You want to guess? I'll give you one hint. Say what? David. No, David. I'll give you a hint. He's a prophet. Go. Elijah. Elijah. Very good. Elijah. OK, some of you high schoolers know the story. No? No. It's Elijah. There's not a whole lot of stories, right? No. Elijah. I feel like I'm a little bit hot. Elijah, this is the story of Elisha and the widow of Zarephath. And I want to, most of the time when you look at this story, you can turn there, 1 Kings chapter 17, I think most of the time when we turn, when we think of this story, we think of the widow of Zarephath. And I could count, I think I've been in one, two, three, four, five, Maybe another one. At least five mission conferences already this year. So I've heard a lot of preaching about missions. And this is one of the passages oftentimes people go to. Yeah, there's another one that's six. Passages that missionaries or preachers often talk about missions and the idea of the widow of Zarephath giving. And there's a lot of application there. But I want to talk about the widow this morning. I want to talk about the prophet Elijah, okay? So we're gonna read the first 16 verses, and then we'll get into it for a little bit. Elijah the Tishbite, who was of the inhabitants of Gilead, said unto Ahab, as the Lord God of Israel liveth before whom I stand, there shall not dew nor rain these years be according, I'm sorry, but according to my word. And the word of the Lord came unto him saying, get thee hence, and turn thee eastward, and hide thyself by the brook Cherith, that is before Jordan. And it shall be that thou shalt drink of the brook, and I have commanded the ravens to feed thee there.' So he went and did according unto the word of the Lord. For he went and dwelt by the brook Cherith, that is before Jordan. And the ravens brought him bread and flesh in the morning, and bread and flesh in the evening. And he drank of the brook, and it came to pass after a while that the brook dried up, because there had been no rain in the land." And the word of the Lord came unto him, saying, Arise, get thee to Zarephath, which belongeth to Zidon, and dwell there. Behold, I have commanded a widow woman there to sustain thee. So he rose and went to Zarephath. And when he came to the gate of the city, behold, the widow woman was there gathering of sticks. And he called to her and said, Fetch me, I pray thee, a little water and a vessel that I may drink. And as she was going to fetch it, he called to her and said, bring me, I pray thee, a morsel of bread in thine hand. And he said, as the Lord thy God liveth, I have not a cake, but a handful of meal in a barrel and a little oil in a cruise. And behold, I am gathering two sticks that I may go in and dress it for me and for my son, that we may eat it and die. And Elijah said unto her, fear not, Go and do as thou hast said, but make me thereof a little cake first, and bring it unto me, and after make for thee and for thy son. For thus saith the Lord, the God of Israel, the barrel of meal shall not waste, neither shall the crews of oil fail, until the day that the Lord sendeth rain upon the earth. And she went and did according to the saying of Elijah. And she and he and her house did eat many days. And the barrel of meal wasted not, neither did the crucible of oil fail. according to the word of the Lord which he spake by Elijah." I want to talk to you for a few minutes about this man Elijah. Think with me now, who are the other characters in this story? You have a king, what was his name? You can talk to me. What was his name? Ahab, Ahab, OK? He's only mentioned one time. So you have Elijah the prophet. Then you have Ahab. Then you have this widow of Zarephath. We can also, as far as we know, she is from that area. And she's not a Jew that's living over there. She's not in Israel. So you have a lady. And I'm going to go ahead and point it out to you. The very last verse, this is after he raises her son from the dead. In verse number 24, the Bible says, And the woman said to Elijah, By this now I know that thou art a man of God, and that the word of the Lord is in thy mouth is truth. So she, to happen to this point, she's basically admitting that she did not know for sure that the word of the Lord in his mouth was truth. Also understand in verse number 12, she says, verse number, not verse number 12. She said, as the Lord thy God liveth, verse number 12, as the Lord thy God liveth. What she was saying is, it's not my God, it's your God. And so I want you to understand that you have a few characters in this story, and Elijah is the only one that is a Christian. So you think about Ahab, who was Ahab? Well, he was the king of Israel, but he was one of the most wicked kings in Israel. I think the Bible says that Manasseh was more wicked, Ahab was known for worshipping Baal. Okay, so here you have a very wicked king, and not mentioned in this passage, but on other passages, Elijah confronts Ahab about how he's worshipping Baal and how he should be worshipping the Lord, and they have that whole discourse. But understand you have a very wicked king, Ahab. And then you have Elijah. And then you have this widow of Zarephath, this person that knows of God, maybe doesn't know God personally, doesn't worship God, Jehovah. And so then, we don't hear in this passage, but we know in other places, Elijah talks about how that he was the only one. And he's the only one left in Israel. because it was not the majority of the people worshiping the Lord. And we understand God shows him that there were 700 people that hadn't bowed and need to bow. Okay? So, but the point there is Elijah felt like he was the only one. And think about this. The first thought I want you to think about is none of this that I'm going to talk to you about this morning is applicable to you if you are not willing to do the will of God. If you don't do the will of God for your life, none of what we're going to talk about is going to apply to you. And the