his harvest, he reaped one hundredfold. So he planted one seed and for every one seed he planted, he reaped one hundred seeds.

Today we are going to look at another drought. If you have a Bible, grab it. We are going to go to First Kings chapter 16. This is a time when Elijah, the Tishbite, got involved in a drought because one of the Kings of Israel was doing some silly things. If you have a look in First Kings chapter 16 verse 29, it says this:

In the thirty eighth year of King Asa, of Judah, Ahab the son of Omri began to reign over Israel. Ahab, son of Omri, reigned over Israel in Samaria twenty two years. Ahab, son of Omri did evil in the sight of the Lord, more than all who went before him.

Now remember, in the history of Israel, by this time they were in the Promised Land, but the twelve tribes of Israel had split. The ten tribes to the north were referred to as Israel and the two tribes to the south, Judah and Benjamin, were referred to as Judah. That’s why we have two Kings that the writer is here talking about.

We’re talking about Ahab who reigned over Israel, that’s the ten tribes to the north and this guy was a bad dude. He was just not one of the good Kings; he did some terribly bad things and so God decided to deal with him by sending a drought. And this is where we see Elijah come, in the beginning of chapter 17 of First Kings and this is what happens.

Now Elijah, the Tishbite, of Tishbe, in Gilead, said to Ahab, “As the Lord the God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, there shall be neither dew nor rain these years, except by my word. The Word of the Lord came to him saying: “Go from here and turn eastward and hide yourself in the Wadi of Cherith which is east of the Jordon. So Ahab did bad things; he married Jezebel, he worshipped another god called Baal and so God’s response was to send God’s man, Elijah, a prophet, to say to the King: “Listen, I am going to send a drought, not only on you but on your whole country.”

Now what’s going on here? God is a God of grace but He is also a God of great wisdom. God’s blessing rains down on us when we are living in His will, when we are living obedient to Him, when we’re living in a relationship with Him. He is like any dad, Dad wants to bless His kids but when we rebel, as the King did here, as Ahab clearly rebelled by worshipping other gods.

What does God do? Does God throw a tantrum? I mean, is that what God is doing here? No, no! God is being like any father and saying, “Well, if you are going to rebel against me, my heart is to bring you back.” There are consequences to your rebelling, so when we rebel, as Ahab did, against God, God turns the blessing off sometimes. The blessings stop raining down from heaven. If you’re a parent who’s brought up a teenager, you know that you want to bless them. Don’t you? I do!

I have a wonderful daughter and I love to bless her but when they rebel; when they turn against us, when they do things that we say "you shouldn’t do" because we know that there’ll be consequences, well, sometimes we have to withdraw some of the blessings. Why? To be mean? No! To help them to grow; to help them to lift up, to help them to learn that there are consequences to rebellion. And it’s the same deal with God, the original Father, sometimes, sometimes our drought is about that very thing.

What about your drought? What is your drought about? What droughts have you got in your life at the moment – in relationships or maybe they’re in a financial area of your life or maybe in an emotional area of your life? Stop and think for a minute and say, “Where are the areas in my life that I would say – well, I’m not really reaping a harvest there? That part of my life is going through a drought.” Ok then, is there anything that you are doing or not doing in those areas that might have caused God to be a good Dad and stop raining down His blessings on that part of your life? Is God trying to get your attention?

We are not doing a guilt trip here. We’re not saying, “Well, you know, if I don’t do everything a hundred percent perfectly, God’s going to come a whack me over the head with a big stick.” No! God’s Dad! Jesus referred to Him as ‘Abba‘, Dad. God is a loving Father so we are not doing a guilt trip number. Ok? This is a realistic assessment of our lives and I want to ask you, “Is God speaking to you today and saying, “There is something that you need to turn away from?”

