Red Clouds

Welcome to Gospel Truth with Andrew Womack, a teaching ministry that focuses on God's unconditional love and grace. And now here's Andrew. Welcome to our Friday's broadcast of the Gospel Truth. This week I've been sharing out of first Kings chapter 17 about Elijah and some of the important things that God has taught me through this. I have an entire teaching on lessons from Elijah. I'm not going to share this entire teaching because if I did it'd probably be a four to six weeks series on television. So I'm not going to teach all that's in this book and this book corresponds to CDs, DVDs, a USB and I've even got a study guide that will go into more detail. This study guide is a man. It's 300 and something pages. And so anyway we've got all of that but I'm not going to be going through that entire teaching. I'm only doing a portion of it from first Kings chapter 17 and I've got that teaching right here in this little booklet entitled Welcome to Your Place Call There. And if you don't understand that title you've missed some of this teaching I encourage you to go back through it. We're offering the booklet as a free gift to you free and post paid and we'll give out all that information at the end. I've already covered a lot of things. This is the end of my first week teaching through this chapter and I've already covered the first 10 verses of first Kings chapter 17. I hadn't got time to go back through it but let me just highlight one thing it says in verse four says and it shall be that thou shall drink of the brook and I have commanded the Ravens to feed thee there. This was God speaking to Elijah and he sent Elijah's provision to where he told Elijah to go not to where Elijah was and I've been making this point over and over and over that God doesn't send your supply to where you are. He sends your supply to where he told you to go and if you are waiting until God supplies everything that you need before you take a step of faith and start moving in that direction you'll miss God. It would have been like Elijah. He could have stayed where he was and because God said I have commanded the Ravens the food was already there but Elijah would have missed it. I believe that God is sending your provision to where he told you to go and if you don't go there somebody else will go there. Somebody else will get that provision. Well that's a big statement and then last time I talked about how that the place called there for Elijah changed. He sent him at first to the brook cheerth but then the brook dried up and then he sent him to Zerepath and he told him in the ninth verse he says I have commanded a widow woman there to sustain me and so Elijah's place called there changed. You have to stay in relationship with God because it's not a static thing. God doesn't just tell you to do one thing in your entire life. There will be steps and stages and you have to grow and so you have to stay in communion and he'll change that place called there for you and then in the tenth verse it says so he arose and went to Zerepath and when he came to the gate of the city he held the widow. Notice the widow woman was there gathering of sticks and he called her and said fetch me I pray thee a little water and a vessel that I may drink and so I spent some time yesterday talking about this that this woman could have been at home just gripping and complaining about her situation. She could have been at home just saying what's the use I give up I'm just going to die now why even go to this effort of cooking this last little bit of food she could have been praying and begging God but it says in the previous verse that God had already commanded her so she had a word from God that she was going to sustain somebody now whether she knew it was Elijah I don't know the scripture doesn't say but she had a word from God God had already spoken to her and because of that she was out just gathering sticks and doing what a normal days you know needs would have demanded of her she was taking steps of faith and boy I just I can relate to this there are so many times in my life that in the natural it's just like hang it up it's over quit I remember when my son died that you know in the natural he'd been dead for over four hours when I got the call that he had been dead and he was in a morgue strip naked with a toe tag on and did you know in the natural it's just like well what can I do it's already done they say that if you go eight minutes without oxygen to the brain that it'll cause even if they somehow another revivio it'll cause brain damage and you'd never be functional again my son had been dead for over four hours when I got a call that he was dead and did you know in the natural I could have just quit and given up but I immediately anyways I'm not going to give you the whole story but praise God he's alive from the dead that has been 24 years ago and God raised him up from the dead and then the next year he had a little girl who was born one year after her father died not many people can say that and so I could have given up and there just so many times but you know what I encouraged myself in the Lord and praise God he brought my son back to life this woman was there she was just doing what she could do because she had a word from God man that's powerful I just want to encourage you today that I know that there's people watching this program that you have something that God has spoken to you you've headed in that direction things haven't just worked out right and you may be fighting discouragement and feeling like giving up but you need to keep doing what God told you to do it's not over till it's over you know Kenneth Copeland put out a little cartoon many many years ago and it was a stork that was eating a frog and this frog was was in the mouth of this stork but his arms were out holding the neck of the store so that the stork couldn't swallow him he was in the mouth of the stork but he couldn't swallow him and underneath it says it's not over till it's over don't quit and anyway that's that's the way that sometimes I feel like man I'm half eaten but I'm not gonna let go that thing get swallowing me yet until I quit and give up I'm not gonna give up this woman was standing there and still fighting and doing what she needed to do and so he asked her for some water that