Greetings, friends and new listeners, and welcome to this program of the RG. Hardy Ministries. I’m Sharon Knotts, and I’m so glad you 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.
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, it’s as 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 an 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 gonna 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 in 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, 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 will 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 thinking, oh God, oh God, am I doing this?
Oh Lord, make sure when I do this, it’s you. You know it’s him, but 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. God always works on both ends. So he put it in Elijah’s heart, and Elijah, immediately he rose up.
And when he got there, there she was, right where she was supposed to be. And so we know what happened. He said, would you get me a drink of water?
And she said, sure. She didn’t question it. She didn’t say anything.
She started her on her way to get him some water. He said, and by the way, while you’re going, bring me a little cake. And of course, we know the story.
And this is the part everybody loves to preach on. And she says, as the Lord thy God liveth. No, she said, thy God, your God, Elijah, as he liveth, I believe he’s a living God.
But I know, even your God knows, I do not have enough to make you a cake. I can barely make one for me and my son. I’m out here.
As soon as I get these two sticks, I’m going to go in the house, fix him a cake and make me a cake. And that’s it. We’re going to eat it.
We’re going to sit down and die. And so what did he say? This is the part I want you to see.
This is the fourth thing that the Lord showed me. In verse 13, Elijah said unto her, Elijah said unto her, what did he say? Fear not.
This is a biggie, because whenever you’re in a place where you’re in a dilemma or whether you’re in trouble, you’re in a test, whatever is going on, the first enemy you must conquer is fear. Your miracle will never show up. It will never manifest as long as you are in fear.
You can stay in fear indefinitely and hold it off indefinitely. You must, but you must, conquer fear first. I don’t care how big the trouble is.
I don’t care if the wolf is standing at your door. You’ve got to get rid of fear before that wolf can go, because if you don’t get rid of fear and God comes down and delivers you and he sends the wolf and gets rid of him, guess what will happen? The next time something happens, you’ll go right back into fear.
I love Psalm 34, because David just puts it in a nutshell. He says in Psalm 34, verse 4, I sought the Lord, and he heard me, and he delivered me from all my fears. That’s the first thing God did.
And then he says in verse 6, This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all his troubles. First the fear, then the troubles. You got to conquer fear first, because if you don’t, the enemy will come back with something else, and they’ll always intimidate you, and they’ll always back up in fear.
But when you conquer fear, and you put fear under your foot, and you know who you are in Christ, and even though that trouble is still looking you in the face, you’re not afraid, and you’re able to face it, and know that God will deliver you. So we find out that she had to conquer fear. And then we see in verse 15, And she went and did according to the saying of Elijah.
Here’s the next thing the Lord showed me. She acted on the Word of God. You see, when Elijah spoke, we have the written word today.
Peter said, we have a more sure word of prophecy. Right here, this is the Word of God we act on. But when Elijah spoke, remember, he was speaking as the representative of the living God of Israel.
He said, I stand before God. I got direct orders, direct words right from the lips of God. So when he spoke to her, when he commanded her, and said those words to her, it was God’s word verbatim.
It wasn’t Elijah’s word, because if it was, then she would be in big trouble, because Elijah would not have been able to bring the miracle about. But if what he said was from the mouth of God and the Word of God, then she could trust it. And what did he say?
He said, for thus saith the Lord God, the meal barrel shall not waste, and the crews of oil shall not fail. He said, thus saith the Lord. And so she acted on the Word of God.
And she went and did what he said. She didn’t stand there and say, I already told you, Reverend Elijah, that I don’t have enough meal, I don’t have enough oil. How do you expect me to take the food out of my son’s mouth?
Because a mother will always feed her child first. She may not feed herself. She might say, you can have my food, but she will always feed her child.
How would she be willing to say, all right, I’ll give it to you? Because she acted on the Word of God. And when you have a promise from God that he has quickened in your spirit, that you have laid hold on, and you know that it is the answer to what you need, and you know that God’s promises are, yay and amen, in Christ Jesus.
And you’ve got to know that. How many know that God speaks clearly? He says just exactly what he means.
He doesn’t say, maybe we will and maybe we won’t. He doesn’t say, K, surah, surah, whatever will be will be. No, God doesn’t talk that way.
He says, for thus saith the Lord, if you will obey me, I tell you that your meal barrel will never run dry, nor will your oil accrues until the day of the famine is ended. And she acted on the word of God. She took the promise of God and she acted on it.
And we know that there was something that quickened in her spirit. How do we know there was something that quickened in her spirit? Because what we read way back in verse 9, For I have commanded a widow woman there to sustain thee.
again, we don’t know the details. We don’t know how he commanded her. But somehow in her spirit, when she heard Elijah say, For thus saith the Lord, just like that, her spirit knew.
She knew it was the voice of God. And when you know it’s the voice of God, faith rises up in your bosom. And you stand up in the faith of God, and you act on it.
