2 Kings 8, tonight we're going to look at these first six verses. And I want to preach to you on surviving the famine. Surviving the famine. 2 Kings 8, verse number 1 says this, Then spake Elisha unto the woman whose son he had restored to life, saying, Arise and go, thou and thine household, and sojourn wheresoever thou canst sojourn, for the Lord hath called for a famine. And it shall also come upon the land seven years. And the woman arose and did after the sayings of the man of God. And she went with her household and sojourned in the land of the Philistines seven years. And it came to pass at the seven years end that the woman returned out of the land of the Philistines and she went forth to cry unto the king for her house and for her land. And the king talked with Gehazi, the servant of the man of God, saying, Tell me, I pray thee, all the great things that Elisha hath done. It came to pass, as he was telling the king how he had restored a dead body to life, that, behold, the woman whose son he had restored to life cried to the king for her house and for her land. And Gehazi said, My lord, O king, this is the woman, and this is her son, whom Elisha hath restored to life. And when the king asked the woman, she told him, So the king appointed unto her a certain officer, saying, Restore all that was hers, and all the fruits of the field, since the day that she left the land, even until now. Wow. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. I'm going to call on Brother Kelly Kramer. Would you ask God to bless the preaching, please? Excuse me, that there's seven years of famine coming on the land of Israel. Now I got thinking about that because, boy, you and I have been warned for years that there's a famine coming to this country. And I'm not talking about a famine of bread or a famine of money. That's what panics most Americans is, oh no, our economy, oh no, what are we going to do if we can't pay the bills? But I'm not talking about that kind of a famine. We've watched a famine grow in this nation. And this famine's getting worse and worse and it's a famine, the Bible talks about it in the prophets, he said a famine of hearing the words of God. You've got that kind of famine today in this nation. People are no longer at all interested in hearing the words of God. Do you realize when somebody is truly starving and they're getting to the point of death, they're so far gone that they don't have much longer to live that they actually lose their appetite. You know what you've got in this nation? And I'm not talking about lost people. I'm talking about saved people. What you have in this nation today is a bunch of people who are spiritually on the verge of dying. I'm not talking about dead and trespasses and sins and going to hell. I'm talking about saved people who are dying spiritually on the vine. They're not producing fruit. They're not getting the nutrition that they need because they're in a spiritual famine. And the famine is a famine of hearing the words of God. You've heard me be real tough on preachers, right, over the years? Maybe even to a fault, I've been hard on preachers. I believe in being hard and accountability and responsibility on leadership. But let me say this, what if the preachers are so weak, the preachers are so frail in their messages, The preachers are so self-helpy with the way that they preach because the people don't want to hear the Word of God anymore. I just wonder how many guys would kind of be encouraged to get a little bit of a backbone if their people were like, Preacher, give us the Bible. Whenever he gets up and starts apologizing for stepping on toes, they say, don't apologize. Preach the truth. We know you love us. You love us if you're giving us the truth. Give us the truth, Preacher. We want to hear what God has to say. Maybe more guys would be encouraged to preach a little bit. You've got a famine in this nation. And the famine has nothing to do with finances. One way or the other, they always seem to figure out how to pull us out of recessions and pull us out of unemployment numbers and make sure that they're making growth for the economy. I mean, even if they got to produce money out of thin air and print it on machines and pass it out, they do whatever they got to do to make sure your pocketbooks are full and your opportunities are there in your wonderful American dream. I'm not talking about that kind of foolishness. I'm talking about a starving Spiritually for the things of God we got a famine in this nation and God help us not to have a famine in this church Now that being said let me tell you something about the reality of the Christian life If you serve God long enough if you come to church faithfully enough The day will come in your Christian walk When you kind of get in a little bit of a famine That's just flat reality. I don't care how excited you are about serving the Lord. I mean, I remember the early days of starting a church and people were getting saved and people were coming and we were doing everything we could to spread the word. I mean, look folks, we ran billboard signs on the highways throughout Metro Detroit. We went like over a month, I think five weeks straight, five different billboards. We were running billboard signs on the highways. We did Facebook ads to where they had to click in order to charge us and ran like thousands of people clicking on church advertisements and we did postcard mailers, thousands