he may drink now get a picture of this this woman was not a Jew it was obvious that Elijah was a Jew I don't know exactly how all that worked but she even said something here as the Lord your God lives she recognized he was a Jew she recognized he was somehow or another maybe a prophet of God it's possible that she even knew who Elijah was I don't know but this woman was not a Jew and during those days the Jews hated anybody who wasn't a Jew and there was this friction between them and yet here's a total stranger coming up to her and saying fetch me a little bit of water you know let me just put it to you this way if you're a woman and if you're watching this and if a total stranger it came up to you and says could you please get me some water how many of you would just obey and quit doing what you're doing and just go serve somebody else not very many not very many would do something like that but this woman do without saying a word she didn't tell him how bad everything was she just started to go get him a drink of water so this says something about this woman this woman was a giver this woman was a person who you know served other people and did things for other people she wasn't just a totally selfish person she could have been just focused on how bad her situation was and and refused to do anything for anybody else but she started to go get him some water and then in verse 11 it says and as she was going to fetch it he called her and said bring me I pray thee a morsel of bread in nine hand and in verse 12 it says and she said as the Lord die God liveeth I made mention of that already but see she knew that this was a Jew she knew that this was a man who had a relationship with God she didn't just say as the Lord my God liveeth she was recognizing him she says I have not a cake but a handful of meal in a barrel and a little oil in a cruise and behold I'm gathering two sticks that I may go in and dress it for me and my son that we may eat it and die do you know I've had some people before take this verse verse 12 and say that this woman had no faith whatsoever because here was her confession that she was just going to eat it and die she didn't have any faith at all and so they used this to say that miracles just come out of the blue and that you don't have to believe God or anything but that's inconsistent with the ninth verse where the Lord said that he had commanded this widow woman to sustain Elijah now again she may not have known exactly who it was but she knew that she was going to live and that she was going to sustain somebody I don't know that she knew how it was going to happen but she had a word from God so I personally read this 12th verse not as her confessing that she was just going to fix this one cake and her and her son would die. But she was just stayed in the house. the natural thing to see are you the one that God has spoken to me about? Like for instance, I can remember a man coming up to me one time and you know if a person asked me how I am, I always say I'm blessed and my people who are partners with me know that that's always going to be my response when somebody asked me how I am. And so this one partner came up to me and he said how are you? And I said I'm blessed and he said I want to know how your finances are. What is your situation in the ministry? And he said I'm a partner and you aren't giving me the information that I need to be able to partner with you. I feel like you need something. Tell me what your situation is. And so I told him and we were way behind at the time and did you know what that God used that man and he gave us the money that we need. He made up the whole deficit on his own. But I spoke for something that was contrary to what I was believing but it was because I was asked and I basically just said well here's the situation. That's what and what I was believing. I didn't believe that we were going to fail and that I was going to have to quit the ministry or anything but in the natural that's what it looked like. And I believe that that's what this woman was doing because she had already had God speak to her and when he asked her to give him a little cake first she just told him the situation basically just testing to see are you the one that God spoke to me about. And look at Elijah in the next verse it says Elijah said unto her fear not go and do as thou has said but make me thereof a little cake first and bring it to me and afterward make for thee and for that son. And did you know he didn't stop right there. There's a lot of people that would just stop right there but then he went on and gave her a word from God of promise in verse 14. He said for thus say at the Lord God of Israel the barrel of meals shall not waste neither shall this cruise of oil fail until the day that the Lord senteth rain upon the earth. So he didn't just ask something of her without giving her a word or any kind of a promise or anything for her to mix her faith with. And I tell you this is something that God spoke to me back in 1996 and he showed me some things and showed me that I was actually robbing from people when I received an offering because I usually presented it is like here's my need and if you can help me but man he spoke to me and told me that I need to start giving the people that I'm ministering to I need to teach them the word and tell them what's going to happen if they give to the ministry. I don't know if you understand that some people that aren't in the ministry may not fully appreciate this but I can tell you if you are a minister most ministers understand what I'm talking about that the average way that a person receives an offering is to tell people about how crisis situation you are in and please help me and people give kind of out of pity or out of you know sympathy for you or something like that. In a sense that's kind of like being a beggar and because that's the way that I saw offerings and this was in 1996 so I had been in the ministry at that time that would have been for 28 years and that's the way that I had basically received offering. Matter of fact the first three little churches that I pastored we never took an offering. We just had a little coffee can at the back and if you wanted to put money in you could and if you wanted to take some you could. I didn't even receive an