Need. We all have it. Some of us to a larger extent and others to a lesser extent, and either way, it seems that there is no man alive who can say he or she has never been found themselves wanting of anything. As born-again believers, how are we to reconcile our needs with the principles of the Kingdom of GOD? How are we to unlock GOD’s blessings to cater for our needs? What does the Bible say about this issue? Are we supposed to make peace with the state of being in constant need? Surely this cannot be the life that GOD intended for His children. The Bible tells us that need and lack are most definitely not the will of GOD for His children. The opening Scripture this week is Matthew 10:40-42, which sets out the principle of how to unlock GOD’s favour and indeed His blessings; Then we move on to look at three different instances in 2 Kings 4:1-7 KJV/AMP, 2 Kings 4:8-17 and 1 Kings 17:8-16 KJV/NIV.
The entire Chapter 10 in the Book of Matthew captures the instructions that Jesus gave His twelve disciples as they were preparing for the missions that He was sending them on. In Matthew 10:40, Christ tells His disciples that, “He that receives you receives Me, and he that receives Me receives HIM that sent Me”, meaning that anyone who receives the disciples receives Jesus, and a person that receives Jesus receives GOD. The first point to understand is that, it is in fact GOD who sends out the disciple, the prophet, the righteous man, the Word, the vessel, into the world; And GOD expects us to receive, welcome, accept and make provision for said vessel, for said Word. The second point is revealed when we answer the question, ‘How then are we to receive the vessel that GOD has sent unto us?’; To which the answer is, we are to receive them by giving unto them, by ministering unto them. The result of these two points working together, culminates in the third point, and that is, when we receive the vessel or the Word that GOD has sent to us, we are receiving GOD Himself; And it is because we have received the vessel that the blessings flow from GOD; [Matthew 10:40-42]. These three points explain the Kingdom principle of giving in a nutshell, but let us unpack this a bit more.
We opened with Matthew 10:40 and looked at what Christ means when He says, ‘he that receives’. By way of three examples, let us look at how we ought to ‘receive’ and how GOD blesses after we have ‘received’ those sent to us. First is the scenario in 2 Kings 4:1-7 KJV/AMP, where a heavily indebted widow is crying to Prophet Elisha for help out of a hopeless situation. The widow was crying because she was heavily indebted, the creditor was about to come take her two sons as bondmen (slaves) as payment for a loan, she was poor and had nothing to pay the creditor with. The second scenario plays out in 2 Kings 4:8-17 where we see a wealthy Shunammite woman invite Prophet Elisha into her home for a meal, and every time Elisha passes through Shunem, he would stop at her house for a meal, and later on she makes up a room for him in her house so that Elisha is able to rest comfortably whenever he was in Shunem. The third scenario is set out in 1 Kings 17:8-16 KJV/NIV where GOD gives a Word to Prophet Elijah to go to Zarephath where he shall encounter a widow who shall provide for him during a season of drought.
In the first scenario, the crying widow was in a hopeless situation when she went to Elisha. Elisha knew that the Kingdom principle required the poor widow to give of the little to nothing that she had, for GOD to work a miracle and a blessing in her favour. This is why Elisha asks her, ‘what do you have of value in the house?’, and then commands her to offer up and give up that very last small jar of oil. She is commanded to fill up as many vessels as she could borrow from all her neighbours with the oil from her small jar, and the poor widow does as Elisha says. The result was that her small jar of oil started flowing with oil and she filled all the vessels she had borrowed to the brim, some much bigger in size than her little jar. The stream of oil, the stream of provision, continued to flow from the widow’s little jar until there were no more vessels left for her to pour into. The woman was faithful with the little that she had, she believed and trusted the Word said by the man of GOD, she gave up the little that she had, and GOD was able to multiply it. When we are faithful with the little that we have and we give, GOD is faithful to multiply it.