Maybe you’ve got some financial issues and I would ask you, “What does your giving life look like? How much are you giving to God‘s work? How much are you giving to the poor because so often, when we stop giving our very best; giving the top of what we earn to God’s work, all of a sudden our finances turn to a mess because God’s plan is to use God’s people to fund God’s work and when we stop giving to God‘s work, then God says, “Well, you know, your life’s out of balance,” and all of a sudden we seem to be having a financial drought. Sometimes we’re having relationship problems or maybe a problem in a marriage and maybe God’s saying, “Well, what’s your relationship with me looking like? How come we’re not spending any time together at the moment?

What drought are you walking through right now? And let me ask you: exactly what is your drought about? I think it’s a good question. Not every drought; not every difficult patch; not every wilderness experience that we have in our lives, is because we have made some mistakes. Sometimes it just happens. Sometimes other people do things and things are just happening and it’s the way life is, but I gotta tell you, sometimes we are doing things that rebel against God like Ahab and God allows drought to come into our lives. The question is what can we do about it? We are going to look now at how Elijah went to be with a neurotic, suicidal widow and we will see exactly what God did.

 

The Suicidal Widow

We are talking this week about reaping God‘s harvest in my life, in your life and sometimes we go through a period of drought in our lives and it’s Dad’s way of getting our attention. God’s way of saying, “Look, there’s something in your life that’s not quite right.” That’s why we need to ask, when we are going through a time of drought, “What is my drought about?” But in a drought, we can spend our whole time hanging out for the drought to break and the drought breaks when? When the rain comes! We have seeds, we plant the seeds and we know we will need rain before the harvest will come.

We can be so busy moaning and groaning about the fact that there’s no rain, that there’s a drought but we miss the whole point of the journey that God has got us on. Elijah was God’s man, he didn’t do anything wrong. He was God’s man in the middle of this drought and he had to get some food and He did provide for him when he went down to that Wadi at Cherith which was east of the Jordon. God said, “You will drink from the Wadi and I’ll command the ravens to feed you,” and that’s exactly what happened, but eventually the water ran out, even in the Wadi and God said, “Well, you know, Elijah’s my man, I am going to provide for him,” and he also had a plan to provide for a woman, a widow.

Let’s have a quick read of what exactly happened. This is coming from First Kings chapter 17, beginning at verse 8:

The Word of the Lord came to Elijah and God said to him: “God now to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon and live there for I have commanded a widow there to feed you.” He’s thinking, “Yes, yes! God has given the food to this widow and she’s going to feed me and it’s going to be fantastic.”

So he goes down there. He sets out to Zarephath and when he came to the gate of the town, a widow was there, gathering sticks and he called her and said: “Bring me a little water in the vessel so that I might drink.” As she was gong to bring it, he called to her and said: “And bring me a morsel of bread in your hand,” but she said: “As the Lord, your God lives, I have nothing baked only a handful of meal in a jar and a little oil in a jug. I’m now gathering a couple of sticks so that I can go home and prepare it for myself and my son that we may eat it and die.”

Aw, fabulous! Elijah goes all this way down to this Zarephath place and he thinks God’s going to provide for him and God gives him an neurotic, suicidal widow, who’s about to have her last meal and die. Aw, fabulous, thank you, God!

But Elijah says to her: “Do not be afraid. Go and do as I have said, but first make me a little cake of it and bring it to me and afterwards make something for yourself and your son, for thus says the Lord God of Israel: “The jar of meal will not be emptied and the jug of oil will not fail until the day that the Lord sends rain of this earth.” She went and did as Elijah said so that she, as well as he and her household ate for many days.

The jar of meal was not emptied neither did the jug of oil fail, according to the Word of the Lord, that He spoke through Elijah.” This is God’s amazing provision. If drought was God’s way of getting our attention to bring us home, doesn’t it follow that He’ll sustain us during the drought? If we die in the middle of the drought, it’s punishment. If we survive and we learn and we change, that is grace. That is God’s blessing from the God of grace.

Elijah was a prophet but the drought still affected him and he goes down there and he goes to this widow and he demands something amazing of this widow. He says to her, “Look I know you’ve got almost nothing left. I know you’re about to die and your son is about to die, but first, from the little bit that you have left, cook me something to eat and I promise you that God’s blessing will chase you down and your food will not run out until the day that the rain comes on this land.”

