Pastor Steven Furtick Sermon Can’t See The Promise Yet: our faith must survive the invisibility stage, the stage where you maybe, like Elijah, have heard something, sensed something, perceived something, believed something that you do not yet see.It just means that as things unfold there are certain realities of your new nature in Christ that you will experience already, but there is a part of it that is not yet fulfilled.
“Elijah said to Ahab, ‘Go, eat and drink, for there is the sound of a heavy rain. by the way, He has been hiding for three and a half years because he called for the drought because the people had started depending on sources other than God. Anytime you depend on a source that is not God, he will cut you off, because he will not allow your life to be sourced by something that cannot sustain your life. So he will cut you off for a little while so you will come back to what you needed all along, because he loves you that much.
Elijah is hiding the whole time, because if Jezebel, who is in charge of all of the rain gods was looking for him. They served this god called Baal, who wasn’t really a god, He didn’t have all power, like some politicians who say things but don’t really have the power to change all the stuff. But God being the true and living God will not be corralled or confined by human need. He’s not corralled or confined by human expectation. He will not be manipulated by the mechanics of humanity. So now the rain has stopped falling. You will come into a season of your life where God will cut you off. He won’t stop loving you. He won’t stop providing for you. It’s just that God will allow situations to get your attention. You can pray and ask him to change the situation all you want, but until you allow him to change you, nothing is going to change in the situation.
When the time came for Elijah to come forth and present himself before Ahab and Jezebel, that king and queen whose wickedness was responsible for the nation’s famine, he comes before them boldly. He calls for a summit, by this time, he has survived so much.
Elijah the prophet had the skills to survive the drought, and he did. He survived in the drought. He survived the dry season, and he did it really well. He did it by obeying the voice of the Lord.So when the voice of the Lord told him to go to the brook “I’ll have birds there that will drop your breakfast off. I’ll have birds dropping off biscuits. God will provide for you in some strange ways, if you haven’t noticed.
God had ravens, which are a dirty bird I mean, the only people who like ravens live in Baltimore; God used a dirty bird to feed his man in a time of famine. Stop telling God how he can and can’t bless you. Stop telling God how he can and can’t feed you. Stop telling God what style he can and cannot use. Stop waiting on a song you like in church to worship God. What if God wants to bless you in a different style, bless you in a different way? He’s very creative.
So he’s supplying for Elijah at the brook. The brook dries up. God sends Elijah to a widow, why would you send me to a widow to provide me with food? Because sometimes God will show you how great his supply is by sending you to someone with a greater need than you had to begin with. Sometimes you will realize in the course of meeting someone else’s need how great God’s supply already is in your life. So he does all that, and for three and a half years he is a refugee until it comes time for the refugee to become a rainmaker.
Pastor Steven Furtick teaches us in today that, God works in mysterious ways, he does not always work the way we want him to, but all we have to do is believe to partake and experience the greatness of God.