Grapevine Ministries
Messages from the bible to uplift and encourage those that need a word from the Lord, to strengthen their faith. Ps Phillip Barker is an itinerant pastor in Perth, Western Australia.
Grapevine Ministries
Unlocking Divine Possibilities Through Faith
What if the impossible wasn't so impossible after all? Tune in to hear compelling stories from 2 Kings, chapter 4, where faith and divine intervention change lives in profound ways. We explore the journeys of a poor widow and a wealthy woman whose faith in the prophet Elisha turned their despair into hope and victory. These narratives aren't just tales from the past; they're blueprints for our spiritual journey today, urging us to distinguish between blind faith and realistic expectations while relying on Jesus Christ as our guide.
But that's not all—our episode bridges the ancient with the contemporary by sharing modern miracles of faith, such as the inspiring story of King's Cafe. You'll witness the power of prayer and divine timing in overcoming life's challenges, enriched by anecdotes of personal healing and liberation. As believers, we're reminded to open our hearts and trust in God's perfect timing, without imposing limits on His plans. Reflect on your desires and aspirations, and consider what you want God to accomplish for you today. Join us for more reflections and insights next week as we continue this spiritual exploration.
Good morning, good afternoon, wherever you are in the world - Welcome to Grapevine Ministries.
Welcome back. For those that are taking notes, today's message is Nothing is impossible for God. Now, in relation to this, I noticed that no one has made a comment on me using the Bible app to read out the scriptures because it's easier for that to read that rather than me, you know, make mistakes or anything else in relation to it. So I'm going to continue to do that. But I like to think that my podcast is just like a church service and I really would enjoy feedback and comments about the messages that I bring, and there's a place for that at the end of each one of them. So please do that, if you should. Now saying that we're in 2 Kings, chapter 4.
Speaker 2:2 Kings, chapter 4. Second Kings, chapter 4. A certain woman of the wives of the sons of the prophets cried out to Elisha, saying your servant, my husband, is dead and you know that your servant feared the Lord and the creditor is coming to take my two sons to be his slaves. So Elisha said to her what shall I do for you? Tell me, what do you have in the house? And she said your maidservant has nothing in the house but a jar of oil. Then he said go borrow vessels from everywhere, from all your neighbors, empty vessels, do not gather just a few. And when you have come in you shall shut the door behind you and your sons, then pour it into all those vessels and set aside the full ones. So she went from him and shut the door behind her and her sons, who brought the vessels to her, and she poured it out. Now it came to pass, when the vessels were full, that she said to her son Bring me another vessel. And he said to her there is not another vessel. So the oil ceased. Then she came and told the man of God and he said Go sell the oil and pay your debt and you and your sons live on the rest.
Speaker 2:Now it happened one day that Elisha went to Shunam where there was a notable woman and she persuaded him to eat some food. So it was as often as he passed by he would turn in there to eat some food. And she said to her husband Look, now I know that this is a holy man of God who passes by us regularly. Please let us make a small upper room on the wall and let us put a bed for him there and a table and a chair and a lampstand, so it will be whenever he comes to us he can turn in there. And it happened one day that he came there and he turned into the upper room and lay down there. Then he said to Gehazi, his servant Call this Shunammite woman. When he had called her, she stood before him and he said to him say now to her look, you have been concerned for us with all this care. What can I do for you?
