You Can't get there from here

I heard a sermon several weeks ago, I can't remember the preacher that preached part in 1st Kings 13.

I have heard many sermons on the lady obeying Elijah and giving him her handful of meal to to the man of God and was rewarded by this with an abundance of food while the famon was occurring.

After hearing this many times I backed up to the beginning of the chapter, as I have done for a little while in order to put the whole story in prospective in my own mind. I feel that many have missed out by not telling the hole story.

For some reason I had a time when I was driving and trying to find a mall in Rochester that popped into my mind. I had taken the wrong exit, and was obviously not in the shopping part of the city. So after some nudging from my wife and brother I stopped at a gas station to ask for directions. After explaining where I was trying to find the large black lady behind the 2 inch thick glass said “You Can't Get There From Here”. And this chapter reminded me of that trip.

I have hear the woman praised for her faithfulness and obedience but not so much Elijah. As I read from the beginning of the chapter I see that it was him that started the chain of events. When the Lord spoke to him, he said I have a plan but, You Can't Get There From Here. So Elijah went to the Brook Cherith and drank and had ravens bringing him bread. The Lord Blessed him for his obedience. I think that was a first test.

After that the Lord said, You Can't Get There From Here, you need to be bold for me, ask a starving woman who is a complete stranger to give you the last of what she had to you, putting herself and her child last, and putting what God wanted above all the rest. And she had done that and this time, the blessing wasn't just Elijah's but this women was blessed by the faithfulness by the servant of God. I know she had to give all of what she had to be blessed but, I have to think would she have been blessed if Elijah stayed in the east or if he didn't leave Cherith. She may never had that opportunity. Would she just have baked her last cake, ate it with her son and just died?

I think if we stay here we will never go on. We will never go there until we leave here and go there. Our blessings are not here they are over there. And maybe a blessing for someone else. But when you arrive there you are no longer there you are now here so you can't stay dormant we need to keep going over there.

The tip may be shorter if we travel in a straight line but sometimes we have learning to do and people to meet on or trip so we might be traveling in one direction in order to get there but God stops us and says go over here.

If we never start the journey that we never get there and it may not be just us that suffers. It may be some poor soul that has to burn in hell for eternity.

Some start the journey but when things get good and the ravens bring us bread, why leave? I think that is the case in a lot of Christians and churches the get stagent in their soul winning, works for Christ and in edifying other Christian they are happy to stay here. And you can see what a pool of stagent water looks like after some time. I believe that the stationary mentality is what holds back true revival, Maybe some of the other bible versions are right. When God goes to prepare a place for us it won't be mansions, it will be rooms. Millions and millions of nurseries to house all the baby christion's that refused to grow up.

We have to be in constant motion, going in the direction that the Lord is leading us. In physics there is a law that states what is at rest will stay at rest and what is in motion will stay in motion unless some outside force changes that.

It is that outside force that can help or hinder us depending on what It is.

If we are always looking over there, keeping our eye's on the prize then it is hard to lose the path that has been selected for us.

I believe that a Christian hasn't arrived until Christ calls us home. My actions not only effect me, my family, my church, but everyone that I will ever be in contact with and maybe someone that may never know about.