Hey, this is Shelby and Paul and you are listening to the A Year in the Bible with Daily Grace podcast. We're going through First Kings. Today we're in chapters 16 through 18. Paul, can you help us break down these chapters? We start following Elijah here and so we get a lot out of his story in these couple of chapters. Can you break it down for us? Yeah, I love these chapters so much. I love the character of Elijah and he's a critical figure in the biblical story, not just here in First and Second Kings, but will also be later as well as we'll see. So he kind of seemingly comes out of nowhere and immediately just starts speaking the word of the Lord to the king Ahab here, declaring that there will be no rain in the land. And following God's command, he flees Ahab and sits in the wilderness and receives bread and meat from birds. But then God tells him to go and find this widow in the wilderness. And I'll come back to that story in a moment before returning to Ahab and having a showdown with the pagan priests. That's a really, really almost like out of a movie, this crazy moment. So we have this widow though that I kind of want to talk about. And God says, hey, this widow is going to provide for you. But when Elijah comes and says, hey, can you feed me? She says, well, actually I'm starving and all I have is a handful of flour and a little bit of oil, so I can't do it. But Elijah's like, okay, no, just go and make the food. Just go do it. And when she goes, she finds that the flour doesn't run out and the oil doesn't run out. And she feeds him for quite a while actually. And there have been so many days when I felt just like the widow, someone or something, some responsibility asks me, make me bread, do what you need to do. And I'm just like, I just have a little bit of flour and some oil. Right. But I think what this story shows us is that God takes the little that we bring and turns it into abundance. He takes just the little efforts, the little decisions that we make to be faithful and he makes so much more out of them than we could ever imagine. And, you know, it even makes me kind of ask, like, why does God include me? I'm so unworthy. But that points me to his love that he wants me to be part of his story. And he has a purpose for me. And for every single one of us, right? It's nothing special about an individual. God chooses us and uses us and equips us to do his work. Yeah. I think we've all felt like the widow. We just have a little bit, but we feel like there's a lot being asked of us. It's so easy to calculate the possibility of something with our own strength, with our own wisdom, with the means that we see before us. But here we see the widow trusting in faith that God will provide even when logically it didn't make any sense. And what does God do? He provides as he always does. Yes. And I think the thing that's really cool about it is that if God had not done that, he, Elijah would not have been prepared to go back and have this big showdown. With the priests of all. And that shows us that God not only provides for us to just get through the day on a daily basis, daily bread, but he actually equips us to do incredible things on his behalf. And those incredible things, quote, unquote, may not be this giant showdown with leaders of a nation, but sometimes it's small things that have eternal significance. And so it's just a reminder for me and for anyone who's listening, just that God will provide what you need to accomplish his calling on your life. Yeah, absolutely. I think my takeaway from these chapters, and this is a verse that really stuck out to me one time when I was reading through the Bible in a year in its first Kings, 1821. I'm just going to read a portion of that verse. But this is Elijah and he's talking to these pagan priests and he says, how long will you waiver between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him. And so you had the people here who were sometimes worshiping God, but sometimes worshiping pagan gods. And he's really challenging them. If the Lord is God, then is he not worthy for you to follow wholeheartedly? We've kind of talked about this wholeheartedly, not following him at all, halfheartedly. So you hear him challenging them to wholeheartedness here. And I received that as a challenge to wholeheartedness. This is a verse that often surfaces in my heart and in my mind when I'm struggling with obedience to the Lord, or just loving him wholeheartedly. And so there's a great reminder reading this today. And that's my takeaway for these chapters. All right, we have one more episode in the book of first Kings. So we'll talk about the end of this book tomorrow.
