Your Drought is Not Your Destiny

“Pastor Sarah challenges us to navigate a season of drought in this flashback clip from the sermon ‘Don’t Settle For Safe’.
Dear Lord,
Today…….I am asking all my prayer warriors to say a prayer that may help others. So many people are hurting now. Many are struggling with finances and need jobs. Some are facing foreclosure and don’t even know how they are going to make it from week to week.. Many are lonely. . Many are heartbroken. . Many are facing sickness and health is fading. . Some are dealing with difficult family members. Many have lost HOPE.. Tonight, let us put our prayers and faith together decree and declare breakthrough over our families. Financial miracles WILL take place. Jobs WILL be found. Our Bodies WILL be made whole & sickness WILL flee. Marriages and relationships WILL be restored. Family members WILL find Jesus. Heartbreaks WILL be healed. JOY WILL be restored and HOPE WILL be found. Print Jesus Name. Amen!!!!!! Keep God First…….

So my topic is indeed don’t settle for safe.
And my text is first kings 18 and seven.
I’ll be reading out of the new King James version.
I know daddy likes the King James version, but legacy does the new King James.
If that’s all right on today, first kings 18 and seven.
Now as Oba was on his way, suddenly Elijah met him and he recognized him and fell on his face and said, is that you my Lord Elijah and he answered him.
It is I go tell your master Elijah is here.
So he said, how have I sinned that you are delivering your servant into the hand of Ahab to kill me?
And as the Lord, your God lives, there is no nation or kingdom where my master has not sent someone to hunt for you.
We’ve been looking all over for you, Elijah.
And when they said he is not here, we all took an oath from the kingdom or nation that we could not find you.
And now you say after I’ve given up, after we swore we would never find you.
Now you tell me to go tell your master Elijah is here and it shall come to pass as soon as I am gone from you, that the spirit of the Lord will carry you to a place.
I do not know. So when I go and tell Ahab and he cannot find you, he will kill me.
But I your servant have feared the Lord from my youth. Was it not reported to my Lord?
What I did when Jezebel killed the prophets of the Lord, how I hid 100 men of the Lord’s prophets, 50 to a cave and fed them with bread and water.
And now you say, go tell your master Elijah is here. He will kill me.
Then Elijah said as the Lord of hosts lives before whom I stand, I will surely present myself to him today.
So went to me, they have and told him and they have went to meet Elijah spirit of the living God fall fresh in this place.
Do that thing that you do when hearts come together, crying out for change.
Oh God, I ask that you would begin to saturate this place that you would allow your anointing to float.
Like never before that you would clear a path.
Oh God, where the enemy tried to trip us up or make us stop that you would clear a path.
Oh God, in this room that hearts would start turning back towards you, that families would be restored.
Oh God, that this nation would remember who was God and God alone.
And so I ask, oh God that you would remove any nerves, any fears, any insecurities that would dare threaten this word.
And instead you would allow your spirit to overflow. I am your vessel. Oh God.
And I humble myself under your mighty hand. And I say, have your way in Jesus name.
Amen. As I was studying for today’s message, I recognize that obed was in a peculiar situation.
You see, the king of Ahab had been prophesized to by Elijah that a drought would come three years before we find them in the text and the drought came and there is a severe famine in the land and Oba is paying for the mistakes of Ahab’s wickedness and as is keeping this his faith, it’s his faith is still with him.
Yet he’s still having to live in an environment where his faith can’t really work on his behalf because it’s been confined by the wickedness that they have.
And so when we find in the text, him and Ahab have had a meeting and in this meeting, they said, listen, you know, there’s this famine, there’s a drought in the land.
And so I want you to go to where there used to be water and I want you to look at the place where there were springs and brooks and see if there’s any grass that’s still alive and if there’s any grass that’s still alive, I want you to bring it back so that we can feed the livestock because otherwise we can’t continue living the way we’ve been living.
What they were doing was looking at the carrying capacity of their environment in ecology.
There’s a term called the carrying capacity and the carrying capacity is the maximum number of a species an environment can support indefinitely.