In the second scenario, a wealthy woman from Shunem gives unto Prophet Elisha; She welcomes and received him into her home for a meal whenever he was in Shunem; And later on she makes up a room in her home for him to use for resting whenever he is in Shunem. This woman recognised Elisha as a man of GOD because she had received her own revelation of who Elisha was, and was moved to receive him into her home without Elisha needing to ask anything of her. The Bible describes the woman as great (KJV), wealthy (NLT), well-to-do (NIV), prominent and influential (AMP), and yet she too had a dire need, a desperate yearning, that no amount of money could soothe; She and her husband were childless. When Elisha asked what he could do for her, for how she has cared and provisioned for him, she was so settled in the hopelessness of their childlessness that she said nothing of it; But Gehazi, Elisha’s servant, let that cat out of the bag. Elisha spoke a Word, that a year from that day she would be holding her son, and the Word came to pass. But now notice this: the woman always had this need and GOD was always aware of her need; Yet GOD did absolutely nothing about her need UNTIL she took care of the carrier of the Word; And when Elisha spoke, it was GOD that blessed her.
In the third scenario, there was drought in the land when GOD gave the Word to Prophet Elijah to leave the Kerith Ravine (Brook Cherith) for Zarephath, where Elijah would encounter a widow that GOD had commanded to make provision for him. The Word came to Elijah first and he carried it to Zarephath. When Elijah encounters the widow, he first asks her for a drink, and as she is about to fetch it, Elijah asks her to bring him bread as well. This is when the woman tells him that the very last bit of her flour and oil is enough for one last meal for herself and her son, and that they would surely starve to death thereafter. This is when Elijah is merciful to her and gives her the Word of GOD that she is to make the meal as she had said but to make a small loaf of bread and give to him to eat first, and that she will then make a meal for herself and her son thereafter, because GOD has said that she and her household will not run out of flour or oil until the drought had passed. The widow listens and does what Elijah says, and the Word of GOD came to pass exactly as the carrier of the Word said it would. GOD knew that the widow had very little and He still wanted the widow to show her faith and make provision for His servant Elijah first, before delivering the blessing unto her household.
A true servant of GOD is a vessel for the Word, a carrier of the Word. When you receive (minister to, take care of, and give to) a true servant of GOD, you are ministering to and touching something invisible that cannot be seen; And it is what the vessel carries in the Spirit that responds to your giving and ministering. When you receive a vessel of GOD, you in fact sow (plant) seed and it is this seed that GOD sees in the Spirit. GOD then rains His grace on the seed, multiplies it, and gives you a bountiful harvest to reap. This means that you cannot harvest when you have not sown seed. It is the seed that dies that produces a harvest. Unless the seed dies, it cannot produce after itself, and every seed produces after its own kind – because apple seeds could never produce pumpkins. Jesus had to die to make us to be like Him, to make us children of GOD. Jesus, the Son of GOD, is the seed that had to die in order to produce other children of GOD in us. It is only unless the seed dies through our giving that we get to receive what we want, need and desire from GOD. It is impossible for GOD not to reward the seed that you have sown in His name.
From the three scenarios earlier on, we see that GOD has worked out a fool-proof fail-proof system of Heaven in the exact way that He did, to have order in how He dispenses His blessings to us, His people. This system is designed to benefit the, “he who receive” the vessels of GOD. GOD is fully capable of taking care of His vessels, but He is not doing that because He has inserted us within the Kingdom system to take care of His vessels and He rewards us for taking care of His vessels. We know we can trust GOD to operate this Kingdom principle judiciously because Hebrews 6:10 KJV/AMP/NIV says, ‘for GOD is not unrighteous (unjust) to forget your work and labour of love, which you have showed toward His Name, in that you have ministered to the saints (you have cared for the needs of GOD’s people, other believers), and do minister’. This is the promise that GOD makes to man and we can take GOD at His Word because it is impossible for GOD to break His own Word. GOD is not a man nor the son of man to forget and need to repent for forgetting. GOD is faithful, just and righteous, and GOD rewards giving. This is why Acts 20:10 says, ‘It is more blessed to give than it is to receive’. In the Kingdom, we receive by giving, we are rewarded for giving, we do not receive by getting.
