Awaiting His Visitation

In this next episode of the encounter between Elisha and the Shunammite woman, we see that this woman has prepared a space for the prophet to stay in when he passes by her house, and the Bible says in verse 11 of 2 Kings chapter 4: “One day he came there, and he stayed in that room and slept there.”

In other words, this woman prepared the room and had it built. She put in everything needed to furnish the prophet’s bedroom, and I imagine that weeks went by, perhaps even months. The prophet may even have passed by the house, but he had not yet stayed in the room, until one particular day he decided to lodge in the place that had been prepared for him.

This has always struck me as a spiritual lesson: many times we can offer our lives to the Lord for Him to use. Many of us have felt a profound call from God and understand instinctively that God wants to use us in some way, or we ourselves have developed a great desire to be used by the Lord. We have offered our lives to the Lord, prepared our lives, taken discipleship classes at church, even enrolled in a seminary or a Bible institute. We are diligent in our service to the Lord, but God has not yet visited our lives in that deliberate and powerful way that would bring us to the level at which we feel He wants to use us.

How important it is that we not lose heart or become discouraged, that we keep that room, so to speak, prepared, clean, and reserved so that, when the time comes, the Lord may visit us and do His work in our lives.

The Shunammite woman kept that room there, that bedroom prepared for the prophet. To me, it signifies the soul of a man or woman who is well prepared, well furnished with a lamp that can represent the Word of God, which says, “Your Word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” It symbolizes a place where God, the Holy Spirit, can feel comfortable and rest; a table and a chair where the prophet could sit—in other words, a place where God can settle, where He can sit and do what He must do in our lives, where He can give us instructions, where He can write, so to speak, His words and His instructions into our lives. This woman furnished that place very well and left it ready, and one day the Spirit of God, through the prophet Elisha, decided to honor her offering and rest upon her.

I want you to meditate on that. If God has called you and that call has not yet come to fruition, do not stop keeping your lamp burning; do not stop keeping your life, your soul, clean and prepared. Do not grow discouraged and throw in the towel, because one day the Lord may come into your life and visit you, and that may be all you need.

Let us not miss the opportunity for God to do what He wants to do in our lives because He has taken too long. Many times God places words, stirrings, and callings in our hearts, and only much later, when He has fulfilled His purpose in us and finished preparing us, when the circumstances are right, does the call finally come to fruition in our lives. In the meantime, our task is simply to remain prepared.

I see that on many occasions God called His servants and then sent them on a journey, as in the case of Joseph. God gave him a dream in which He clearly told him what he would become: a great man of God, a powerful man with authority, before whom his brothers and his parents would bow. But after that call through a dream, God sent him to Egypt, where he entered into a whole journey of preparation of his character and his faith. The circumstances in Egypt were being prepared, and Pharaoh’s life was being positioned to place Joseph in the position to which God had said years earlier He would bring him.

Even the circumstances themselves seemed to contradict what God had told Joseph, because instead of rising, his life seemed to be sinking. But it was all preparation, and at the right moment Joseph was summoned from prison, brought before Pharaoh, and then entered into the full exercise of his ministerial calling.

So do not lose sight of the call; do not lose hope. If God has spoken something into your life, keep that lamp burning until He accomplishes His perfect will and fulfills the call He has placed upon your spirit. This Shunammite woman reached the day when the room she had prepared for the prophet would finally be occupied by the servant of God, and great things would happen in her life, as we will see in our next meditation.

May the Lord bless you, and may His grace be with you.