Chasing The Carrot

I am an auto racing fan.

Grew up around it in South Africa.

My father’s first job, as an 18 year old in the 1930’s, was for a wealthy mining family who raced two Bugatti Type 35’s. He was their pit mechanic.

So I come by my interest genetically.

Years ago, before the Riverside, CA, race track became a subdivision, Rita and I would spend a weekend watching the infamous CanAm races there.

One day, as comic relief, the organizers ran a VW Rabbit race. So, instead of the thunder of massive V8 engines roaring towards you, the high-pitched whine of 30 VW Rabbits came screaming towards us, all trying to get through the first corner in front of us at the same time.

It was hilarious!

There were VW Rabbits off the track on both sides of the corner, raising clouds of dust in the air. But what I will never forget is that the first driver to emerge from the dust, and make his way down the straightaway, had grey-taped an old fishing pole to the roof of his Rabbit with a huge carrot dangling out in front of the car…ostensibly to encourage his Rabbit to run faster, but obviously never catching the carrot.

The image of that Rabbit chasing a carrot it could never catch can, all too often, capture the challenge for those of us who devote our lives to calling on God for revival…the kind you read about in the history books but seldom, if ever, actually experience.

And that can be frustrating and hope-stealing…unless!

Unless, like the troubled widow in 2 Kings 4, we recognize that we do have oil in the house…and that, no matter how little the measure of that oil might be, God can use it as the starting point for the miracle He was about to provide for her.

Like the Church in America right now, the widow, in 2 Kings 4,  was poor, in debt to creditors and about to lose the next generation to slavery.

So, she went to the prophet Elisha to ask for help. He first told her that he didn’t have the amount of resources it would take to keep her sons from slavery. Then, he asked her, “What do you have in the house?”

Her first answer was, “Nothing, my lord.”

Then, she thought for a moment, and changed her answer to, “I do have a little oil.”

Little did she realize that that answer contained the tiniest seed of the overflowing miracle God was about to give her. God was going to use the pouring out of that little bit of oil to perform a miracle that would bless the entire community, redeem her sons from slavery, and take care of her needs for the foreseeable future.

But it began with her recognizing that, as impoverished as she thought she was, there was oil in the house.

Those of us God has called to intercede and believe Him for a revival of the Church of historic proportions, have to encourage ourselves in the Lord by recognizing and celebrating the oil in our house. It is what will keep faith alive in us…the kind of faith needed in us to start collecting empty containers.

 

What oil do you have in your house?

What testimony do you have about how God saved you, delivered you, has kept you?

How has God provided for you?

How have you experienced His presence?

What vision has He birthed in you re: His calling on you and your family?

What burden has He been stirring in your heart?

What friends has He brought into your life who have a similar heart and passion for Him?

 

While we keep pressing in to God for the kind of revival the Church and the nation so desperately need…don’t get discouraged and quit because you don’t see it yet! Rather, take stock of and celebrate the oil in your house!

Start, in faith, pouring it out into empty vessels.

It is likely the very thing God will multiply until you become the miracle of revival you have been praying for!