of postcard mailers. We actually, before we had the money for any of that, we printed out like Thousands of little pamphlets. I think it was like 5,000 or something like that. And we rolled, because we didn't have any money, there were black and white invitations to come to the church. A storefront. We were just starting out. And we rolled them up and we put rubber bands on them. And then we had a work day at church, and we rolled up just thousands of these pamphlets inviting people to church, had bags full of them. And then we came back another time, and we're going to pass these out. Once we didn't get done, we left stocked at the church. Well, one day I decided to pull them out and look at them, and I pulled the rubber band off it. And I realized that the folder, they'd been rolled up so long, they didn't stay open. You couldn't read them. You had to kind of like wrestle the paper to get it all open at one point. We're hanging these on doors, hundreds, thousands of doors all over the South Lyon area. Just excited about the ministry. I mean, I can't even explain to you how excited I was. I'd pray and pray and beg God for people to come to church and for the pews, the chairs that we had, the mismatched chairs we had in the storefront to fill up. rinky-dink makeshift platform and Larry built me a makeshift office out of plywood and we pulled some kind of black paper over it and stapled the paper to the plywood and that was my office in the corner of the storefront. Boy, I took it serious, man. I can only imagine what visitors must have thought when they walked in there where we got a makeshift platform and blue chairs. Some of them are still downstairs. Some of them had pads on them and some didn't. carpet that got donated to us from a church who had left out in one of their church buses rolled up and there was stains bad on the carpet. It was old carpet. So what we did is we figured out how to lay out the carpet when we moved into the second area. When we bought out the second area, oh no, that was the first area. Then we bought the second area, that was concrete. So when we laid out the carpet, we took the stains and we tried to put the stains against the wall over here, hidden underneath the chairs, and put the best looking parts of the carpet out in the center when people walked in. I'm preaching with a garage door opener over my head. And the bus door, it was a bus garage, the bus door behind me and a garage. Visitors would come in and sit down and they wouldn't look at me, they'd be staring over my head like, what in the world did I just walk into? But man, I was excited. I was full of hope. I was full of ambition. I was full of dreams. I would beg God I'd stay up all night praying that God would help souls to get saved and that a church could get established in South Lyon, Michigan. I didn't care what kind of burdens and troubles and trials came with the ministry. It didn't matter to me. I didn't care what an older preacher said about pacing myself and being careful because the day was going to come when I'd get burned out if I'm not careful. Nothing could stop me. I couldn't imagine ever getting discouraged ever thinking about quitting But let me tell you something 13 years later, and that ain't a very long time There have been some very very dry times There have been times of spiritual famine Not because I didn't want to be in the ministry not because I wasn't reading my Bible not because I wasn't praying Not because I wasn't trying not because I was dabbling in sin because the reality of trying to serve the Lord faithfully over time means you will run into phases of spiritual famine and You have to know how to survive the famine. I Want you to be equipped with reality I'm not trying to discourage you I want you to be equipped with reality so when the day comes that you walk into my office and you're like, preacher, I'm not feeling it anymore. I don't even know what's wrong. I don't even know how to put it into words. I'm discouraged. I'm not that excited anymore. I just come to church because I'm just kind of supposed to come to church. I want to be able to say, and I told you this was coming, right? Hey, look at me. It's normal. Everybody, what's wrong with me? And I love it when people come to me like that and I can honestly look at them and say, hey, you're normal. You're not alone. Here's a woman. This is a great woman in this chapter. She's been through all kinds of problems already in her life. This woman is the woman that back in chapter four, she was the one that had seen the preacher coming by Elisha and she built the prophets chamber. You remember that? And he says to her, he says, hey listen, what do you want? What's your request? I'm Elisha. I got a double portion of Elijah's spirit. You know what Elijah did. You know what God's done with me. You've seen what I can do. I can make the axe head to swim and I can heal the meal and you know what God has done with me. Parted Jordan with the mantle and you know, listen, what do you want? I'll pray to God for you. Here's a woman, she gets whatever her wish is. Now let me ask you a question. You get that opportunity. What would you ask for? Let me say this. If you had a burden on your heart that had been weighing on you for years, a temptation, a struggle, a problem that had been dragging you down and beating you down for years, and there seemed to be no answer, no solution for it, wouldn't that be the