Speaker 1:Now we're going to stop there, but what I want to do is that you know there's many people that may be aware of this passage of scripture and what it relates to, but I just want to clarify a couple of points as we go through this. Now, remember what I said. The title of this is Nothing is Impossible to God. So we have two women with totally different, contrasting lifestyles one poor and one rich. So if we look at the poor woman first, you see that what it was all about is that the woman had gone to Elijah. She was the prophet, right, and so when she went to the prophet, the prophet said well, this is what you need to do to basically turn your life around. So she went from poor to not necessarily rich, but being able to provide for her family and everything to provide for her family and everything, where there's a total different contrast with the rich woman who is going out of her way to do the right things for the profit, and the hope and the desire is there that she will be able to benefit from that. Now let me just put this into perspective right Now. Back in that particular period of time, people were blessed because they had the prophet and they could go to the prophet and they could ask for their problems to be solved, and he would solve them, because they were problems that couldn't be solved in the natural. So they were looking at the spiritual side of things. Now we today have the greatest prophet who ever walked the face of the earth, jesus Christ of Nazareth. We can go to him anytime with our faith in him and we can actually have the desires of our heart met. Now the only thing to be aware of here is to make sure that you do not confuse blind faith with an ask that you have for our Heavenly Father. As I discussed, we need to remember that we all have problems. Sometimes some of us have got more than one problem, problems which cannot be solved by ourselves in this world. And there are many people who have these problems which cannot be solved because they do not have a relationship with the Father, solved because they do not have a relationship with the father. But as we see in these passages here, as we read through the scriptures and I strongly recommend that you read the whole of Kings 4, and it really puts things into perspective. So that's a little homework for you. These two women had Elijah, but we have our Heavenly Father. Jesus is present here to solve our problems. If only we will go to him Right now.
Speaker 1:As we look at these two women, we see the big contrasting difference. Now, the rich woman, okay, didn't want to let anybody else know that her son had died right, so she was basically speaking out in faith, believing what she wanted to believe. Speaking out in faith, believing what she wanted to believe that he was alive, Knowing that the prophet Elijah could do something about that. Now let me just clarify this. I don't want anybody getting this mixed up with believing that, whatever it is that you have in your heart, whatever your desire is, if someone asks how you're going and what you're going through and all of this sort of stuff, if you just are ignorant of the fact that you have a problem, there's a difference between speaking out in faith and having reality come past to. Let me put this another way If you go around telling everybody that everything is good in your life and you don't have any problems when you do, how do these people know what to pray for?
Speaker 1:Because God uses other people to intercede on your behalf, in the same way that God has sent Jesus to you to be the mediator for you, so that we could go boldly on the throne with grace, stand before the Father, and the desires of our heart shall be met. Why? Because Jesus makes a way where there is no way. It is only through the Son that we can go to the Father. So if you're not, you know and sometimes it may be that the Lord has to put people to come across your path to plant a seed, to say something or do something in life. It doesn't matter whether it's to do with finances, it doesn't matter whether it's to do with restoration of family members, it doesn't matter whether it's to do with you know someone who you know that they need God in their life, but they're not listening to you. Or it may be to do with your health, but the thing is, yes, it's good to be able to speak in faith.
Speaker 1:So if someone asks me, says Pastor Phil, how are you feeling today? And I just turn around and say, oh, I'm strong in the Lord and the power of his might. You know, I'm going over, not under. I'm the head and not the tail, I'm above and not beneath. So if I do that, then that person says, oh, that's good, I can stop praying for Pastor Phil now because he's all right. No, what I need to do and this is where I need to clarify this because in the, in the passage of scripture here, it has a tendency to perhaps lead you down the wrong path.
Speaker 1:So you actually, uh, believe that all you've got to do is speak the word and that's all there is to it. And that's not entirely true. But what you need to do is you need to get there and say well, this is what I'm going through in the natural, but this is what I'm believing. For it's totally different to being in from some person's aspect. You're in denial, well, I've got cancer, but I'm not accepting the fact that I've got cancer and I'm not even going to speak the word. Well, that's not going to help you.
Speaker 1:What you need to do is there has to be a relationship with the spirituality that you have, the same as it was for the rich woman. A spiritual man can die without wealth, wealth. There is great wealth that a man can leave behind in his death, and that's just his bank balance, property, business. All of these great things are awesome. You can have that to pass on to your. We come into this world with nothing, we go out with nothing. So all the wealth in the world is no good to us if we haven't got health.