offer in the first 10 years and that's one of the reasons I nearly starved at that but anyway when I did receive offerings I did it kind of apologetically but then I got the revelation right here I lied you didn't just say gift to me here's my need gift to me he told her if you give the Lord says that you're a little barrel of oil and meal will not waste until the day that the Lord sends a rain upon the earth. He began to tell this woman about the benefit to her if she gave and when I begin to see these things it totally changed everything instead of me approaching an offering like could you please help me we're gonna have to go off television radio if you don't give. No I started teaching on giving that's what I'm doing the last two previous weeks when I played these chapel services from our carous Bible College what I'm doing with this teaching I'm sharing truths with you that will help you this isn't for me this is for you and I know that there's a lot of people that will criticize that and I can't control what you think but I'm telling you the truth the reason I'm teaching on this is because this is what set me free and I have seen it set other people free we've got one couple that came through our Bible College that they were pretty prosperous they had a good job when they came but they took a step and started a business and they came to me because to leave their secure job and to start their own business there was no guarantees that anything was gonna work and they came to me and I prayed with them about it and that's been now over 10 years and did you know that they now run over a billion dollars a year gross income now that's gross that's not profit but a billion dollars it were and so the point I'm making is I was teaching them I've taught other people I'm doing these things for your benefit and this is what Elijah did he didn't just say gift to me because I'm in need could you give me something he's saying if you give this is your key this is the way that God is gonna meet your needs you know I had a graduate of our Bible college who when he graduated he started a church up in the mountains of Colorado and it was just a small church only had about 30 people and he asked me if I'd come hold a meeting and so I said I would and to be able to gain more people he went together with two other churches so three churches about 30 people per church came together and there was like a maximum of a hundred people and when I got there he says I want you to receive your own offerings and I think the logic behind it was that if I was one receiving the offerings I couldn't complain about how small they were because this was really a very small group of people and he wasn't expecting much out of it so I told him I'd receive my own offerings and so the very first service it was a three-day meeting in the very first service I got up and I told the people I said look I don't need your money I just came from a place in Charlotte North Carolina they gave me $350,000 for a meeting that I held and I said I don't need your money I'm not a poor preacher that just got into town and I won't be able to get out of town if you don't give and when I said that this pastor's all of the blood just drained out of his face he turned white like you have killed the offering nobody's gonna give to you now and you know what I did I got up and I said look it's not about what my needs are it's about what your needs are you need to give you need to be a part of getting the gospel out and this is just one ministry where you can give and I started teaching them that when you give that money doesn't leave your life it enters into your future where it grows and multiplies it'll come back to you a hundredfold in this life Mark chapter 10 verse 29 and 30 and in eternity you'll have people coming by your mansion thanking you throughout all eternity for the money that you've son and I just taught on why giving benefited them and did you know after that meeting was over the next week the next Sunday after that meeting was over the three churches separated and went back to their own place and that pastor got up in front of the church and he began to cry and he said look I don't even remember what Andrew was teaching on when he was here except those offerings and he says I realized that I was not telling you about how giving would benefit you I was afraid that people would think if I put an emphasis on giving you would think that I was doing that so I could get your money and he felt like I was begging and he says I'm not in the ministry to beg and I'm not in it for myself and so I haven't been teaching you but he says man I got convicted that I have been not telling you the truth and he got on his knees in front of those thirty people on a Sunday service and apologized and he says forgive me for not challenging you and telling you the truth about how giving is for your benefit not just for the church's benefit and he was repenting and asking the people to forgive him and did you know that those people came up and started hugging him they started throwing money on the stage and he called me and told me about this and he said we paid off ten thousand dollars worth of church and dead in this out of thirty people and I'm sure many of those were husband and wife and stuff and yet they they just gave supernaturally and he says this is one of the greatest things that he had ever seen happen the reason for getting is not just for the minister for the church or for the ministry that you're giving to like Elijah did right here he didn't say just give to me I'm hungry give me something to eat he says for the say at the Lord God of Israel the barrel of meals shall not waste neither shall the crews of oil fail until the day that the Lord sin reign upon the earth he was doing this for her benefit again Elijah was the man of God he was in the next chapter he called fire down out of heaven. Did you know God could have supplied his needs some other way? He had already been bringing him bread and flesh through these ravens. God could have meant his needs super naturally, but God doesn't just want to bless the birds. He wants to bless people. A minister should recognize that when you are receiving an offering, it's not just about your needs, it's about the people and they need to invest. You know, if