Can you imagine if you were that widow or I was that widow and this man says, “Gimme, gimme! Gimme what you’ve got,” and the widow has a choice, either to withhold it – and we now know from this story, if she had withheld from the man of God – she and her son would have died because they would have run out of food. Or she had the choice to give and take a "faith risk". She was sowing seed in drought and she chose to give to Elijah.

Question: what’s the point of the widow’s story? Why is it included? Because if you look at the few chapters around the particular chapter in First Kings, there’s a big macro level story going on. There’s a King who had sinned, a land full of famine and drought and just after this – we’re not going to have time to go there – there’s a big picture story where Elijah has a showdown with the prophets of Baal.

All this big stuff going on here and we think this macro level is important but at the micro level God tells us here about this widow with no name who is dying, who in faith plants seeds and takes risks and experiences God’s blessing. And what God’s saying is that the little story is as important as the big story.

Here’s a guarantee – in the midst of your drought; in the midst of my drought, the Word of God will reach out to us, somehow in some little way and there might be some much bigger things going on as there were here but God will come along and say, “Plant a seed here and now.” A faint whisper, a prophet, the Holy Spirit stirring in our hearts, “Plant seed here and now,” and you know what I’ve noticed? – often we have a problem; an area in our life where there’s drought and God says, “Plant a seed, not in there, not is that field, plant a seed way over here in another field,” and we think, “Hang on a minute, God, these two things have got nothing to do with each other. I need to plant into my field, I need to feed my need,” and God say, “No, don’t feed your need, plant my seed.” That’s really important – “Don’t feed your need, plant my seed.“ The widow could have feed herself and her son first and God said, “No, feed my prophet first.”

“God, why do you want me to plant over there, my problem’s over here? Why, this is crazy, this doesn’t make sense? Why?”

 

The Lord’s Rains

Well, we are looking at reaping God’s harvest in our lives and we’ve been looking at the story of Elijah and the widow and this drought and in the middle of this drought, when she had nothing left, God called the widow to sow the very, very little bit of food she had in her hand and give it to the prophet.

Now she had a choice – she could have kept it. She could have said, “No, I need to feed my need,” but through Elijah, God said, “Don’t feed your need, plant my seed over here, where I tell you.” And so the widow gave Elijah food. She sowed into his belly not her own belly and we saw as we read that story before, that God made sure that she was provided for. That none of her food ran out. Why is that? Why did God say, “Plant your seed over here – not in your need, not is your field – not where you want, do it the way I want you to?”

Well, I think what’s going on here is that God says, “Put me first.” We want to sow into our belly and that’s not God’s plan. This little story of this widow – we don’t know her name - and Elijah is God’s story. It’s God’s story of grace. It’s a fabulous, wonderful miracle that she steps out in faith with her last little bit of food and she ends up with an endless supply of food to carry her through the famine. Isn’t that a great story? God does that! When we honour Him, when we put Him first, He blesses us and she must have thought, “Fabulous, everything is going to be wonderful from here on in and then “Bang”!

If you have a look at chapter 17, beginning at verse 17, we see that all of a sudden her son dies.

After this, the son of the woman, the mistress of the house, became ill. His illness was so severe that there was no breath left in him and she then said to Elijah: “What have you got against me O man of God? You have come to me to bring my sin to remembrance and to cause the death of my son.” But he said to her: “Give me your son,” and he took him from her bosom, carried him up into the upper chamber, where he was lodging and laid him on his own bed.

He cried out the Lord: “Lord my God, have you brought calamity even upon the widow with whom I am staying, by killing her son?” Then Elijah stretched himself upon the child three times and cried out to the Lord: “Lord my God let this child’s life come into him,” and the Lord listened to the voice of Elijah and the life of the child came into him again and revived and Elijah took the child, brought him down from the upper chamber into the house and gave him to his mother and then Elijah said: “See, your son is alive,” so the woman said to Elijah: “Now I know that you are a man of God and that the Word of the Lord in your mouth, is truth.