first thing on your mind? I'm telling you, this woman's no stranger to difficulty because the first thing on her mind when he says, what do you want me to pray to God for you for? She doesn't say a million bucks. She doesn't say a nicer car, a nicer house, a better husband. She says, I want a child. She'd been for years carrying around the heartbreak and the burden of not being able to have a child and she wanted a child. She's no stranger to hardship. So now here she is, she gets the child finally of her dreams and the miracle child from God and the child grows up a little bit, he's out there in the field working with his dad and he comes in one day, my head, my head, something's going on, I don't know, maybe an aneurysm, maybe some kind of a hematoma on his brain, who knows what happened but somehow or another he comes in, she puts him on her knee and he dies. I think it said at noon, the baby dies. What a cruel joke. Can you imagine my lifelong dream? I got it finally and now God took it away from me. So the woman runs down and gets the prophet. You know the story. He sends Gehazi. Gehazi can't get it done. Elisha comes in, raises the child back to life. This woman is no stranger to hardship. She's no stranger to panic. She's no stranger to, what am I going to do? My heart is broken. Burdens and troubles and trials of life. And now here, a new trial comes along, and this time, like all times, she survives it again. You know what I want? I want to survive. I'm not saying I want to just survive like getting by as a survivor, squeaking by in life. I'm saying when the troubles and trials of life show up, when 2020s come, and it's never just one thing. It's never just the pandemic. It's never just the worries and stresses and weirdness of you have to social distance and be panicked everywhere you go and wear a mask all the time. And yes, some of that should be, I don't know. Just the pressure of even worrying about that, whether you're taking it seriously, you're not taking it seriously, it doesn't matter either way. It's a weird year. It's not normal to say you can't get together with your family on Thanksgiving. It's not good for people to say you can't go to church. It's human nature. We're social creatures. It's weird. On top of that, have you not noticed it seems like the devil has been aware of the fact that there's pressure on God's people and brought special little blessings into your life to add insult to injury on top of everything else going on in the world, He brings extra things along to discourage you to get between you and your Bible reading, you and your prayer, and begin to starve you spiritually. And I'm telling you, I don't know what my future holds, but sometimes if I sit around and think about it, if I sit around and think about what could happen down the road, I know people in their 40s and 50s and 60s that sometimes, you know, getting to that point in life you're like disappointed. Can I get a witness? Because your young mind thought, oh, it's going to be great when I'm a grandma and all my little grandchildren come run around and play at my feet and the kids are there with their lovely little spouses and we're all getting along at Nana's house and everything's happy and wonderful. And then you find out like, no, human nature doesn't work that way. Grandkids are bored around The old people. And not everybody always gets along like we thought they'd get along. And I'm just saying, sorry if I'm being a little bit too real. I live in a real world. You're looking at me like, oh man, he's not going there. Yeah, that's reality, folks. And it can be discouraging. It can be frustrating. It can begin to drag you down a little bit and you begin to think, God forgot about me. and the troubles and trials and frustrations of reality of life, the reality of life. Oh, if I could just get married. Two years later, you're in the preacher's office trying not to murder each other. If I could just have a child. Well, a year later when you haven't slept in a year. Never mind. Anyways. I'm talking about life, do you understand that? And I'm talking about the way the devil, through the problems and trials of life, knows how to come in there and start cutting away your communication with Jesus Christ, cutting away your interest in the Bible, cutting away your interest in being in church, too distracted by everything else going on, too many activities to do, too much in American culture and American society, to like, I gotta go to church? I have too much going on, I can't make it. and you'll start starving, you won't survive. I don't know what's coming in my future, but folks, I want to survive. I want to be faithful to Jesus Christ until I die. I want to be in this Bible. I want this Bible to grow sweeter every week, month, and year of my life. This book means so much more to me today than it meant to me 22 years ago when I went off to Bible college. It means so much more to me today. I can't even put into words the difference that that Bible is to me now than it was back then. I want it to get better. I don't want it to get worse. And I know human nature and the way life works. If I'm not careful when the famine comes, I'm not going to make it through the famine. And there have been times of famine. There have been times in that last 22 years where I haven't really felt like studying. I haven't really felt like praying. I haven't really felt like reading. And if you're not