Speaker 1:Now I know of someone I'm not mentioning their name or whatever a person who is quite financially, very, very stable. To some people you would even say this person is quite wealthy, but they have in the natural a death sentence spoken over their life. So this person can spend as much money as they like, getting the best doctors in the world and going to the best specialists and getting the right treatment and all this sort of stuff, but it it is just doing things in the natural, unless you can have a relationship with the Father or at least have others interceding for you, basically what you have in the natural will manifest itself and become a reality. There are many people that have been healed that do not have a relationship with the Heavenly Father, but they know somebody who knows somebody right? You know the old saying it's not what you know, it's who you know, and it's not what you believe, it's who you believe in. If you get that correct, everybody should be applauding for that. I mean, if I was in a normal church, uh, situation. But let me just say that again okay, it's. It's not what you believe, it's who you believe in. You know it's not what you know, it's who you believe in. It's not what you know, it's who you know, and that's in the natural and in the supernatural.
Speaker 1:This is the time where prosperity theologically Prosperity theologically talks about how things can be. But you can be a righteous man and die poor. You can be a righteous man and die rich. But David said that I have never seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging for bread. Psalm 37.25 says yes, it is the promise of the righteous. Maybe some of us are enjoying these good things in our life just because, out of our righteous parents, the greatest wealth that we can leave behind for our children is the testimony about ourselves that we led a righteous life so that our children won't be begging for their food, won't be begging for their food.
Speaker 1:If we read Matthew 19, 16 to 30, jesus said it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for the rich to enter the kingdom of God. Some people have suggested that this is a reference to a gate in Jerusalem that is called the Needle's Eye. A camel would need to unload all of its cargo that it's carrying so it can actually get through the gate. Other people point out that the word very simply camel, that the word very simply camel. There is another word that is very similar to camel. That means a sort of rope, and maybe they're taking the threading of rope through the eye of the needle. These attempts to rationalize the word of Jesus is missing the point. The point is that it is totally unthinkable for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. But this is impossible in human terms, but it's possible in God.
Speaker 1:When you're looking at this, you can clearly see that two different people have two different outlooks on their life. So one was poor and went to seek the wisdom of the prophet and the prophet was able to tell her what to do. And the other one was rich and was able to go to the prophet and the prophet was able to tell her what to do. Now, I think one of the key things here is that when God does something, he does it different every time. When God does something, he does it different every time, and a very large percentage of the time. You'll see that when Jesus is healing people or casting out demons or whatever, a very large percentage of the time, it requires the person to do something to receive what God has got for them. Go and wash yourself in the water, pick up your bed and just leave, stand up and walk. All of these things are. Go and fill these jars with water, right? Fill the jars with oil, and then you keep filling them with oil, and as long as you're filling up jars with oil, the oil never runs out.
Speaker 1:So I remember something once a while back, and it was brought up to me just recently. Um, we had a thing called king's cafe at the church that I was an associate pastor at, and they they did this thing on one of the Friday nights at the church where they had basically like a soup kitchen where they would feed the people that were coming in. They relied a lot on donations, so depending on what food was donated would determine what sort of food that they were made, and very dear friend of mine was the one that used to do the cooking for them. But what actually happened is they had they had so many trays of this chicken schnitzel that they were giving out to all of the homeless, and for some reason there was an enormous number of people turned up, and so they're praying that the food will be enough. And so it basically was like the loaves and fishes. And this is, without a doubt, exactly what happened. As the trays were coming out, they were handing out the fillets of chicken breast, and it just seemed to go on and on and on, and eventually they actually had leftovers that they were able to pack up and send away as well, had leftovers that they were able to pack up and send away as well. God, through prayer and belief, manifested those chicken fillets to last and last and last, so they had ample amount to do the job.
Speaker 1:If I go back and I'll just reiterate what actually happened with the woman, the poor woman with the oil, now what it was was there and basically said this is what I want you to do Okay, go and collect all of the jars from all your friends, everybody's got them. Get all those jars and bring them back and shut the door and then just fill up the jars with oil. And as she was filling up the jars with oil, she would ask her son for another one and another one, and then eventually she ran out of jars and they're all filled with oil. And so she went to Elijah and said what do I need to do? He said well, all you need to do is go and now sell the oil, and then you and your children will be able to live and continue your life. So the thing is that you need to look at what's going on If, if you are just looking in the natural and the assumption is that you you actually decide what it is that you need to do to be able to actually solve a problem, and realize that the problem is so mammoth that it is impossible for you to do.
