Cocktail“Now it came to pass, when the vessels were full, that she said to her son, ‘Bring me another vessel.’ And he said to her, ‘There is not another vessel.’ So the oil ceased.” (2 Kings 4:6) In the 1988 movie Cocktail, Tom Cruise is a talented New York bartender who takes a job at a bar in Jamaica and falls in love. While Tom Cruise is good at the Risky Business of mixing cocktails and doing Mission: Impossible, God often mixes the cocktail of faith and business. In 2 Kings chapter 4, the widow’s husband had died. There was no way to pay her debts, so her creditors decided to take her two sons as slaves for payment of the obligations. She pleaded for assistance with Elisha, the only man of God she knew. “What do you have in the house?” Elisha asked. “Nothing in the house,” she said, “but a jar of oil.” Elisha then instructed her to go and collect all the empty jars from everywhere, and from all her neighbors. “Do not gather just a few,” he instructed. When the jars were collected, Elisha instructed her to pour what little oil she had into the jars. Miraculously, the oil was more than enough to fill the jars. In fact, there was more oil than jars to fill and the only limit to the oil flowing and therefore her income was how many jars she collected. “Go, sell the oil and pay your debt; and you and your sons can live on the rest.” (2 Kings 4:7) Long before Sir Mix-A-Lot could rap, God has always been the Master Bartender, and He often mixes faith with the tangible. The widow believed she had no resources to meet her need, but God didn’t think so. She did not see the one jar of oil as a resource, and it did not become a resource until it was mixed with faith. Her need was met when her faith was mixed with the business of going door to door and to the market to sell the oil to receive her needed income. In fact, there was so much revenue she was able to pay off all her debts and live on the rest of the money. Although God works through business to provide for our needs, it is wrong to place total trust in business without faith in God. God often requires simple obedience to an act that seems ridiculous, but it is this faith mixed with the practical that God honors. If you have a problem that has been hounding you, and you see only Kevin Costner and No Way Out, God may have already given you the skills and talents to meet that need. In fact, God may just be waiting for you to mix them with faith to produce a cocktail called a miracle. Ask God to show you how to solve your problem, and be ready, as it often takes obeying the ridiculous before receiving the miraculous.Copyright © 2003 Eddy Ministries. All rights reserved. Subscribe/Unsubscribe: eddyn@earthlink.net
|