careful, what's going to happen is you're not going to make it through the famine like this woman does. Let me get to my outline and we'll get it done. It won't be long, I don't think. If you want to make it through the famine, you better get in a habit today of consistently obeying the Word of God. Look at verse 2. The woman arose and did after the saying of the man of God. You see that? She didn't just hear Him. She heard Him and she put action to what she heard. I'm wasting my time if all you do is come sit here and get preached at. Oh, praise the Lord, preacher. Keep preaching hard. We like that hard preaching. We like that Bible preaching. And then you leave and don't change. My goal is not to stay the same. Somebody said that to me one time, and the way it was said with the tone of voice, the look on the face, all that stuff, you know, I don't think it was meant to be taken the way I took it, but I took it as a compliment. They said, your preaching's changed a lot. I said, well good, praise the Lord, I'm glad to hear that, thank you. Boy, you want to watch him get even more mad, you know? The complexion changes completely, it goes just beetroot, just hate him, you know? If I'd have got offended, it would have been perfect, but when it's like, well thank you very much, I praise the Lord for that, that's a blessing, hallelujah. I want my preaching to change. My preaching should change. I want to change as a husband. I don't want to be the same husband 18 years later as I was when we first got married. You kidding me, man? I want to change. You know how I change? By when I hear that book, when I see what God said, when God gives me a message, I take that message like we talked about this morning, and when the truth goes against me, I accept the truth because I love the truth. I love the truth more than I love anything else in the world. I want the truth. Jesus Christ is the truth, right? The way, the truth, and the life. And he said, sanctify them through thy truth. Thy word is truth. You've got the truth living in you if you're saved, and then you hold the truth in your hand if you're saved. You can be sanctified by it. You've got to live what's preached, not just hear the preaching and go out there and act the same way. You've got to take what you've heard and make changes. And I'll tell you this much, God doesn't sit in heaven. I've been on myself for once, that's a blessing. Instead of on poor Luke. You've got to take the truth and you've got to obey it. This woman knew how to obey the truth. Where did she get that from? Her past. Her past. You know what she recognized years ago when that man of God was coming through there? She had a heart for truth. She had a heart for the Word of God. He kept passing through and she says to her husband, hey man, this man of God keeps passing by here. Why don't we build him a little place to stay and just put him up here at our expense? You know why? She recognized the truth. This woman showed years ago that she had a heart for the truth. No wonder she survives a seven-year famine when other people are dying and losing everything and she comes through it and we see in the end better off than she was before she went into it. She comes through that thing seven years later doing real good. Well, no wonder. She put the things of God and the Word of God ahead of everything else and she'd been conforming herself to the Word of God for years. God prayed, the preacher prayed, and gave her a son. Well, she'd been taking care of God's business so God took care of hers. You know what the problem with most Christians today is? They're not interested in taking care of God's business. They're so worried about themselves and consumed with their self, we live in the most selfish generation you've ever seen on this planet. I don't think, at least in the history of this country, and I think in the history going all the way back till God destroyed this thing, you've never seen people more narcissistic than you'll see them today. And you're being brainwashed with it in your psyche and your children. iPhone. iPad. Selfie. Selfie sticks. More and more selfie. I mean, we're shopping for Christmas shopping. It's like, if you don't buy technology for your kids, there's nothing out there to buy. And there's like 900 adaptations to every little stupid thing. And like, you know, pictures. It's a self-obsessed generation. Well, okay, take care of your own business and then wonder why you don't make it through the famine or you can start putting God first every day of your life and you watch what God does for you when the famine comes. You think God's unrighteous to forget your work of faith? You think God's unrighteous for you to be faithful to him and he's just gonna dump you and not take care of you? God will take care of you. You can mark it down, take it to the bank, it's better than the money you got. Well, she consistently obeyed the Word of God in her past, so then when she's faced with something in her present, she knew exactly what to do. You want to know why most preachers, Christians, churches are panicking nowadays and don't know what to do? They haven't learned from the past what God's done for them. God ain't been first. When God's first, then you'll know in the presence, you know what? God took care of us back there and back there and back there and back there and back there. You remember when God did that? You remember when God did that? Remember when