Contacting Provisions: The Principle of Location

Sometimes we miss provisions, even gracious divine provisions, because we miss vital principles for contacting those provisions.  Sometimes we miss the provisions because we are at a different address than that to which it was being forwarded.  Meanwhile, we scream at Him from our alternative address, accusing Him for our lack. 

There are two basic ways we contact provisions.  Some provisions will meet you where you are, at your address, like a parcel mailed to a home or office address.  Other provisions, however, can only be claimed where they are.  That is comparable to the large parcels we would go to the warehouse or post office to receive.  If you should go to the post office for what has been posted to your address, you would have wasted the trip.  If you should wait at home for what has been designated to a collecting centre, you would be waiting in vain.  We find illustrations for both principles in the life of Elijah in the season of the famine that he had called upon his land in the name of the Lord his God.

Blessings that Meet you where you Are

3 Get thee hence, and turn thee eastward, and hide thyself by the brook Cherith, that is before Jordan.

4 And it shall be, that thou shalt drink of the brook; and I have COMMANDED the ravens to feed thee there (1 Kings 17:3-4).

God told Elijah that provision had been made for him at a certain place called “there.”  Prophet as he was, if he remained anywhere but “there,” he would never contact what God was sending, or had sent.  Elijah moved over to that address, and the commanded birds brought his daily provisions to THAT address.  If they did not find him “there,” those ‘postmaster’ birds (or should we call them ‘delivery officers’?) could have returned the ‘parcel,’ or disposed of it otherwise – who know how?  Even though this was a blessing commanded to meet him where he was, the prophet first had to be at that address.  In other words, the fact of locations, or being at the right location, seems crucial to all categories of blessings.  Either you move to where the blessing would meet you, or you move to where you should meet the blessing.

The wise men that brought three prophetic gifts to the infant Jesus represent blessings that meet someone where they are.  Those men, or that Blessing, travelled about 500 miles all the way from the East (Matthew 2:2, 11), to meet Jesus where He was.  That is the first aspect of the principle of location.

Diverted blessings

Sometimes it is not enough to merely wait at a location because God has promised to post a blessing to that address.  The blessing could be ‘lost in transit.’  Jesus told the apostles to go to Jerusalem to wait for a blessing that Heaven was sending to that address.  It was going to take ten days to arrive.  Did they merely sit to wait?  No, they spent that time praying (Acts 1:8-14).  On the morning of the tenth day, the delivery came in a mighty way, with Ã¢â‚¬Å“a mighty rushing wind” (Acts 2:2). The Parcel seemed in a hurry to arrive, or the delivery agents announced by the accompanying mighty wind, seemed in hurry to deliver.

The story of the wise men who were bringing baby Jesus His parcel from the East, well illustrates how even a properly addressed parcel could be misdirected in transit.  Those international ‘courier agents,’ after travelling so many miles from so far away, finally arrived in the country of the addressee only then to be strangely diverted to the wrong address of the opulent home of Herod, asking directions.  They seemed to have said to him, “Hello sir, we have a parcel with us, addressed to ‘King of the Jews,’ but a minor.  That’s what the address reads.  We have been following our GPRS-star that has led us to this point, but we lately seem to have been having ‘connection’ problems with our radar and the star.  Can you help us, sir?”

What they did was due protocol; standard international protocol practice.  A dignitary who enters another’s territory would usually pay a visit of honour to the ruler.  That was what they did.  But who was this man to whom they got diverted?  It was a hitherto undiscovered enemy of the One whose parcel they were carrying. 

How could anyone come so close to your house only to miss their way to the house of your enemy?   How could anyone ‘miss’ their way to be printing a marriage announcement card in the shop of the very witch who had long sworn that that person would never be married?  How could someone suddenly find ‘scholarship’ in a school where the principal is the head of the coven that has never let any member of this person’s family pass any exam?  How could a parcel travel from so far away only for the guiding-star to begin to malfunction, the ‘waybill number’ to disappear, the system to go faulty, when they were just next door to the Person they had been travelling to meet?  Mysterious diversions. 

Thank God, there were angels on duty, to defend the interest of the apparently helpless Infant.  They ‘restarted’ the ‘system’ to guide those innocent delivery wise men who did not seem wise enough in matters of the kind they had suddenly faced; wise men who were wise in other matters but not in the spiritual intricacies of ‘mysterious diversions,’ because they had never faced a case like that in their culture, in their land, in all their wise days 500 miles away in the East.

All wise men are not wise in all things.  Wise men from the East might not also be so wise in the West.  Every specialist is a specialist merely in a small area; also, some wise men are wise only in matters of the star, not also in matters of the land and the malicious men there that camouflage in clerical and royal robes.   Somehow, those wise men re-connected and found their way to the designated address, and did their delivery, but were warned by God not to return by their initial route of error.

11 And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh. {presented: or, offered}

12 And being warned of God in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they departed into their own country another way (Matthew 2:11-12).

