In the World You Will Have Affliction

We continue with the account of the widow who approached Elisha to ask for help in a time of great need. This woman cried out, just as we must cry out fervently before God when we are in need.

This woman also appealed, so to speak, to her husband’s record of service to the Kingdom of God. He was a servant of the Lord, and we were saying that we must live lives that accumulate credit, so to speak.

Again, we are not talking about a gospel of works. We are talking about the fact that God honors those who serve Him and love His Kingdom. As the Bible says, those who seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness know that all these other things will be added to them.

We must live diligent lives for the sake of the Kingdom of God, investing and sowing, in ordinary times, in things that strengthen God’s Kingdom, because this will bring blessings to our lives in the future.

A third principle I see here is that this woman tells Elisha, “The creditor has come to take my two sons as servants.” This woman suffers two great crises in her life in this account: first, she loses her husband, a servant of God; and second, these creditors come to take her sons to pay her husband’s debt.

Adversity, suffering, and trials will come into the lives of God’s children. Serving the Lord, doing His will, and living righteous lives do not mean that we will not go through tribulations and trials. Trials will come even to those most loved by God and those who live in the greatest holiness.

Sometimes we think—and we are told in many sermons—that if we are in God’s will, everything will be victory and everything will be fine, and we will always have the money we need, and we will never get sick, and we will never have problems. It is quite clear that this is not so.

The Lord Jesus Christ said, “In the world you will have affliction.” Now, He added, “But take heart; I have overcome the world.” There are times in the Christian life when trials will come, difficulties will come, illnesses will come, and you know what? The answer will not come immediately, if it comes at all. I know many Christians who have all the faith in the world and all the holiness in the world, and they are diagnosed with an illness and have to spend the rest of their lives going to doctors and taking pills. No matter how much they cry out and ask the Lord with all the faith in the world, they do not receive the healing they so deeply desire. And in that, too, there is a promise from God: that we can live in victory, learn from trials and grow, become stronger, counsel others, become humbler, depend more on God, and have our character become more and more like the character of Christ.

That is to say, trials are not necessarily evidence of a lack of faith or holiness, or of punishment from God or the devil’s power in our lives. Now, I emphasize that when we find ourselves in times of trial, we cannot simply hang our heads, throw ourselves to the ground, and let the devil strike us however he pleases, settling into a kind of fatalistic resignation to problems and crises.

When problems come into our lives, we must do what this woman did: gird up our loins, ask with full authority, and contend for our solution, our provision, our deliverance.

The Bible is very clear on this point. When we find ourselves in need, we must cry out to the Lord and do everything within our power to get out of the problem. But we must understand that problems will indeed come into our lives and that we will not necessarily always get the solution we need.

Now, the Bible makes it very clear that there are resources, there are solutions, there are doors that can be opened. We must ask and it will be given to us, knock and it will be opened to us, seek and we will find. I believe that the Word of God’s preference is to promise us a solution when we are in need. Even so, when we are in need, we must say: Father, I will do everything within my power, and I will leave the final word to You.

What matters is that we understand that trials can come in the spiritual lives of God’s children. Notice that this woman’s husband is not raised from the dead by the prophet. Elisha raised other people from the dead, but he did not raise her husband. Instead, the solution comes through a lesser provision—profoundly miraculous though the multiplication of the oil is—but it is not the ideal solution they would have wanted, which would have been her husband’s resurrection.

God has His own way of working and responding to our needs. What we must understand is that difficult situations can come into our lives, but we must indeed come before the Lord and present our case, do everything within our power, and then leave the outcome to the Lord.

This woman had a need, and it was not a sign of a lack of faith in her husband, who had died, or in her, who was now going through a difficult situation. What she does is come before the Throne of God through the prophet and ask for a solution to her problem.

Let us understand that in this world there will be marital problems, problems affecting our children, health problems, financial problems, problems at work, problems in human relationships. These things happen in life. We live in a hostile world, a fallen world, a world permeated by the devil and his hosts of evil, who want to wreak havoc in our lives. And when struggle and crisis come, we cannot simply give up, doubt our faith, or doubt our God. Rather, we must seek a solution, face the problem, and seek the answer God has for our lives.

We will continue our study in our next session. God bless you.