will of God for everyone is to be saved. And if you don't know the Lord as your personal Savior, then you're not saved. And if there's never been a time in your life when you truly repented of your sin and asked the Lord to forgive you and take you to heaven, then you're not saved. It doesn't matter if you feel like you're saved. It doesn't matter if you feel like, you know, you're one of those people that should go to heaven. You know, you've been in church all your life. And you said some prayer, you don't remember when, but you said some prayer and your mom remembers it. That's not enough. I was in college with a guy and I asked him about his testimony because I was thinking about it and it didn't quite make sense to me. And he said, we got to talk in a little bit more detail. And finally he said, well, this is what my mom told me. And I said, hold on, your mom is the one that remembers when you got saved? I said, you need to get saved. You need to pray again. And oh, he got very defensive when I questioned the fact of whether he was saved. But all of you may not remember the date, but you should remember the place. And you should remember the day when you got saved. So first of all, God's will is for you to be saved. But God's will for you also is the general will as far as reading your Bible, going to church, praying, and being a witness. But God has a specific will. God has a purpose for your life. I like to think of it as myself when I grew up on the farm. Dad did not leave the house without making known to us his will for our lives. And what I'm trying to say is he gave us instructions of what he wanted us to do that day. And on the farm, there's always things to do. And if Dad left early or something, he would always leave the instructions with Mom, because he wanted us to know what he wanted us to do. And the same with God. The difference sometimes is God does not sit there and explain to you, you know, for the rest of this year, this is my goal, what I want to accomplish, like Dad would on the farm sometimes. He wouldn't talk about, dad would talk about his dream, what he wanted the farm to be someday. God doesn't always do that for us. Usually God just tells us one step. And this is what I want you to do today, this is what I want you to do this week, maybe You know this month, you know what you're supposed to be doing for this month. But usually God does not tell us the end of the story. And in this chapter, we don't have, the Bible doesn't say that God told Elijah to tell Ahab this. It's just kind of understood. And we know that Elijah did not have some power in and of himself to stop the rain. So you know that God was the one that stopped the rain. So we know that God was behind what Elijah was saying. And we understand that the reason why it was going to stop raining was because Israel had turned to worshiping Baal. And this was the time when God was trying to get their attention. So here you have what we call a famine, a time when it doesn't rain for years at a time. And this is when God uses Elijah to speak to Ahab to say, I want you to stop raining. And I want you to think about three things this morning about what the will of God comes with. And sometimes the will of God is these things in our life. But before we get going, let's pray. Dear gracious Heavenly Father, Lord, humbly we come before you, and Lord, we know that it's not in me, and it's not in any words that I can say, but Lord, we ask that you would speak through your word to their hearts, and Lord, help us to apply this simple truth to our life. Lord, we ask all these things in your son's precious name. Amen. First thing I want you to think about, imagine being Elijah, and understood in this passage, God tells Elijah, go tell Ahab, it's not gonna rain until I tell you otherwise. And so here you have Elijah, he comes to Ahab, he does what he's supposed to do. And if you can just think about, here is the king of Israel, and you're, in his perspective, you're causing this famine. Your life is going to be under threat. In other words, he's going to want you to be gone, okay? If you're going to cause it not to rain, you're going to cause this curse If you kind of convert it to the lost mentality or the people that worship Satan, their mentality, this is called a curse, okay? You're gonna curse the land and it's not gonna rain for three years. Ahab is not gonna be very happy with Elijah, but Elijah did what he was supposed to do. and he obeyed and he went and he went to Ahab and he said now it's not going to rain until God tells me otherwise or until I tell you otherwise and then the Bible says in verse number 3 when God speaks to Elijah he says get thee hence and turn thee eastward and hide thyself by the brook, Cherith, that is before Jordan. Now a brook is like a tiny little river. It's a small body of water that's flowing. And so you think of this brook and Elijah's not just there by the brook, but he's supposed to hide himself. He's supposed to hide himself from all people. So why? So Ahab does not know where he's living. Okay, so here you have Elijah there by the brook. And I want you to think about for a few minutes Sometimes the will of God is unpopular. I would imagine sitting there by the brook that he couldn't see anyone. I would imagine that he had no idea if anybody else still worshiped the Lord Jehovah. If anybody else in Israel was willing to take a stand for Baal. Because as far as he knew, there was nobody else. He was the last person. And he's sitting there by the brook, and yes, God was with him. The Spirit of God was upon his life, and God is with you in your life. As long as you are in the will of God, God is gonna be there with you. And the Holy Spirit is a comforter, and we could go on down the list of what the Holy Spirit does for us, okay? So you're not ever alone. God is always with you. But sometimes you feel like you're alone. I was not the only person in Bible college that was trying to