Adversity Can Come in Any Situation

Elisha goes from being merely someone who passes through the woman’s life without much notice to being a dear friend who stays in her home and whom God uses to give her the most wonderful gift she could ever have imagined: a son.

And just as Elisha had prophesied in the power of the Holy Spirit that this woman would have a son one year after he gave the prophetic word, so it happened. It says: “The woman conceived and gave birth to a son the following year, at the very time Elisha had told her.”

Now, in verse 18, it says: “And the child grew. But one day he went out to his father, who was with the reapers, and said to his father, ‘Oh, my head, my head!’ And the father said to a servant, ‘Carry him to his mother.’ And when he had picked him up and carried him to his mother, the child sat on her knees until noon, and died.”

Here the whole tone of this passage changes. After that initial joy of having a son, several years have probably passed, because the child can speak and is with his family, perhaps as a young boy. Now he falls ill—perhaps with some kind of stroke or whatever it was—and after a brief illness, he dies in his mother’s arms.

And here we see something interesting. The very son God gave this woman has now died. One might ask: Well, if God gave this woman this son, wouldn’t that be like a life insurance policy, guaranteeing that the child would be completely protected and sealed against every kind of illness and accident, injury, and even death? You would think that was how things worked, wouldn’t you? That when God blesses us in some way, it is definitive and all-encompassing, forever, and nothing negative will ever touch that aspect of our lives.

Here we see that adversity comes in any situation. God brought this child to this woman, but he was a normal child. God’s prophetic and miraculous act was to give her a son, but God’s miracles are specific; they are focused. And so this child would now go through life like any other normal child, and adversity and misfortune come to this woman who has been so blessed.

I always tell my congregation that we must be prepared for pain, setbacks, and adversity when they come into our lives, because sooner or later they will come, even into the lives of those most blessed and protected by God. Why? Because God will often use those tragedies and setbacks to reveal other dimensions of His Person, His Power, and His relationship with us.

The fact that this child dies sets in motion a series of events that will illustrate other dimensions of the life of the spirit. And that is what adversity sometimes does: it prepares us to enter even more deeply into our relationship with God.

Now, when this woman’s son dies, notice her faith. That is why character and closeness to God are so important: when trials and difficulties come, we have the tools and spiritual capacities that enable us to deal effectively with adversity.

This woman does not simply give up and die there. She does not surrender, sink into depression, rail against God, or freeze in the midst of her crisis. Instead, what she does is this: “She takes her son,” it says, “and carries him to the room where the man of God stayed when he passed through there, and she laid her dead son on the prophet’s bed, shut the door, and went out.”

Wow, what a wonderful idea, isn’t it? Discerning through the Holy Spirit, this woman takes the problem—her dead son—and brings him, so to speak, into the realm of the Spirit. She seems to sense that this son, given to her as a blessing by God, is God’s responsibility.

She has enough faith to believe that God can raise her son from the dead and give him back to her, and that is why she brings him into the place where the prophet stays. This is a great lesson for us, because when we have problems in our lives, when difficult situations arise, what must we do? Instead of despairing, we must take our need and bring it into the divine realm. By what means? By prayer, by prayer, by crying out, by fasting. We must invite God into our situation, or bring our problem into the realm of grace and the Throne of God.

There are many passages where we see this same idea, aren’t there? The apostle Paul says: “Be anxious for nothing, but let your requests be made known in every prayer and supplication.” In other words, instead of becoming depressed or filling ourselves with sadness or anxiety, we must bring our problem before the Lord, present it to Him, cry out to Him, make Him part of our situation, and, in a sense, make Him responsible for giving us the answer we need.

God likes us to bring Him in, even to challenge Him lovingly to come in and bless our lives, because when He gives us something, He is consistent. So we must trust God for great and wonderful things.

This woman’s faith leads her to bring her dead son into the prophet’s realm, and we will see what happens in our next meditation. God bless you.