God did that? Remember when we were in a storefront with rotten carpet and old trashy chairs and a garage door opener over the pulpit? Look what God's done. If God did it back there, back there, and back there, then we got a little bit of a track record. We got a little bit of a history here with God. So now it's getting crazy. We've never seen it like this before. Great! That means we get to see God do some things we haven't got to see Him do yet. This is a good thing, not a bad thing. Stop panicking. God didn't fall off the throne. Stick with God and you'll make it through the famine. But don't obey God and you'll see what happens. This woman has a track record. She has a history. Remember Saul? Saul started out right, didn't he? When Samuel came and anointed him and he went through all that thing, Samuel gave him instructions. He went and he obeyed what God said. The preacher gave him a message. It was a message from God. I'm not elevating the preacher to Pope status, okay? It's the preacher said so, so I better forget that garbage. When the preacher gives you God's message from God's Word, it can be confirmed. Open the book in your lap, you can confirm the message. Not asking for blind faith, drink the Kool-Aid, make sure you give some money before you do. You'll get that later. We don't care if you die, just give first, get the point? Okay, anyways. Not talking about that stuff. I'm talking about when the preacher's given the Word of God and you see it as the Word of God and the Spirit of God confirms that while you're sitting in that pew and you do what he says, you wind up the king like Saul. You know what happened to him later? He did it in the past. He just got to a point where he felt like he didn't need to obey anymore in the present. And that's when he heard that Epic passage. To obey is better than sacrifice and to hearken than the fat of rams. Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft and stubbornness is as the sin of witchcraft and rebellion as iniquity and idolatry. You've rejected God. He's rejected you from being king. You're dead, boy. Why? Because he didn't obey the word of God. He grew to a point where he thought he didn't have to anymore. He's good. He's stable. He's all set. Consistently obeying the Word of God will get you through anything life brings your way. Anything. Number two. She didn't get content in a foreign land. Look at verse three. It came to pass at the end of seven years' end that the woman returned out of the land of the Philistines. And she went forth to cry unto the king for her house and for her land. You know what I noticed about that? She didn't get happy in the land of the Philistines. You know what some Christians will do? They'll try to catch God on a technicality. Well, Lord, you told me to go wherever I wanted. That's exactly what he said. But what was the purpose of it? Famines coming the famines gonna last seven years So for the next seven years go wherever you want to go He says sojourn where thou will God didn't say Michael manage exactly what move he wanted her to make he said go find a better place Because here there's coming a famine His issue, get out of here so you can survive. You've taken care of my man. You've been faithful to me. You stuck with me when your son died. You turned to me when you had a panic issue in your life. You didn't run from me in 2020. You drew closer to me in 2020. When your son died on your knees, you didn't run from me. You laid him down on the bed and you ran to me. Because of that I know some bad things are coming to the United States of America. So here's what I want you to do I'm gonna take you make sure you stay safe. I'm gonna take care of you Well seven years has passed So she just has faith in God in his word Because God's Word has never failed her yet Can I say that again? God's Word has never failed her yet folks. God's Word is not gonna fail you and I don't care what issues you see in life, what problems you see right now on the horizon or what you're dealing with right now. Just because you're going through a famine and you've got issues right now does not mean God's word has failed you. Stick with him. Ride it out. Don't quit. Wait on God. He's going to bring you back and take care of you. Just don't defect. She went down to the land of Philistines. Why? Because God told her to. Seven years later, She ain't content to stay down there. She wants to get back home. So what does she do? She heads back home. When she gets back home, she's not just ready just to settle. Look at verse 3. At the end of the verse, "...and she went forth to cry unto the king for her house and for her land." You know what she did? God said, go home. Now think about it. Think about it for a minute. Wild scenario. You've been gone for seven years. You left, you're down in the land of the Philistines for seven years. Now I'm gonna go back home because I heard things are turned around, and I'm gonna go waltzing in there, and I'm gonna go straight to the king, and I'm gonna cry out to the king because I want my property back. This woman's got some guts, man. I mean, I like this woman. I see a lot of character in her. When she saw a need, she stepped up and took care of it. When God gave her an opportunity, she seemed to be content with her problem. You don't hear her whining and complaining. You don't hear her going to Elisha and, well, look what we did for you. And so now she's not like, there's