live for God, but I can assure you, even in our Bible college, not everybody wanted to serve God. And sometimes, and even more so in our youth group, not everyone wanted to live for God. Well, you know, on Friday night of teen camp, pretty much everybody wanted to live for God. But the majority of the year, not everybody wanted to live for God. It wasn't always popular to read your Bible or to talk about spiritual things or to talk about what the preacher had preached about. It wasn't always popular to do that. And can I reiterate that by saying, it's almost always not popular to be spiritual. It's almost always not popular to do whatever God's will is for your life. And understand with me, this idea of Elijah being alone was not the fact that he was the only Christian, the only believer. That's not the truth. The matter is that he felt like he was the only one. And in your lives, sometimes the devil allows us to get this thing into our mind that we are the only ones that are really trying to live for God in some particular way. And the devil wants you to forget that God Almighty is with you. And He's living there in your heart. And why do we really need anyone else when we have God Almighty with us? I mean, if you start to think about that, you know, it's not such a big deal that you're alone. I've been to a lot of small churches in Kansas, and in some way or another, you get to the feeling that the pastor feels like he's all alone. Sometimes I mean just he's just hungry for fellowship you stop in there on just randomly and we stopped in at Brother Grace Church and They said about three or four times and we got to let you go because they knew we had to travel back that night The storm was coming in and everything but then they kept talking, you know, why because they were lonely They missed the fellowship. Okay, and sometimes in our life when you're doing God's will for your life You're gonna feel like you're all alone And so understand, sometimes the will of God is lonely. You know, I'm going to keep going. Second thing I want you to think about this morning is the will of God. Here you have Elijah, and he's by the brook of Cherith, and the Bible says God commanded the ravens to feed him. If it's a raven like I think of, it's kind of like a crow, okay? It's not like maybe a dove or it's not like one of those birds that we are known to be particularly clean, okay? But regardless whether it was exactly like the type of raven that I'm thinking of or whether it was some other kind of raven, it was a bird. And there's two ways that birds can carry something. You all thinking this morning? He can pick it up with his mouth, and I think that's probably most likely for a raven, but the other way, eagles carry things with their feet. You know, birds don't wash their feet. I don't know of any birds that wash their feet, okay? Cats may lick their feet, but birds don't, okay? So there's nothing really particularly clean and wonderful about this raven. And yet it was God's will for Elijah to sit there by the brook, and wait for that Raven to come. Think about, this was not like McDonald's. You know, the thing about McDonald's is, at least before COVID, they were open 24 seven, a lot of them, or at least till late at night. And whenever you thought, you know, I gotta have a cheeseburger, you can go to McDonald's and probably within five minutes, you can be holding a hot cheeseburger, okay? Because you could get it when you wanted it. The raven was not that way. The Bible says he came sometime in the morning and it came sometime in the evening. And whenever the raven got there, that's when it got there. Animals are not always predictable. You can't always predict when they're gonna come. And Elijah had to sit there and wait for a raven. I mean, why did God not pick a different bird? You know, aren't there better birds to carry things? I don't know. Understand, this was not the ideal thing, okay? Remember, Elijah's not cooking the food. Elijah's not having to go and clean the bird and do all the food preparation, all that. And he just sat there and waited for the raven to come. Sometimes God's will for your life is not gonna be comfortable. It's not gonna be whatever you think of as would be ideal, okay? I think of for myself, Whenever I figured out that being a missionary, part of being a missionary was getting up in front of people, I did not feel very comfortable in front of people. I remember one time at teen camp, they had it all broke up, and I don't know if there's like two or three different age groups or something, but we preached just to the preacher boys. So there was like 10 people there, maybe. Probably counting the judges and everything, there was 10 people. And I was still terrified, okay? So the preacher this week was talking about how he was in 12th grade, and his teacher told him that he was gonna give an oral book report. And he says, ma'am, I'll write you a nice book report, and I'll set it on your desk, and you can read it, or I'll come into your office, and I'll read it to you, or I'll tell you it, but I'm not getting in front of people. And she goes, oh no, you won't. And he went on to tell the story. But he was terrified to get up in front of, I can't remember what size his class was, I think there was like 12 of them, or 15 of them. And he was terrified as a senior in high school, okay? So understand, the will of God is not always comfortable. We travel in a minivan, it's no secret, I think you all know that. This last trip we went to Pennsylvania. And it's not that I was calling in Pennsylvania. Somebody in Pennsylvania called me and asked for me to come. It's about 13 hours from where we're at. So we made it in two days. And then right after that, that finished on Sunday. And on Wednesday, we started a mission conference in Arkansas. And that's about another 13 hours that way. And so we made it in two days. And that's a lot of time in a car. And that, but that is God's will