When Less is More

UV 576/10,000 I Kings 17 v 4 When Less is More “For thus saith the Lord God of Israel, The barrel of meal shall not waste, neither shall the cruse of oil fail, until the day that the Lord sendeth rain upon the earth.” The Lord will protect and sustain the faithful in times of recession or famine. He will multiply the little that we offer Him in faith and make it sufficient to meet our need till the time of plenty comes again. The prophet Elijah was asked to move from the brook of Cherith that had dried up to Zarephath where the Lord had commanded a widow to sustain him. Elijah did find the widow at Zarephath but she did not show any sign that she had received any instruction from the Lord. It is only after Elijah boosted her faith with the Word of God, did she part with what she had intended to be the last meal of her little family. The Lord promised the disconsolate woman through the mouth of Elijah that bread or oil would not fail in her house till the rains return. The Lord does allow periods of drought in our lives to test and to strengthen our faith. He will increase the “mileage” of our resources so that it travels the whole distance till the time, He brings an outpouring of blessings once again. Without faith, more will seem to work like less. There is always a feeling of inadequacy. With faith even a little will work like more. The willingness of the widow to give out of her little resources to the servant of God opened the door for the Lord to do a miracle. Similarly, our willingness to part with our little resources to serve the purpose of the Lord will cause it to multiply such that neither bread nor oil will fail in our house. Just as flour mixes with a little water and oil to form bread, similarly, the Word of God needs to mix with a little faith and the anointing of the Holy Spirit to form the “ bread of life.” Like the little boy, we need to give our seven loaves and two fish to the Lord to multiply. The lack of faith and hope in desperate situations kills the spirit, soul and body. At the start of the recession, I was shocked to read how a brilliant engineer in California took a gun and killed both his brilliant sons, one of them a Fullbright scholar, his wife and then took his own life. Similarly, a number of mass killings in the USA and elsewhere in the past few years were prompted by this sense of desperation. They not only want to die but in their frustration want to take with them a number of souls. A glimmer of hope and faith in the Word of God could have saved them and the world of such a holocaust. Both Elijah and the widow were driven to desperation but the Word of God brought a glimmer of hope into their dark situations and revived their souls. The hope when fulfilled turned into faith and sustained their lives in a time of drought. Prateep V Philip