somehow or another, I was, I don't know the richest man, on the planet. And if I had some corporation and if I came into a church and I said today, you know what, I'm going to give you an opportunity to buy a stock. And if it was one of these businesses that just kept doubling and tripling all the time, you know what, you wouldn't look, if you invested, you wouldn't look at that as you, that money leaving your life. You'd look at it as an investment. When you go and buy a, you know, a CD or something like that, you don't go home and think about, man, look how much money I'm doing without. No, you go home and start contemplating, boy, this much interest, this means in a year I'll have this much. That money doesn't leave your life. It's an investment. You need to quit looking at giving as something that you've just lost this money. When you put it in the bucket, you see it go down the aisle and you just wave goodbye to it because you'll never see that again. No money when you give with the right attitude, it never leaves your life. It just enters into your future where it grows and it multiplies and it comes back to you 100 times in this life and in eternity it'll come back to you in relationships with the people that God used your money to change their life. So this is what Elijah was doing. He told this woman, go get me something not because I need it. You need to give. There are some of you watching this, that you may be in a financial bind and you're just thinking about what your needs are. But I'm telling you, when you give to a ministry and I'm not saying this just for me, you can give to somebody else. You can give to your own church, but when you start giving, it's the way for you to prosper. And ministers need to be telling you this. Ministers need to be letting you know that the way to increase in the kingdom of God is not by hoarding and cutting back. It's by increasing. It's by giving. You know, it says over in Proverbs, I think it's chapter 11 that there are some that withhold more than meat, but it tends to poverty. But then there's others that open up their hand and they are just prosperous. It's counterintuitive. If you have need, most people think, well, I need all of this. Know what you need. If it's not enough for your need, then turn it into a seed and plan it so that you can get a harvest off of it. Man, this is powerful stuff. I'm going to continue this into my next week's programs and I encourage you to please get this teaching. I've got an entire teaching entitled Lessons from Elijah and it will go into more detail than what I'm going to cover just on our television programs. I'm doing kind of an abbreviated session on that, but this teaching entitled Welcome to Your Place Call There. This is just a brief little 50-page booklet and we'll send this to you free in post-paid and this is dealing with the exact things that I've been talking about this week. And so this is a freebie to you. We encourage you to give if you can, but if you couldn't or wouldn't send anything, we'll send this to you free in post-paid and then we got the larger teaching. If you listen to our announcer, we'll give you all the information and then please call our right today. Enter is offering his booklet Welcome to Your Place Call There as his free gift to you today. This offer is limited to one free booklet per household and is available in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia. Contact us today to receive your free booklet. Let me encourage you to get these products once again. I've got the larger teaching, the complete teaching on the life of Elijah in this book. I've got CDs, DVDs, a USB and we even have a study guide that is made for discipling other people. But then I have this little booklet in title Welcome to Your Place Call There and this is the summary of First Kings chapter 17. We're making this available as a free gift post-paid. If you listen to the announcer, he'll give you all of the information and please take advantage of these offers today. Welcome to your place called There is taken from Andrew's larger teaching Lessons from Elijah. He's offering the complete Lessons from Elijah's series as a book, study guide, CD album, or as a TV DVD album made from our daily television broadcast. 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While there, you can discover more product details and download additional free resources. Also, our products and additional resources are available in various languages through our website. You can also order resources or receive prayer by calling our helpline at 719-635-1111. Our helpline is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. To write us, use the address on your screen. We appreciate your generosity and hope to hear from you today. The reason I do what I do is to fold. First of all, God just transformed my life and it's just like the guy that the Lord told him says, "Don't go tell anybody that what's happened to your daughter and he, man, couldn't keep it quiet." When you get God touching you, you just want to tell somebody, you got this good news, you want to tell people. But beyond that, I believe God's got a specific call on my life. And I mean, God has encouraged me thousands of times. And on November the 4th, 2014, he woke me up at 3 o'clock in the morning and he said, "This is the reason that I've raised you up, is to change people's opinion of me and as their opinion of me changes, then they in turn will go change their world." The initial response that I get from people who come in contact with our ministry is that they just see God in a total different life than they've ever seen Him at causes them to respond to God. The whole motive behind carous is 2 Timothy chapter 2, verses 1 and 2, where Paul said, "Be strong in the graces in the Lord Jesus and the things that you have heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit out of faithful men and women will be able to teach others also." That's been my whole thrust and when I started carous Bible college, it was because I can see that it was a way of fulfilling those verses. And so what we hope to accomplish is to make disciples. And it's already happening. We've got people on every continent of the world that are reaching people. And through them, we are making an impact that I can never do.