Isn’t it amazing how  we are going through a drought and God does some miracles along the way and we think, “Fabulous, we’re on easy street and all of a sudden "whack"! It’s like three steps forward, five steps back.

It happens sometimes. It’s often the way – miracle, calamity, another miracle. Why? Well, have a look at what it says in verse 24.

Now I know that you’re a man of God and that the Word of the Lord, in your mouth, is truth.

The reason God lets this happen is so that we learn faith and so that we learn that God will provide; that God will come through. There’s so much more in this story that we can’t go through in the next chapter, chapter 18 – we don’t have time for that but there’s God’s powerful showdown between Elijah and the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel. I really encourage you to read it in chapter 18.

But eventually, eventually, the drought comes to an end. This is what happens. Picking it up in chapter 18, verse 41:

Elijah said to King Ahab: “Go up and eat and drink for there is the sound of rushing rain.” So Ahab when up to eat and drink and Elijah went up to the top of Carmel, there he bowed himself down upon the earth and put his face between his knees and he said to his servant, “Go up now and look forward to the sea.” And the servant went up and looked and he said, “There is nothing.”

Then he said go again seven times and at the seventh time the servant said: “Look, a little cloud no bigger than a persons hand is rising up out of the sea,” and then he said: “Go say to King Ahab, “Harness your chariot and go down before the rain stops you.” In a little while the heavens grew black with clouds and wind and there was a heavy rain and Ahab rode off and went to Jezreel. But the hand of the Lord was with Elijah and he girded up his loins and ran in front of Ahab, to the entrance of Jezreel.

There’s a drought. There’s been a drought for three years. Nothing’s been happening and all of a sudden, it’s time for the drought to come to an end and this man, Elijah, speaks the Word of God and says, “There’s going to be rushing rain, there’s going to be a flood, get home before it happens.” He spoke those words before even one cloud appeared, because he serves the God who calls things that aren’t as though they are.

What about your drought – your relationship drought or financial drought or health drought or whatever it is – we are walking through life and we are travelling along and we have this sense that – "nothing is really going right for me" – and the Holy Spirit comes along and says, “Plant a seed in another field.” He whispers that into our hearts and we do that and we just decide to be obedient to God and we plant that seed and maybe there’s some other big spiritual battle going on, we don’t really understand and we think, “Well, God’s got to worry about that because I’ve got to let Him fight that, I can’t deal with that.” And one day in your heart, one day in your Spirit, you’ll sense that the drought is about to break.

Why? Because you’ve figured out what your drought was about and in your heart you see that little cloud; you see a cloud no bigger than a persons hand is rising out of the sea and in your heart you can rejoice.

Before the rains even come, we know. We pray in faith; we give thanks because God takes us through the drought and like that widow, He calls us to plant a seed, to take a risk, to take a step of faith because in the middle of the drought God wants to change us because in the middle of the drought, God wants to grow us because right in the middle of the drought God wants to bless us. And so we experience His blessing in the drought and there are ups and downs and there are days we want to cry and days we want to laugh, but one day the drought finishes.

One day when we’ve figured out what God is doing and we bend our will towards His and we obey Him and we plant a seed in another field. When we finally figure out we have to stop feeding our need and start planting God’s seed, then God says,“He’s learnt what I wanted him to learn; she’s learned what I wanted her to learn.” And then it’s time for the drought to break.

It’ll take time. Droughts always take time and when we’re in the middle of the drought it’s never a lot of fun. But when the rain comes, it’s God’s rain. When the blessing comes, it’s God’s blessing. See if we had planted the seed in our own field, we’d be able to say, “I did it!” but when we take this seed, this Spiritual faith decision that God is calling us to – whatever it is – maybe it’s forgiving someone, maybe it’s giving money to some ministry, maybe ... whatever God calls us to do.

When we plant His seed, in the field of His choosing and the blessing comes and the rain comes and He changed our heart along the way, we know that it’s the Lord’s rain, we know it’s the Lord’s blessing and we know it’s His flood-tide, and that’s so much greater and better and sweeter than you or I could ever do. So let me ask you - what exactly is your drought about?