for our life. People often say, so how is it to travel with four little kids? I'm like, oh, you know, it's fun. We laugh and stuff. And I'm like, you know, it's not that hard for me. I sit in the driver's seat, you know. But understand the will of God is not always comfortable. And sometimes I think, you know, well, maybe if we had like a big van, all the kids could have their own bed. You know, when we come out, we can have more space. But it's not really necessary, and I don't think that's what God wants to do right now, but for the time being, that's what we tried putting the seats here and putting the seats that way, and we tried turning my wife's seat around, we did that for a while, and she rode backwards until she got headaches from going backwards, and you know, we tried everything we could just to be more comfortable. But you know what? It's not that you should feel sorry for us. This is God's will for our life, and we're happy. We really are. I used to drive truck, and I enjoyed that. But I am so glad that I'm not sitting in a truck today and just making more deliveries, OK? Understand, if you're gonna do the will of God, sometimes it comes with not being comfortable. The last thing I want you to think about is, in verse number 8, the Bible says, And the word of the Lord came unto him, saying, Arise, get thee to Zarephath, which belonged to Ziodan. and dwell there. Behold, I have commanded a widow woman there to sustain me. Now think about it, try to think about it from Elijah's perspective. Why did God not say, you know what, there's a king or a really rich man over here. He's got lots of cows and lots of sheep and you know what, just go over there and live with him and maybe watch his sheep or something and he'll take care of you. That was not what God's will was for Elijah. No, God said, Elijah, I want you to go over here to this widow woman. And not only a widow woman, I mean, a widow woman is usually somebody that you would feel sorry for, somebody who doesn't have somebody to provide for them, somebody who has to take care of themselves all by herself. And usually she's older. And so you feel sorry for this type of a person. But not only that, she has a son. And so Elijah has to go to this poor person, this person that's not even a part of Israel. And he has to go over there and tell her, hey, God told you to feed me. But not only that, this woman was not part of Israel. We do know that they are in the famine because they're eating their last bread too. So they're in this famine too. And here Elijah has to go over and tell her, hey, God told me for you to feed me. And she says, well, this is the only food I have left. And she says, as the Lord thy God liveth, kind of like I'm telling you the truth here, like they would swear by something, you know, but as the Lord thy God liveth, this is the last thing we have to eat. And then he said, I want you to feed me first. I believe God told him that she's supposed to feed you first. If I'm going to take care of her, she has to be willing to have faith and to feed you first. Elijah had to do that. There's nothing comfortable or comfortable for our pride to go and talk to a widow woman like that. I think of myself right now and I am making phone calls. I still got probably another six months to fill in meetings before we can be done calling churches. And there's nothing that I enjoy about asking pastors, hey, can you have us in? Can you give us money? Can you support us so we can go to the mission field? There's nothing I enjoy about that. But it's God's will for my life right now. And for you in your life, sometimes it's going to hurt your pride to do what God's will is for your life. Go on and on with more illustrations, but I hope that you understand this point. If you're going to do God's will, it's going to come along with this idea of being uncomfortable or hurting our pride, this idea of just being uncomfortable with having to rely on a little bird to bring you food. This idea of, sorry, I forgot my first point here. But this idea of just being willing to go to wherever God tells you to go to, this idea of being willing to be all by yourself and not get to talk to anybody for days and days on end. The Bible doesn't tell us how long he was there, but presumably he was there for a couple years. He spent probably less time with the widow than he did at the brook. So he was there for a long time. That was God's will. But I want you to remind you, this was the Elijah that prayed and it rained. This was the Elijah that prayed and fire fell from heaven and consumed that army three times. And this was the Elijah that got to see a boy that had died, raised from the dead. This was the Elijah that got to experience a lot of great things in his life. but it came along with some of these other things. And God's will for your life, I'm not trying to just share the gloom and the doom with you this morning. God's will for our life is great. God's will for our life is better than anything else. But sometimes, for three and a half years, Elijah had to depend on a bird, and then, He had to depend on an old lady with a son. We don't know how old she was, but she was a widow lady with a son. Elijah had to depend on her. And for you in your life, sometimes you're gonna feel like you're all alone. Sometimes you're gonna feel like, man, there's a lot of things that could be better about the situation in my life. And sometimes you're gonna think, man, God, does it really have to be me that goes to them and tells them that? Understand that God's will for our life can be a lonely, it can be uncomfortable, it can be hard to go and talk to people, it can be embarrassing. So let's pray. Dear gracious heavenly Father, Lord, as we come before you this morning, Lord, I ask that you would allow all these young people to understand the importance of doing your will for their life. And your will for their life is always gonna take faith, and usually we don't know