no manipulation there. She's not like, well, we built you a chamber. Can you pray for me? Nothing. She did it because it was right to do. She did it for God. She did it for truth. She did it out of a pure heart when he said to her, hey, what do you want me to pray for you about? I know exactly what I want you to pray for me about. When God takes her son, she doesn't turn on God. She runs against the preacher. She's anxious. He sends Gehazi back. Do you remember the story? He sends Gehazi back, and she says, I'm staying with you. I ain't running with him. He ain't got what you got. What you tell him to do is your business, but I want to be with you. She stays with the preacher. She gets back out, sees her son raised. This woman's got some stinking character, man. This woman, every time life just sends her a knockout punch, she turns her head, her heart, and her mind right to God. She runs right to the place where she can get a prayer answered. And now God sent her out. God sent her back. She's like seven years. We're going back. There is no evidence in the text. That she checked to make sure and see that everything was going good back in the land of Israel. What the text shows us is simply that at the end of seven years, because the preacher said God said seven years, she got it from God. Seven years, she heads back. Instead of heading back and moping around, she walks right into the king and says, here's what I want. I want my stuff back. Now, I ain't that wild. Let me ask you a question. When's the last time you walked into the king's throne room and dropped on your knees and said, here's what I want? I want my walk back. Here's what I want. I want my love for truth back. Here's what I want. I want victory over my sin. Here's what I want. I want you to move me forward for your glory. Here's what I want. I want my family to see me growing spiritually. Here's what I want. I want to learn your word. Here's what I want. I want to learn how to pray and get prayers answered. Here's what I want. I want to win a soul to Jesus Christ in 2021. I want to see somebody saved. I don't want them just saved and gone, Lord. I'm going to get real picky here. I don't just want my property back. I want my house and my property. I want to get them saved. I want to get them in church, and I want to keep them in church. That's what I want this year. When's the last time you just walked right in there to the throne room and just told him what you want? Hey listen, if you've been walking with him for a while, if you're trying to do the best you can, if you've seen his power before, why wouldn't you ask? All he can say is no, or not yet. And you're in the same boat you're in now. So if you don't ask, you don't have a chance of getting it. But if you ask, He might say yes, He might say yes but not yet, He might say no but give you peace. Can I say I don't think He's going to tell you no about drawing closer to Him? I don't think He's going to tell you no about learning His Word. I don't think he's going to tell you no about learning how to pray and get prayers answered. I don't think he's going to tell you, but sometimes some things we want, we do get a no on. But if you've got a burden on your heart, you might as well just ask him anyways. She got a son and she got a son raised from the dead because she asked. I wonder if one of the reasons we starve like we do spiritually and struggle like we do spiritually is because we don't Walk into the King's throne room and ask. You know, I think too many of us are just content. The Bible says to be content. Yeah, it says to be content with such things as you have. It's talking about covetousness. It's talking about things of this world. Be content with whatever God's given you monetarily, physically. But why would you be content with not moving forward for Jesus Christ? Why would you be content spiritually? Paul said, "...forgetting those things which are behind, reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus." He's pressing it. He's putting pressure on it. Why? Because he wanted more from God. Boy, I want more from God. So this woman walks into the king and guess what she does? She gives her request, my last point and we'll go. She saw the divine power of God work in her life. Watch it. Verse 4, the king talked with Gehazi, the servant of the man of God, saying, Tell me, I pray thee, all the great things that Elisha hath done. It came to pass, as he was telling the king how he restored a dead body to life, that, behold, the woman whose son he had restored to life cried to the king for her house and for her land. And Gehazi said, My lord, O king, this is the woman and this is her son whom Elisha restored to life. And when the king asked the woman, she told him, You know what she got to see? She got to see the divine power of God come together for a specific moment in her life. Now wait a minute, wait a minute. Everybody wants miracles. Miracles are not the reality. They're not the norm. Do you know that when you look at your Bible and you watch the way the miracles are grouped, The first time you see a grouping of God working regularly in miracles, it's with Moses and Joshua. The second time you see God working regularly in a grouping of miracles, it's with Elisha and Elijah. 