Beyond Prosperity, Part 1

Greetings, friends and new listeners and welcome to this program of the R.G.

Hardy Ministries. I'm Sharon Notts and I'm so glad you've tuned in today because we know that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. The message you will hear today is Beyond Prosperity, which the Lord gave to me after telling me to read 1 Kings 17 out loud.

I didn't see the need to since the widow of Zarephath is the most preached about widow in Bible history and I knew her story quite well. But the Lord didn't disappoint me and I hope you will also be blessed by the amazing things I learned in Beyond Prosperity. Oh, how I love the Lord and love the presence of God. Amen. There's nothing like God's presence and there's nothing like the Word of God. I'd rather eat the Word any day over any meal or any food that I, my favorite dish. I'd rather have the Word of God.

What about you? Turn your Bibles with me to 1 Kings the 17th chapter. Now, what if I said Elijah in the little widow woman? How many know there's barely a week that goes by that somebody is not preaching about that widow?

We don't know her name but we know her story. We know all about Elijah in the widow woman. You hear it preached continually.

And I remember this was back now in the fall, last October, because that's what my notes say, that's how I know it. But I know that the Lord, he kind of said to me, to read the book, to read the chapter 1 Kings 17. And I thought to myself now, I do not need to read that chapter because I hear it preached at least once a week. I mean, somebody is preaching about that widow woman and we know that usually the main thrust of it and it's nothing wrong with it. I'm not saying it's not biblical and it's not scriptural, but you know, we're told if we will give then we're going to get this big blessing back and our oil and our crews of oil and our mill barrel will get the miracle. And you hear it preached all the time. How many would agree with me on that?

Okay, how many think it's reasonable to say that or close to it? And so when the Lord put it on my heart to read the chapter, I thought, I don't need to read that chapter because it doesn't really, you know, I just don't need to read it. But the Lord really was pressing on me to read it and then not only to read it, but he told me to read it out loud. To read it out loud. You know, usually in your home you generally don't sit around reading the Bible out loud, at least I don't. Maybe some people do, but how many usually read the Bible out loud?

Okay, sometimes. And so I felt that the Lord wanted me and I thought, why do I have to read it out loud? And he said, because if you just read it, you'll read what you think is there because you already have it in your mind that you know this chapter. So you'll just be reading it and you won't. But if you read it out loud, then some things that I want to show you, you'll begin to pick up on.

So we're going to read it first. 1 Kings, and I know you know the story, you probably, anybody here could probably stand up and preach this message without even looking in the Bible as far as this story is, but we're going to read it nevertheless. And 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 be dew nor rain these years, 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 careth 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. 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 Zidane and dwell there. Behold, I have commanded a widow woman there to sustain thee.

So he arose 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 she was going to fetch it. 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 she said, has 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 my son that we may eat it and die. And Elijah said unto her, fear not, go and do as thou has said, but bring 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 God of Israel, the barrel of meal shall not waste and neither shall the cruise of oil fail until the day that the Lord sendeth rain upon the earth. And she went and she 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 cruise of oil fail according to the word of the Lord, which he spake by Elijah. Most of the time they'll stop here.

This is the end for most of the time that the message but we're not going to stop. He said, read the whole chapter. And it came to pass after these things that the son of the woman, the mistress of the house fell sick and his sickness was so sore that there was no breath left in him. And she said unto Elijah, what have I to do with thee, O thou man of God? Art thou come unto me to call my sin to remembrance and to slay my son? And he said unto her, give me thy son. And he took him out of her bosom and carried him up into a loft where he abode and laid him upon his own bed.

And he cried unto the Lord and said, O Lord my God has thou also brought evil upon the widow with whom I sojourn by slaying her son? And he stretched himself upon the child three times and cried unto the Lord and said, O Lord my God, I pray thee let this child's soul come unto him again. And the Lord heard the voice of Elijah and the soul of the child came into him again and he revived. And Elijah took the child and brought him down out of the chamber into the house and delivered him into his mother. And Elijah said, see thy son liveth. And the woman said to Elijah, now, now by this I know that thou art a man of God and that the word of the Lord in thy mouth is truth. So here we are, this chapter that is preached over and over again, probably 52 times a year, I'm sure. And God said, but I want you to go and read it. And as I read it out loud, I began to pick up on some things and there are seven things that I saw in a different light that the Lord showed me in this chapter that I want to share with you tonight. And each one of the things will sort of elevate, go a little higher spiritually. We'll sort of start off down here in the flesh where, you know, we spend a lot of time and then we'll wind it up a little bit and we'll start climbing the ladder till we get to number seven and we'll be where God wants us to be in camp meeting. Amen. So here we have Elijah.