If you wait to act, the devil will talk you out of it. The mind, your mind will talk you out of it. Your flesh will talk you out of it.
The more you think about it, the more you reason it out, the more you’ll say, Oh, my God, this is so foolish. I can’t do this. This just doesn’t make any sense.
But when you realize that God’s Word has been quickened to your spirit, you rise up in obedience. And this is exactly what she did. Something in her spirit caused her to obey.
First of all, she was well on her way when she got rid of fear. If she hadn’t dealt with the fear first, see, Elijah didn’t say, First, thus saith the Lord, he said, Fear not. The first thing he recognized, he saw maybe there was something about her demeanor.
You can see the spirit of fear on a person. You can look on a person and see when they’re in fear. I mean, it’s just on them.
It’s in their eyes, it’s in their face, it’s in their countenance. Have you ever had to maybe minister to someone or prayed with someone? And you saw the fear on them and you thought, you’re in your mind, you’re thinking, if we don’t get rid of this fear, I can pray a storm down, but they’re just gonna fall right back into this thing.
How many have ever been in a place like that? And you know you’ve got to get rid of that spirit of fear. And it’s a terrible thing.
Fear is a terrible thing. It’s the first negative emotion that mankind ever experienced. Because when Adam and Eve sinned against God, they were afraid and they ran from God.
Instead of running to God, they ran away and they covered their nakedness. And when God called to them, He says, why did you hide from me? He said, I was afraid.
And so the devil uses fear. And I know I experienced a time in my life when fear had a grip on me. I mean, it had a powerful grip on me.
And it was so great on me that my sister-in-law, Cheryl, had come to the house to see me, and she looked at me. She said, Sharon, if you do not deal with that spirit of fear, I’m telling you, and she didn’t mince any words. She says, the devil is going to take your mind.
You’ve got to deal with that fear. I mean, she rebuked me, and I needed to be rebuked, because it was just all over me. She just looked at me and saw it.
She says, you’ve got to deal with that. And she brought something up that I had forgotten about. I didn’t even realize that it was in my memory banks.
She says, I’ll never forget the time, Sharon, way back when Sister Elizabeth preached in the church. How many remember the woman evangelist we used to have, Sister Elizabeth? She was a powerful preacher, a little woman with a big voice.
And I mean, she preached powerfully. She was having a service, and I mean, the power of God was moving, and she had a prayer line. After she preached, she had a prayer line.
And they were coming up, she was praying for them, and I was up on the choir standing with the singers behind the mics, and we were singing. And this woman came up, and she was full of demons. And when she got up to the front, she began to manifest.
And she had long, I don’t know if they were real or acrylic, but she had long red fingernails. I mean, they looked like daggers. And she was like this, and she had them out like claws.
And when she began to manifest, the people that work in the prayer lines, the men and such, they were holding on to her, and she was bucking. She was bucking, and they, because, I mean, she was dragging them. She looked at Sister Elizabeth, and she says, I hate you.
And she was threatening. I don’t know what all she was saying. And she was doing like this, and fear jumped on Sister Elizabeth.
And she started backing up like this. She started backing up. In the meantime, they’re trying to hold her, and she’s bucking trying to get loose.
The more they’re trying to hold her, the stronger she got. And Sister Elizabeth was standing there. She was in a dilemma trying to think what to do, because this woman was powerful, and Sister Elizabeth was just little.
And Cheryl says, Sharon, without you even thinking, she says, you ran down off that stage. You ran down there, laid hands on that woman, and you commanded that devil in the name of Jesus. And now I don’t know if the devil came out or not, but the woman stopped manifesting.
She just calmed right down, and then they took her off, and she walked out. She had never been here before. And to my knowledge, she’s never been here since.
And Cheryl says, I’ll never forget that. She says, you just ran down there. And when she said that, I thought, I did do that, didn’t I?
I really, oh my God, I did do that. I remembered that I had done that. So after she left, I went and laid down in the bedroom, and I was laying there on my bed meditating, and I was thinking, I did do that.
God, I did. I wasn’t afraid. I really wasn’t.
And in my mind, I began to see it happening. You know, I was like going through it again, like a picture, a movie, and I saw it happen. I saw the woman up there.
I saw the look on her face. I saw the fingernails where she was trying to claw. I saw myself run down off the stage.
I saw myself run up to her, and the minute I put my hand on her head as I saw it and said, in the name of Jesus, the minute I said that, something went, rrrp, and lifted right off my stomach and off my chest. In other words, it’s like seeing myself do that. I delivered myself in the name of Jesus.
And that thing lifted off of me. And you see, the Lord allowed Cheryl to bring up that obscure thing that happened way back. Why she thought of that, it had to be the Holy Ghost.
And then later when I was alone and as I went through, God actually allowed me to see that happen, go through it, and the same deliverance happened to me. And so in order for you to get deliverance from anything, you’ve got to deal with the fear. And that allows you to rise up boldly.
You will shock yourself. You’ll say, who? I did that?