The principle is really truly simple – your NEED is PROVIDED for IN your GIVING! This is what Scripture tells us, this is what the Word of GOD says. This principle governs the Kingdom, and GOD is not going to break the principle because we do not believe in the principle, or we question the principle, or we are not happy with the principle. No exceptions apply; And no rebellion or tantrum outburst will change this. So no, GOD is not silent on your needs, far from it. GOD has already released a Word of blessing upon your life, a Word saturated with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, but the Word is encumbered, yes restricted, by your giving. This is what Elijah was trying to tell the widow from Zarephath! The miracle, the breakthrough, the blessing that your life is in dire need of, begins to come to pass the moment you give and you minister unto the carrier of the Word from the very little, the close to nothing, and the nothing that you have.
GOD is aware of every single need that each and every one of us has under the sun; And He is waiting on us to receive His vessels for Him to release the provisioning that He has made for our needs. In all three scenarios in the Books of Kings, nothing happened for any of the women until each one of them received the carrier of the Word. By receiving the carrier of the Word, the women were in fact receiving GOD. When we give to, do unto and speak to a true servant of GOD, whatever we give, do and say we are giving, doing and saying directly to GOD, and GOD rewards us for it. But if we give to the wrong vessel, the false church and the false prophets, GOD is absolved of any obligation to bless us. This is why our own revelation of the vessel, the church and the ministry, is of importance, because no one will pull the wool over your eyes when you have discernment, and you are giving and ministering according to the revelation that you have received. We look without when GOD is looking within us for the solutions to our problems – ask yourself, ‘What have I taken from myself to give and minister to GOD?’.
More often than not, we fight giving because of the lack that we live in, and we want to reason to GOD why not giving is justifiable in our circumstances, when GOD knows better than us what the Word that He has sent out would do for us but if we were to give. Others justify their refusal to give with not wanting to be taken advantage of by false churches and false prophets; But when we refuse to give because of this, we are in fact announcing our spiritual ignorance, that we lack revelation and discernment, and GOD will leave you, leaving the true Word sent out for you suspended and unfulfilled. Our capacity to give and minister unto GOD’s vessels can never be equal, and this is why we must each give according to our own revelation and as the LORD leads. The Shunammite woman gave according to her means. The widows each gave according to their respective means. The principle operates regardless of the size of what has been offered up or given; The principle does not recognise the size of what is offered up or given, it only recognises the right response from us.
In Philippians 4:15-19, Apostle Paul tells us that the act of giving of our own accord, and doing so consistently, is tantamount to having the keys to GOD’s heavenly vault in your hand and opening the vault to receive what you need; Every offering made unto a true vessel of GOD ascends to the throne of GOD like a sweet aroma and this is very pleasing to GOD. The Church is all about giving and receiving. This is traced throughout the dispensation of the prophets right through to the gospels, and it will never change. The heavenly divine economic system is designed to respond to giving and to the offering on the altar. The problem is that we test GOD when we contravene the Word by not giving. This is why the Word cannot work for us even though we know the Word, are well-versed in the Word, and are full of the Word. Let us seek revelation about these divine principles, to strengthen ourselves in spirit. We cannot expect to receive from GOD when we have not given any seed. Let us sow seed and trust GOD to deliver rain. For it is written, that the rain comes to water a seed, causing it to bud and to flourish (Isaiah 55:10). But rain is useless to ground without seed. Be the believer who is believing GOD for rain and the bountiful harvest sure to follow because you have seed in the ground!
Let us seek revelation about these divine principles, to strengthen ourselves in spirit. We cannot expect to receive from GOD when we have not given any seed. Let us sow seed and trust GOD to deliver rain. For it is written, that the rain comes to water a seed, causing it to bud and to flourish. Be the believer who is believing GOD for rain and the bountiful harvest sure to follow because you have seed in the ground!
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