He just, he just explodes on the scene. All we're told is that he was the son of a Tishbite and we don't know anything else. We don't get any credentials. We don't know what Bible school he went to. We don't know if he was a doctor, a Bishop, apostle.

We don't know any of that. We just know that he came on the scene, boom, he explodes on the scene and he begins immediately without any preliminaries. He comes right to the point. He says, as the Lord God of Israel liveth, and I like that. He starts right off, right off the bat, speaking to Ahab. He said, as the Lord God of Israel liveth, because he's making it very clear.

You Ahab and your wicked wife Jezebel, you're serving Baal. He's nothing but a piece of stone. He can't see, he can't hear, he can't speak, he can't do anything.

You got to carry him around and take him where you want to go. But I'm the representative of the living God. I'm the God who's alive. I serve the God who's alive.

I'm the servant of the Most High. He's the God that lives. He can hear you when you cry. He can see you when you're hurting.

He can be touched with the feelings of your infirmities and he can do something about it. So right off the bat, he says, I want you to know that I'm representing the living God. He said, before whom I stand. I like that because Elijah was saying, I just came from the presence of God. And when you get in God's presence, it'll make you bold. You'll be able to stand up in the face that they have and you'll be able to say, I'm here to tell you what God says.

And it's not going to be something you want to hear, but I'm not afraid to tell you what God says. I've been in the presence of the living God. And so he says, I've been with God. I have a relationship with him. He knows me and I know him and that's why I'm not afraid of you, Ahab, because I know God.

And I like this. He said, according to my word. Notice that Elijah said, according to my word. Because when you spend time in God's presence, when you know God in an intimate way, when you're with God and you're in his word all the time, his word becomes a part of you. His word gets in you. And when you begin to speak, you can say, according to my word, because you're speaking under the unction of the Holy Spirit, God's word.

And so Elijah, he just comes right to the point. He says, I'm here representing the living God. I know him. He knows me. I've been in his presence.

Therefore I have authority to speak this word and this is the word I'm speaking to you. I want you to know that there's coming a drought. It's not going to be rain. It's not even going to be a speck of dew on the grass until I say so. Now we found out later it lasted three and a half years, but here he just says, until I say so, there'll be no rain. How many know what happens when there's no rain? After a while, if a drought goes on long enough, it brings famine, especially over there in the Middle East, especially in that part of the world, we see the devastation in Africa.

Even right now, they're showing some of those nations like Niger, but they're starving to death because of the drought and the famine. And so that's what was going to happen here. But he said, I'm here to tell you something. There's going to be, the judgment of God is going to come. Now the thing about it was, was he prophesied this judgment and this trouble. The thing about it was, is he was going to have to go through it too. He was going to have to go through the drought. He was going to have to go through the famine. When God sends judgment, it's going to be all around us.

But the thing I liked about it is even when God is judging, he is able to keep his people. He's able to supply your need. He's able to pay your bill. He's able to make a way for you. And so God said, Elijah, I want you to get to the brook because I have commanded the ravens. How many know God talks to birds? And birds listen.

They hear his voice. He said, I've commanded the ravens to feed you and you can drink from the brook. So there he had it made in the shade. He just sat there and the drought was getting worse and the famine was getting worse, but he didn't care.

He was just at ease. He had the brook to drink from anytime he was thirsty. And he had the first emergency airlift in the time of famine. You know how they show him sending the emergency airlift to Africa?

Well, he had his own private emergency airlift every morning and every evening. Here come the ravens. And here's the first of the secrets I want you to see.

I said, we're going to start in the flesh because that's where we live. Here come the ravens. He said, I've commanded them. And what did we read every morning and every evening? What did the ravens bring him? Flesh and bread.

Amen. And we know that flesh means it was some kind of meat, whether it was a chicken leg or a turkey wing. I know it wasn't a pork chop.

That much I know. But it wouldn't have been any ham hocks or any of that because it would have been kosher. But it was some kind of meat. Now it might have been, like I said, chicken, turkey. It might have been a steak. Amen.

The thing about it is now I want you to see something. Ravens are carnivorous birds. They eat meat. So you know that those ravens were obeying God if they would take food that they would eat and bring it to the prophet. And not only that, I want you to know that Elijah wouldn't have eaten raw meat.

