Nothing but...

I have recently been in a time of visioning. Where am I going to be in the next year? How about the next five or ten years? When you start praying into your future and God starts revealing to you visions, it can some times be overwhelming. The thing is though, God gives us these visions to offer us hope, not so we feel inadequate. We can start filtering these visions and dreams through our minds and not our spirits, clogging the truth and making our goals seem unattainable. 

This was the mind set of a widow who met Elisha in 2 Kings 4. Her husband, the care taker  of the family recently died and left behind some debt. Creditors had come to her, threatening to take her two sons to sell as slaves because she had no real means to pay them. Elisha simply asks her, "What do you have?"

Ask your self that. Do you have a job with a good income? Do you have administrative or leadership skills? Do you have a heart to serve and be hospitable? What talents or gifts do you have? Search your life and pick out something that is working in your life. This is always a great place to start when trying to figure out how take the next step into this elaborate vision and dream God has placed into your spirit. Every one of us is blessed with something, yet most of the time we just simply will answer "Nothing". 

The widows first reply to Elisha was just that. "Nothing at all... well, except for this flask of olive oil." She almost doesn't even mention this flask because to her it is so miniscule. We are lead to believe that this olive oil was her very last possession. If I were asked what I had lying around my house, a jar of olive oil would be far down on the list. It is here that God shows us that even with the smallest things in life can be used to change someone's world.

Elisha now tells the widow to go to all her friends and neighbors and ask them for empty vessels. This is huge! People around us can be resources to get to our God given dreams. When I moved to NYC, I ended up selling a large amount of my things to help pay for the transition. This included my guitars. For those who do not know me or what I do, music has always been my olive oil. So when we arrived here, I was with out a vessel, a conduit, to use my olive oil. Thankfully the pastors happened to have a guitar that was open for me to use. What is better, this guitar was even better than the ones that I had to leave behind. 

There are ample opportunities and vessels that are already around us that we can sometimes overlook and pass by. Use your spirit to filter your vision so that you see the realities of heaven. See the open doors. See the empty vessel that can be used to produce great things in your hands. In the hands of Samson, a donkey's jawbone was the perfect weapon to defeat the enemy. 300 men in the right hands of Gideon was all God needed to win a battle. We all have something to work with. Find it. Embrace it. Use it.

Breaking Down Worship

Worship to many can be confusing. The term can seem quite general and leave  some wanting more. To get a grip on the word "worship", lets take a look at the first place we can find it used in the bible. Genesis 22: 2, 5:

"take your son, your only son- yes Issac, whom you love so much- and go to the land of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains, which I will point out to you...

'Stay there with the donkey', Abraham told the young men. 'the boy and I will travel a little farther. We will worship there, and then we will come right back.'"

This first use of the word worship in the bible is key. Moses, the supposed author of Genesis, saw this as an opportunity to include the word worship here to make a point. And with more than 250 appearances throughout the bible, this one appearance would have been enough to define to us what worship really is. It is described as simply giving or offering God the biggest part of your life.

Ask yourself, what is the biggest part of your life. 

For some people this "biggest part" of their life might be a burden. A sickness, a lost job, a lonely heart. This doesn't make them any less qualified to worship, it just means what they lay down as a sacrifice looks different then someone's sacrifice of great success. 

If your giving up your burden- do so with hope. Understand that there are highs and lows in life and that they are not the realities of heaven which pertain to us. God is a huge God in the sense that He can take care of all his people.  Jesus says in Matthew 11:28, "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest." 

Other people are currently in a high point in this roller coaster of life and have plenty to offer God, yet many times this can be harder to do. We can get in this comfort zone and look around and say, "I've got the house, I've got the car, I've got the job, I've got the friends, etc..." and actually forget God got us there in the first place. 

If your giving God the greatest most successful part of your life, do so with gratitude. Laying down your success doesn't mean you loose it, it is just an acknowledgment that God is faithful to give us the desires of our hearts. When we prosper, the Kingdom prospers. 

Psalms 9:1-2 says, "I will thank you, Lord with all my heart; I will tell of all the marvelous things you have done. I will be filled with joy because of you. I will sing praises to your name, O Most High."

Genesis 4 gives an account of Cain and Able's sacrifices to God. If you don't know the story, basically they were brothers. Cain grew crops, and Able raised livestock.  One element wasn't more important than the other to God, but the giver's heart was. Able gave the best of his flocks in sacrifice to God, were as Cain just gave. It is important to give, but to give with faith whole heartedly.