May your blessing not come so close only to be diverted, and that to the address of an enemy, a deadly, bloody but camouflaged enemy.  May the prophetic notice of what God is soon sending your way not lull you to bed but fire you awake to pray in Gethsemane.  Amen.

I prayed with one of our brothers lately.  He was a printer who had seen great business proposals mysteriously diverted to his neighbours.  In the case that bothered him the most, he had concluded all the deals with the customer, even taken appointment on when to meet.  Strangely, when that day came, he could not be reached.  The customer made about twenty-five unsuccessful calls.  This printer saw those many calls later that day after the frustrated customer had taken that huge business elsewhere.  He could not blame the man, and that was not the first time that had happened.   He ran down for us to pray.  We did, and the following week, he got so overwhelmed by bigger blessings headed somewhere that somehow got ‘diverted’ in his direction.  It seemed so amazing, he could wait no more but run to share his story at once.

I was speaking on a similar subject in Uganda and a lady requested we pray for her daughter who was supposed to have had a United Nations appointment for which she had applied.  The lady was sent a email that she never saw.  On the day of the interview, the office made about fifteen calls that rang but never showed in her phone until after the interview was over.  Diversions.

For a great door and effectual is opened unto me, and there are many adversaries (1 Corinthians 16:9).

Jude well warns us to “earnestly contend” even for what has been long been “delivered”; how much more what has not yet been delivered?  Daniel placed a call that went through to the Third Heaven, and a delivery angel was promptly dispatched but got intercepted by diversionary devils, and Daniel kept praying until the delivery came (Daniel 10:1-14).

May God judge diversionary devils determined to intercept and destroy your parcel in transit.  May angelic help be at your disposal until every package meant for you is received.  Amen.

Blessings you Meet where they Are

Some blessing will meet you where you are, but other blessings you must meet where they are.  When God was going to give the blessing of protection to the same baby Jesus to whom blessings had recently travelled from far to meet, God told that Baby’s caretaker to flee to where that provision had been made.  That was the kind of next instruction God gave to the prophet Elijah:

Arise, get thee to Zarephath, which belongeth to Zidon, and dwell there: behold, I have COMMANDED a widow woman there to sustain thee (1 Kings 17:9).

This, too, is locational blessing in a sense, but locational blessing of a different sort.  The first category of blessings was to meet Elijah where he was, but for this second category, he was to meet it where it was.  Some blessings will walk to you, but for some other blessings, you must walk to them.  Both are ‘commanded’ blessings, but they operate in different modes.  When Elijah moved into that house of the widow, he lived with the ‘provision’; it didn’t have to come to him morning and evening, as at his previous address.

Commanded Blessings

That God has ‘commanded’ a blessing does not make it automatic in the sense of getting to you irrespective of the delivery ‘terms and conditions.’  In the first case, God had said to the prophet, “I have COMMANDED the ravens to feed thee.”  In the second case, He said, Ã¢â‚¬Å“I have COMMANDED a widow woman there to sustain thee.”   Both blessings were commanded, but they still followed principles.

What is a commanded blessing?  It is blessing that has no choice but come to you, whether Satan likes it or not.  It is a ‘registered’ parcel, bearing your name (and, possibly, your address, too).  It is a blessing designed for your preservation in a season of famine. Some commanded blessings, you have no control over them, as Elijah had no control over the birds that brought his meals.  Whether it was a smaller ration in the morning and a larger one in the evening, Elijah had no input.  Whether the bread they brought was brown bread or wheat bread, was not the prophet’s choosing.  Whether the birds arrived a minute earlier or later, was not in the prophet’s power.  All he had was the assurance that the provisions would come.   However, in the second category of the commanded blessing in the house of the widow, he could at least decide if he wanted more flour than oil or more oil than flour in his meal. If he did not wish to eat on any day, he could stay from food, or if he wanted four ‘square’ meals or only two on any day, he could choose.  The blessing was already commanded in his direction, yet he still had somewhat of a say in it.

Will everyone always know when they have been commanded towards a prophet?  No.  The widow in our story didn’t know she had any obligation to the prophet.  Meanwhile, God had already told Elijah that she had been commanded.  Did God lie?  Or was it the woman who was pretending?  How could God say that He had commanded someone to do something of which they seem so unaware?  Or was it that the woman needed the little ‘boost’ of the prophet’s ‘sermon’ to open her eyes to what she was yet to know? 

Some people are close enough to God to know what they have been commanded to do.  Others are not so sensitive; they need the prophet to clarify the ‘feelings’ they have been having.  They need the prophet to nudge them on, first with a very simplistic ‘water’ request, to set them in motion in the right direction, and thereafter the weightier ‘commandment.’

Prayer: May your feet be ordered by God to bring you to the place of the blessing: those blessings you should meet where they are, and the others that should meet you where you are.  Amen.

From The Preacher’s diary,

Feburary 4, 2019.