No, he wouldn't. That would have been against the law for him to eat raw meat. So somehow these ravens not only had to get meat, I mean, they could just go out there and snatch a chicken out of the barnyard and bring it.

Amen. They had to bring him some cooked food. And I don't know, maybe they flew in the window of the palace and snatched a chicken leg off of Ahab and Jezebel's table.

And that which was meant for the king and queen brought to the prophet. But what I want you to see is that every morning and every evening they had bread and flesh. They had carbs and proteins. They had carbohydrates and proteins. They had a balanced diet.

He didn't have just bread and he didn't have just protein because God made the human body. He knows how it works. He knows how to keep it well.

He knows how to keep it from getting sick. And if you read in the Bible, the type is there again and again. If we go back to in the wilderness, when they were in the wilderness, God kept them for 40 years. Now I know people say, well, all they had all those 40 years is manna, but that's not true.

I'm not going to take you there because of time, but you can look it up for yourself later. It's in Exodus 16 and 8 and 12 through 14. The Bible says that he gave them every morning, he gave them the manna in the morning and he gave them the flesh in the evening. In the morning they came out and there was manna on the grass. In the evening he sent the quail. And not only that, once he instituted the sacrifices in the tabernacle and they slayed the goats, the sheep and the oxen, they didn't throw them away. They ate them. So they had meat to eat in the wilderness. How many say amen?

Because like I said, God made your body and he wants you to have a balanced diet. If we go up into the New Testament and we go to the one miracle that is recorded in all four gospels, the only one that's in all four is the feeding of the 5,000. And you know the story. The little boy had the lunch. What did he have? Two little fish and five loaves of barley bread. And Jesus blessed it and multiplied it and gave it to the disciples.

They fed the 5,000 with what? Carbohydrates and protein. Because God wants you to have a balanced diet. And if you're on one of those wacko diets that all you're eating is protein and you're not eating the right kind of carbohydrates, you're doing harm to your body. And if all you're doing is stuffing your body with a bunch of carbohydrates and you don't have the proper balance of protein, you're doing harm to your body. God made your body and he wants you to have a balanced diet. They just had it on the news this week that the Atkins Corporation, the one that had that big thing about the low carbs, they're going bankrupt now.

They're filing for bankruptcy because people realize it's just another fad. It only works for a certain amount of time, but eventually you've got to get your body in balance. And if you eat the way God made you to eat, then you'll be able to be healthy. See, you didn't know you were going to get this, did you?

Now, when I say you have to have a balanced diet and you need to eat the carbs and the proteins, I'm not going to go into the whole thing. You know, there's plenty of information out there. But I'll just say this way. Stay away.

I'll say this much. When we're talking about carbohydrates, stay away from the white stuff. The white flour, the white sugar, the white rices, the white, all that stuff is just junk. It is not the stuff that's in the Bible. The bread God gave them was not like this junk that people are eating today. The bread that they ate wasn't like we're eating, you know, the white stuff and all that.

They didn't have all that then. And so I'm talking about eating the whole grains and the complex carbohydrates. So the first, the very first thing that I saw in there is that God says he wants us to have a balanced diet.

All right, now we're going to notch it up and go a little higher, okay? And so here he was. He had it made in the shade. He had his carbohydrates and his proteins and he had all the water he needed and it was good water too. It didn't have chlorine in it and fluoride in it and whatever. It just was fresh water in the brook. But alas, alas, alas, and the brook dried up. Amen. So it didn't matter how much food the ravens brought and you got to have water.

You can't make it without water and the brook dried up. The blessing stopped flowing. He was blessed. I mean, you talk about being blessed. He didn't have a care in this world. He didn't have to get up and drive down to the giant and get his groceries.

He just laid back and enjoyed himself and chatted with the Lord and just let himself be fed by ravens. But when the brook dried up, he had to do something. And sometimes God allows your blessing to seemingly be cut off and you jump up and say, hey, wait a minute, God, this doesn't happen to Christians. We are the blessed, the prospered of the most high and we don't have troubles like this.

We don't. The brook dried up because you can get so comfortable in your blessings, you can start depending on your blessings and your faith will get real puny and weak when you don't use it. So sometimes God has to bring us to a place where we've got to rise up and get some faith working or our faith is going to shrivel up and die.

Amen. And if the brook didn't dry up, Elijah would still be sitting there eating his carbohydrates and proteins. But when the brook dried up, he had to do something. And when God shuts one door, don't get discouraged and get down in the mouth and say, God, did you forget about me? Start looking for the other door that God is going to open up. Because you got to realize that when God shuts the door and cuts a blessing off, he's not being mean.