I said that? Are you sure? Because when the Holy Ghost comes on you, you become bold.
But when that fear is there, he’s competing with that fear, and that fear in your mind is raging, and you’ve got to rebuke it. When you do, it will go. But most of the time we don’t, and it just gets stronger, and then we get bound by that.
I don’t even know why I told that story, but anyway, that’s not in this chapter. But the point is, because she had dealt with the fear, she was able to rise up and obey the Word of God. And how much more when we had the written Word of God?
And of course, what was the result? For three and a half years, they ate every day.
Every breakfast she went there, and there it was.
There was flour or barley or whatever it was, was in the pantry. There was the oil in the pantry. Every morning, every evening, she ate.
Her son ate. Elijah ate. And it actually says all of her house.
So you know, we’re probably got around to Annie Bessie and Uncle Joe and Cousin Lulu. That Annie Soso has, she’s got food in her house, and it’s there every day. No matter how many times she goes, no matter how many cakes she makes, there’s always enough.
So it says all her house. And it needs me to think it was more than just her and her son by saying all her house. So word travels.
When people, you know, all of a sudden inherit money or whatever, word travels. You got cousins you never heard of, show up at your door. And that’s what happened.
But that was okay. There was enough blessing to go around for all of them. And for three and a half years, they were blessed.
And most of the time when we hear this message preached in this chapter preached, this is the end of the sermon. And then, of course, we know we are told come on. And it’s true.
If you give, you will receive. And if you obey God and you send the Word of God and you preach the Gospel, you will be blessed. That’s all true.
That is a valid message. But most of the time, this is where it ends. But God said, no, I want you to read the whole chapter.
And that’s what we did. So what happened after that? We don’t know how much time it was, but it came to pass at a certain point of time, somewhere later on, her son died.
Her child became sick, even with Elijah living in her house.
He was still there. How many noticed?
He said, I sojourn with her. That means I’m living with her. Her son got sick.
Now, don’t you think if Reverend Elijah was sitting, living in your house, eating at your table, that if your son got sick, he ought to be able to pray and get him healed? Don’t you think that? I’m sure Elijah thought that.
I have to think that Elijah had to pray for him, for God to heal him. But the child didn’t get healed, he got worse. He got so bad that he died.
And she came, she said, Excuse me, Reverend Elijah, great prophet of the living God of Israel. My son is dead. Thank you for the meal barrel.
Thank you very kindly for the oil of Cruz. Thank you very kindly for all those financial blessings. praise the Lord.
But they don’t mean nothing right now. My son is dead. And what are you gonna do here?
And Elijah grabbed the child out of her bosom, ran up to the place where he slept, put the child down on the bed, and for a moment there, Elijah. How many see for a moment Elijah? Because he said, Lord God, what are you doing?
How come you slayed this woman’s son? Now, first of all, let’s get our doctrine straight. God doesn’t go around killing people.
He doesn’t kill anybody’s son. He doesn’t kill anybody’s mother, father, husband, wife, relative. God doesn’t do that.
He’s the God of life. But sometimes, God does not intervene, and he allows the natural course of things to go on. If someone gets sick with an illness, and it’s a terminal illness, if God does not intervene, the natural course will be they will die.
It doesn’t mean God killed them. There’s a difference between commission and permission. Let me say that again.
There’s a difference between co-mission. You commit the act, and permission, you allow it. God allows this world to do all the crazy things they do.
People go around saying, if there was a God, then these people wouldn’t be starving. And if there was a God, these people wouldn’t be shooting and killing. And if there was a God, this, this, this, this, as though God is doing all these things.
God is just letting the natural course of things go. But we know that we can get a hold of God, and He can intervene in our circumstances. I’ll stand up here and I’ll say that I believe we don’t know half the stuff that would have happened to us.
We don’t know half of the bad things that almost, just almost happened to us that God intervened and they didn’t happen. I believe that. I believe that there’s been many times that we, now there’s been times we know about that God, we say, wow, God kept me from getting hit by a car.
God kept me from this. God kept me from that. And we think, wow.
But I believe there is as many or times, if not more, when because the angels of the Lord are in camp around the Bounties, that God intervenes, he don’t even bother to tell us about, he just intervenes. But there are times that God does not intervene. And sometimes we don’t understand why.
But other times we do understand why later. And I’m sure Elijah couldn’t understand why when he was this this great prophet of God, why did this child die? And he said as much, Lord, why did you let this child die?
Amen.
Amen, I hope you’re seeing some of the new facets of this story of the widow of Xerapheth. 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 1 Kings 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 7 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’s 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 RG. Hardy Ministries, PO.
Box 1744, Baltimore, Maryland, 21203, or go online at rghardy.org. Once again, the offer is SK116 for Beyond Prosperity. For a minimum love gift of $10, mail to PO.
Box 1744, Baltimore, Maryland, 21203. Until next time, this is Sister Sharon saying, Maranatha.