So let’s say, for instance, you are ship wrecked and you find yourself on this private island somewhere and not the private islands that we see like on the news with mansions and homes already.
There, there’s a few fruit trees and you and X amount of people and you start doing the math because you recognize that we can’t just eat everything.
We see, we’ve got to ration this thing out and as we ration this thing out, we’ll see how long, how much we can eat based off of what’s being produced in the land.
It’s called the carrying capacity.
If we’re gonna be on this island forever, then we can only eat one mango a day because only one mango is produced from this tree a day.
So if we’re going to survive, we can only eat this much.
I’ll give it to you uh a bit different.
It’s like when you’re in relationship with a friend and you recognize that there are a lot of drama and you start looking at your nerves and seeing how many of your nerves you can ration out indefinitely.
And you start thinking like, listen, if we gonna stay connected, I only have one nerve a month to give you.
And if you use that one nerve, I might have to move you out of my environment because otherwise you’re gonna overdraft me.
It’s my carrying capacity.
It’s not that I don’t want to help you.
It’s just that I only have a certain capacity and if you exhaust that capacity, then I’m going to be the one in trouble and you’re not changing any way from these conversations.
So I might as well do what I have to do to save myself. It’s my carrying capacity.
So that’s what you can tell them next time when they’re like, listen, can we get together and talk?
I know you helped me last time.
But this time for real, I’m gonna listen, you say, you know what based on my carrying capacity, I’m not gonna be able to meet with you.
This month, next month is looking a little bit better depending on how the kids are acting and how my husband’s doing.
Then I’ll know for sure whether or not I can carry your burdens and my burdens too.
It’s not you. It’s me, it’s my carrying capacity.
So ahab and are trying to figure out the carrying capacity of Samaria, how much can we eat before we have to start killing our livestock?
But I submit for your consideration while they were looking at the carrying capacity of Samaria that the Lord was trying to show Oba that his faith had a carrying capacity.
His faith, he had figured out how to live in a drought and to only have enough faith to survive indefinitely in that drought, but not to actually end the drought.
It’s like when we recognize that our marriages aren’t what they could be, but we only have enough faith to maintain them on the level that they are.
We don’t have enough faith to actually trust again and be vulnerable again.
We only have enough to, to make breakfast and go through the motions but not to actually save things.
Our faith, our faith, our spirituality ends up with these carrying capacities where we don’t dream anymore and we don’t push beyond the limits anymore because the last time we stepped out on faith that didn’t work out the way we wanted to.
So we learned to live life safe even if that means living in a drought.
And you know what’s wrong with being comfortable living in a drought is that you only attract thirsty people.
You only attract people who are just as thirsty as you are.
To be honest, the only people available and in your sphere of influence are people who are comfortable living in droughts.
Oh Feared the Lord Ahab did not yet.
They were still in the same drought.
And we get fooled into thinking that just because we fear the Lord that we’re different than the person who lives in wickedness because until you actually start exercising that faith, are you really any different than the person you’re judging?
Because your face looks more like religion than relationship.
When you don’t actually exercise it in your life.
Diet is comfortable living in a drought.
I’m not exactly who I could be, but I can’t risk growing because growing requires vulnerability.
I’m not exactly maxing out my potential, but I can’t really afford to step out of my comfort zone because this drought is all I’ve known.
So I’d rather stay, stay in the drought. I love then pray for a rain. I can’t handle.
I’d rather stay in this Brokenness because it’s the way everyone connects with me.
It’s just how I am and I know I could change and I know I could be better, but it would risk shaking up what I’ve learned to be comfortable with.
And so I’d rather just stay in this drought. Great. Can’t go back to school.
I’m too old for that. I can’t write the book.
I can’t step out on faith.
I, I’d rather live in this drought and hate on people who had the audacity to go looking for water.
Sometimes people can be very hateful when they see you looking for water because they’ve been so comfortable living in the drought that they don’t understand why you can’t just be thirsty the way everybody else is thirsty.
But something down on the inside of me knows that there’s a well available to me.
So I don’t believe that this drought is my final answer.
I believe that I can step out of this drought.
I have enough faith to believe that I can tap into a well.