700 years later. Do you know the third time God does things in threes? Father, Son, Holy Ghost, Sun, Moon, and Stars, Body, Soul, Spirit, and I spare you the rest. Lots of them. The fingerprints of God. The third time God does things in a grouping of miracles regularly. The Lord Jesus Christ and his particular disciples that were with him. Three groupings of miracles. 700 years after Elijah and Elisha. The norm in this woman's life was not God's always working miracles so of course I have great faith. The norm of her life was the mundane reality like your life. Get up in the morning, read your Bible, get the coffee going, let the dogs out, feed the dogs. Get the kids up. Get things going. Got to get out the door to school. Sometimes everybody's in a good mood. Sometimes some of them are in a good mood and some aren't. Sometimes we're all in a bad mood at the same time. Sometimes we're in a bad mood and the dog's eating the couch. Talking about life. We get in the car. Oh, I forgot to fill the gas tank. The kids are in the back seat. Dad, slow down. You're going to get a ticket. Remember last time. Life, right? Reality. That's how it is. But that doesn't mean there's not a God in heaven who's not watching you be faithful and giving you credit and giving you heavenly rewards and spiritual blessings in the here and now because he sees your faithfulness in the mundane and God respects and loves and requires. Moreover, it is required in a steward that a man be found faithful. I wonder if this whole famine of 2020 has a lot to do with seeing who's going to be faithful and who's not. Here's your excuse. You're going to draw closer, you're going to run. And you know what this woman does? This woman gets to see the divine hand of God, because I am telling you this right now, you're going to see it from time to time in your life, and y'all got a testimony of it at some point or another, where you saw God bring it all together in a way that was just, whoa. Did that just happen? Ah, I see it now. Hindsight's 20-20. Now looking back, I can see what God was doing. I can look all the way back to when Elisha sent Gehazi to come and try to heal my son, and now this leper who defected. He's not even with Elisha anymore. He's down there with the king, talking about the days when he used to be down there at the church house with the preacher and what God used to do. Because he got the leprosy stuck to him from Naaman, you remember the story? Now here he is, he's out. And God's still using him from her past to tell a story to the king about the prophet so that when she walks in, it just so happens that they happen to be talking about her right at that moment. It's like Ruth's hap, it just so happened, that's chance, that's luck. that she fell upon the spot that God had for her to take care of her. And it just so happened that she shows up right when Gehazi is talking about back in the day when he was with Elisha before he screwed up and got out. A sad story. Back when he was with Elisha, he did raising this woman, and he looks up and he says, my Lord, that's her. And the king double-checks the story. Obviously, he must not have a ton of trust in Gehazi, the leper, but he sure is intrigued with the stories of this preacher and the miracles and all the stuff he saw and what it was like being around him and what was his daily life like. I don't know if Hezai's embellishing the story or if he's shocking him with the fact that Elisha was actually really human and really normal because they viewed him as being something unnormal, not a man subject to like passions as we are. And oh man, he was normal. He was so grouchy and he'd get up and he snored terrible at night. You wouldn't believe how bad he snored. He had the worst dragon breath ever in the morning. But man, God sure seemed to use him. And you'd have never guessed it, man. You'd have never guessed it. But you know, I didn't see him pray as much as you'd think he prayed. But I think he was praying when we were walking around a few times because I was talking to him. He wasn't listening to me. I don't know. I just know this. He's telling stories and the king's eating them up. And then she walks up and he double checks his story with her and he says, hey, come here, officer. Take this woman down to give her property back, her land back, make sure that she gets it, and I want everything that that land might have produced in the last seven years to be given back to her. Now, wait a minute. If a miracle like that happened, I wonder what God was doing with that land, because it just so happened that the king knew that even in a famine, that land was producing, and he says, I want you to give her back everything she's lost in the last seven years. You're fixing to see that when we get to the end of Job. There's a theme in the Bible here, folks. When you stick with God, He gets you through the bad times. And when you come out the other end of the bad times, you come out better off than you were when you went into them. And that's how to survive the famine. Obey that book. Don't ever stop obeying the word of God. Don't be content with where you're at. Do you hear me? Don't get content with where you're at spiritually. And last of all, wait until you see the hand of God move, because you will see it move. He'll take care of you. I'm going to give you a chance tonight to respond. We don't usually do so on Sunday night, but we haven't been having an altar call for a while, and I feel like I should tonight if the pianist will make her way to the platform. Why don't you stand to your feet with your heads bowed and your eyes closed?