He's got something better. He wants to take you to a new place and you can stay in that one place so long that it'll become ho-hum and it'll become you expect it and you just think, you know, that you're just laying back and you're not, you can even become unappreciative. How many know that's human nature?

We just are selfish like that. We just, after a while, you know, we just expect things to be the way they are. But sometimes God has got to stir us up like he did Job where we'll just sit back in our nest and then we'll just stay there.

So when the brook dries up, do not be discouraged, but begin to look to see that God has got something else. Because God said, Arise and get thee to Zarethath, for there I have commanded a widow woman to feed you. You see, Elijah was blessed, I mean, he couldn't be any more blessed. He was just blessed. But God wanted to bless somebody else. And sometimes we get so blessed we just sit back all fat and happy and we're not thinking about nobody else. But God wants our blessings to spill over into other people's lives. He blesses us to be a blessing.

Amen. And so he had to get up, but he would have never moved if the brook hadn't dried up. So difficulties and adversities when they come, don't look at them as though God is against you or he's forgotten you. Look at it as an opportunity that God wants to do something for you. Let me tell you something, true miracles, and we use the word miracle so lightly, we've done watered it down, you know, we say, oh, that was a miracle and this was a miracle.

And it really wasn't. Because the miracle is when no human help can bring it about. When it takes divine intervention, then it's a miracle. If we said we need $1,000 right here, right now, we must have it. And we could say that would take a miracle. But what if every person here because somebody came in with a gun and said, give me all your money, and every person just emptied out their purse and their wallet and got out all that secret money stuffed away in that little secret compartment. And when we got all our money out, we had $1,000. Would that be a miracle?

No, because we had it here. But a miracle would be if he said, I want $1,000 or I'm going to shoot everybody and everybody poured out their money. And really, it only came to $725. But somehow or another, God multiplied it and it was $1,000. That would be a miracle. And so God sometimes lets us get into adversities because those, it is the baby stage of a miracle. Trouble, adversity, difficulties, these are all the grounds, the breeding grounds for a miracle. It has to start with an impossibility.

It has to start with a dilemma. It has to start with things going wrong and backwards before God can step in. And sometimes it gets worse and worse because the greater the difficulty, the greater the adversity, the greater the miracle.

How many say amen? So he had to come to the place where the brook dried up and the blessings were cut off. But when that happened, the Bible says in verse 10, so he arose and went to the gate of the city. Now here's the key, immediate obedience. He didn't sit around and think, well, you know, I'll wait and see, maybe God will let the brook get some more water. I'll wait till tomorrow and see, maybe the Lord will move. I mean, after all he's been feeding me by ravens. What's the big deal? I mean, couldn't he have them bring me some water too?

I mean, what's that? He could have sat around and tried to reason in his mind, but he didn't. He got up, he rose up immediately. And this is a lesson for us to know that when God truly speaks in our heart and our spirit and we know that it's the Lord, we must act immediately.

If we do not act when God tells us to, we may cause the problem to not be resolved because all the other events, it's like a domino in order for the other things to fall in place, we've got to first obey God. Because what happened when he got to the gate of the city? Guess what?

Can you imagine that? That same widow was there gathering sticks. She just happened to be there when he got there. You got to realize she was not in her backyard. She wasn't in her neighborhood.

She wasn't in her own block. She was at the gate of the city. She didn't live at the gate of the city. She lived somewhere inside the city. The gate of the city was the entrance. The gate of the city is where the judges sat, where the rulers sat, where business was taken care of. Why was she out at the gate of the city? Because God put something in her heart to make her go to the gate of the city. And she just happened to go at the gate of the city when Elijah just happened to show up. It just happened that way. No, it didn't just happen that way. It wasn't a coincidence.

It was a God incidence. But if he had not obeyed God and arose immediately and acted when God told him to, he might've got there later and she did then come and got her two sticks and going home and had her cake. And that would've been the end of that story. We would've never heard it preached all these years.

A lot of people would've run out of material to preach on too. So they need to thank God Elijah rose up because when he got there, there she was. And see, another thing I want you to see here why it's important to move when God says move and obey him because God always, listen to this now, this is important. God always works on both ends.

He always works on both ends. He put it in that little woman's heart to go there. We know that he did.

Why? He said that he commanded a widow woman to sustain him. How did he command her? I don't know.

