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By: Crystal Lyons
After God got Moses’ attention with the burning bush and told Moses what His plan was…Moses looking at himself was overwhelmed with the impossibility of the task! God responded to Moses’ unbelief by asking him a question… “What do you have in your hand?” “A rod.” “Throw it down.” You know the story. After that encounter with God, Moses went back to Egypt with nothing more than what he personally had except for one major difference…God was on it.
The Bible is literally FILLED with stories that reveal to us this same principle. Remember Elijah and the poor widow woman who was going to cook her last bit of meal for her son and herself and then they would starve? (IKings 17:
13-16) Elijah told her to fix a cake for himself FIRST
with what she had in her hand and by doing that, God would impart Himself into what she HAD. She obeyed by giving God what she had and miraculously it fed them all through the duration of the famine.
What about Elisha? (IIKings 4:1-7) In finding a way to meet an overwhelming financial need of another widow woman, Elisha asked her what she HAD. GOD ALWAYS STARTS WITH WHAT WE HAVE. Luke 16:10-13 declares this principle. God looks for faithfulness on our part with what we HAVE…not what we don’t have. He sees if we’re faithful with what has been put into our hands, whether it is ours or another man’s makes no difference. David’s life was a great example of this. He was faithful with another man’s sheep. He was faithful in protecting sheep,
even putting his life on the line to kill a lion and a bear…FOR SHEEP! God knew that this was His man.
He was faithful over little…
God could make him faithful over much. He moved
from protecting sheep to protecting the nation of Israel. Things like going from shepherd boy to king don’t
“just happen”…we GROW into these things! God places something IN OUR HANDS and then watches to see if
we’ll be faithful. Because David was faithful in
protecting sheep…who knew but God?! David could
have taken the attitude when the lion and the bear came and killed a sheep that it wasn’t worth it. He could have justified his inaction and told himself… “A lamb isn’t worth risking my life over”…or… “They aren’t paying me enough for that”…or… “That’s not in my job description.”…or… “Why risk it? No one will ever notice.” But he DIDN’T take that attitude and Someone WAS noticing…GOD! In I Samuel 16:7 God told Samuel that He had REFUSED David’s other brothers. You know what that tells me? That tells me that God was taking inventory over the entire land of Israel and EVERY young man had the opportunity to be chosen as Israel’s next king. God is watching!
God watches us while we’re in situations that are uncomfortable, to see how we respond. He watched
David over a period of several years to see if David would respond in a manner that God could bless.
In I Samuel 22 we read where men who were rebellious
and disgruntled with authority started attaching themselves to David. Great. That’s what he needs…
a bunch of riff raff. Men who are running away from unpaid debts, men who are mad at their situation and blame society for their lot in life. God watches.
“What are you going to do with THESE sheep, David?” They come alongside David and ENCOURAGE him to kill Saul…the man God anointed to be Israel’s first king. If David doesn’t have hard enough time in fighting his own inner impulses to take matters into his own hands and
bring about a little “justice”, now he has a few hundred men behind him BEGGING him to kill Saul and end their misery! What does David do? The right thing…even when the right thing was the hard thing to do! What became of these rabelrousers? Read II Samuel 23 and I Chron. 11. These are the guys who became David’s mighty men! Read about these guys! They are some AWESOME dudes! How did that happen? It didn’t “just happen”. David was faithful with what was placed in his hands. Because of David’s faithfulness, God could put His super on David’s natural and it brought about supernatural results!
direct result of David’s faithfulness with what was put in his hands. How could David have known that when he faced a lion and a bear over a LAMB, that he was paying the price of faithfulness for a few hundred men who would do incredible exploits and GLADLY lay down their lives for him? He couldn’t have known. That’s just it.
We can’t know what God will do with our individual faithfulness until we are faithful with what is in our hands! God is ready to do the supernatural with our natural if we’ll just be faithful to give it to Him.
EVERYTHING basically works this way in the Lord.
A person gets “saved” or “born again” this way.
We say, “we accept Jesus as our Savior”…but basically that’s not really a good description of what happens
when a person enters into covenant with the Lord Jesus Christ. What has to happen for a person to become a Christian is…they have to give what is in their possession. THEMSELVES. Before God can do a supernatural work on the inside of us, we have to give ourselves to Him! God
is not a thief. He will NOT take what isn’t given. We
GIVE ourselves to Him…our life, our future, our talents, our sin. When we GIVE what is in our hands…basically
ourselves…then and only then does God have the right to place His super upon our natural! So many people
believe they are Christians just because they believe in Jesus or go to church or were baptized but nothing supernatural ever occurred in them. They can’t
remember a time when they KNEW God entered into them and they were CHANGED. Why? Because they never
gave up themselves to God. Many people believe they
can “add” Jesus to their lives without giving up themselves to Him. That’s religion. To have relationship there has to be a two way friendship. It can’t be one sided.