We didn't get the privilege of getting the details. Did she have a dream? Did she have a vision? Did the angel come? Did she hear a voice? Did she just get this impression in her spirit? We don't know, but he commanded her. Somehow God commanded this little widow woman. We don't even know her name, but God put it in her heart. And there she was gathering her two sticks. When God is about to move in your life, this is what happens.

A door closes. Now you can start getting afraid. You can start getting shook up and you can start making things happen yourself. Oh my God, what are we going to do? I'll run over here.

Maybe this is where I ought to go. No, I'll run over here. No, I better run over here. And while you're running all these places, you're not hearing God. You're not looking for the door that he has open. You say, well, what am I supposed to do? Then you get down and pray and say, God, close the doors you want closed and open the ones you want open. And I'll walk through them.

How hard is that? When God knows he can trust you that you'll do that and you'll not just pray one thing with your mouth and get up and do another thing. So God works on both ends. Whenever God is about to do something, he's working on both ends. I mean, if somebody comes to you, if you're a single male or a single woman in this church and somebody comes to you and says, God told me you're my wife or you're my husband, don't set no marriage date until God tells you. Because if it is from the Lord, if it is from God, he will tell both parties. Now it is very possible that he'll tell one party and not tell the other immediately. That is very possible. Sometimes God'll reveal to somebody that's your wife and they may not marry that person for another five years, but God reveals to them that is your wife.

That is the one. And that person is thinking, I'm not marrying them. I don't have the slightest interest in them. You know, I just don't. They're a nice, wonderful person, but they're not.

I don't care about them. But if God is in it, when the time is right, he will deal with that person. All of a sudden they'll wake up one day and say, my God, I love that person.

Why didn't I see before how wonderful they are? It's true. If God is going to do something, if God wants two people to do something, whether it's ministry, if he says he's calling somebody to work for him in a certain ministry place or maybe to work full time, quit their job, come work for the Lord, he's going to tell both ends. He's not going to tell one end and not the other. How many say, amen? You're not going to up and quit your job if you haven't heard from God. Now, sometimes you have to take a step of faith and you're fearful and you're saying, oh God, oh God, am I doing? Oh, I know Lord, make sure when I do this, it's you.

You know it's him, but you, you know, you're just shaking with them baby legs to take that walk, but you know it's him, but that's okay. It's okay to do it afraid when you've heard from God, but it isn't okay to do it afraid when you haven't heard from God. You ought to be afraid.

You ought to be scared out of your living mind because you're liable to make a big, huge mistake that you will have to pay for, for a long, long time. Amen. I hope you're seeing some of the new facets of this story of the widow of Zarephath. I believe her to be the most preached about widow in human history. It is the centerpiece of most prosperity messages. So when the Holy Spirit spoke to my heart to read first King 17 out loud, I thought, why?

I know this story very well. I've heard it preached and dissected hundreds of times, but I obeyed and as I read aloud, I picked up on seven powerful principles that I had never seen or heard in this story before, which take the story to a higher level of blessing that far exceeds just financial prosperity. Some of these are the part that overcoming fear played in her miracle and that sometimes before God opens the door to a miracle, he first closes the door like what occurred when the brook dried up and Elijah had to get up and go to Zarephath.

If the brook had not dried up, he would have never obeyed and had he hesitated, he would have not arrived at the exact time when he came upon the widow. But the crown jewel of this great story came much later when the widow son had died and Elijah persisted in prayer three times to raise him up. Then the mother said, now I know you are truly a man of God. You see, financial prosperity alone is not proof of God's blessing. Even sinners prosper because of the divine law of sowing and reaping. Anyone can preach prosperity and when people act on it, they will get results because of the universal law of reciprocity. But what Elijah had, money could not buy. Paul says in the last days, a symptom of many Christians is going to be they count gain as godliness.

But only the true power of God can heal the sick, deliver from death as when Peter and John told the cripple at the gate, beautiful silver and gold have I none, but such as I have, I give unto thee in the name of Jesus of Nazareth, rise up and walk. Today's message Beyond Prosperity is available on CD for a love gift of $10 or more for the radio ministry. Request offer SK116.

That's SK116. Mail to R.G. Hardy Ministries, P.O. Box 1744, Baltimore, Maryland 21203 or go online at R.G. Hardy.org. Once again, the offer is SK116 for Beyond Prosperity. For a minimum love gift of $10, mail to P.O. Box 1744, Baltimore, Maryland 21203. Until next time, this is Sister Sharon saying, Maranatha.