Speaker 1:See, the rich woman wanted to be able to conceive a son, and so she did. And the child grew up. And if we go back to um 18 in kings, uh, four. And said and the child grew. Now, it happened one day that he went out to his father, to the reaper, and he said to the father my head, my head. So he said to a servant carry him to his mother. And when he had taken him and brought him to his mother, he sat on his knees till noon and then he died. Now, this is what she wanted. She desired a son. Now, all of a sudden, um, she got the desires of her, she got a son and she had this, this idea in her head about he was going to grow up and he was also going to become a great prophet and so on and such, but he's died. This is very similar to when Abraham had to take his son up to the mountain and God told him to sacrifice him.
Speaker 1:Now, if you looked at it from a logical point of view, like right now, and you say, hang on a minute, god, you gave me a son when I couldn't father one and Sarah couldn't give birth to one, and now you're telling me to sacrifice him, how am I going to be the father of many nations if I haven't got a son? So in theory, you would be thinking that Abraham would be getting there. Okay, I've got to go through the actions. Supposedly I'm looking at this from a natural perspective. Don't send me hate mail or anything, right? So you would think he'd get there and say, okay, I'm going to go through the actions of killing my son, knowing that God, in his intimate knowledge, is going to stop me from doing this, because otherwise, how can I fulfill what he's already told me I'm going to do? But you don't think that way when God's telling you to do something you've either got to make a decision to do it or not to do it, but you've got to know that it's God, got to know that it's God In the Old Testament.
Speaker 1:It is easy to have that clarification, but now we have the Holy Spirit that dwells within us. So here, where the rich woman has now lost her son, she knows that she just has to go back to the prophet, because what's impossible to man is possible to God. So that's what she had to do. But with us and this is the point that I want to make okay, we have the Holy Spirit living within us. If you were born again spirit-filled, then we know that we can go boldly into the throne room of grace, stand before the Father and the desires of our hearts shall be met. We have the greatest prophet known to walk the face of the earth. He is an open channel so that we can speak directly to him.
Speaker 1:So if you have a problem that cannot be solved in the natural, don't just assume that God's going to fix it, because I'll give you a classic example myself at the moment I have a lot of health issues, and some of you listeners may or may not know my situation, but I need a healing, I need a miracle and I am believing for a miracle, but it has not manifested itself yet, but I believe it will. But the thing is, I'm not putting a time limit on God. You can't put a time limit on God. God is the author and the finisher of our faith. We are going over and not under. We are the head and not the tail. We are above and not beneath. We can do all things through Christ, who strengthens us. You need to focus on the word of God and what it says. He's the same today, yesterday and forever. Nothing has changed and nothing is going to change. But it's the relationship that you have with the Father that is more important than anything else, because he wants to have fellowship with us.
Speaker 1:Now, this is just my take on this. It's not 100% scripturally accurate, but I think it plays the part of what I'm trying to say here. Nothing is impossible to God. But if you go right back to Genesis, adam and Eve were in the garden and God would come and have fellowship with them and walk through the garden. Now, how he did that we don't know, because you're not supposed to be able to look on God, but the thing is he created us to have a relationship with him, and it's the one thing he can't do. He can't, you know. I mean, yes, god could do all things, but he can't have a relationship with himself. He can't have a relationship with himself. He has given us free will and he has made us in his own likeness, but he wants to have a relationship with us. He wants to have fellowship with us. He wants us to constantly talk to him and we talk to him in our own special way or through the written word of God.
Speaker 1:Everything in this book which I teach on and speak about, from Genesis to Revelation, is all about the word of God and what he is doing for us. We need to examine ourselves and understand what it is for us to do. And if you look at 1 Corinthians, 11, 17, it talks about the Lord's Supper and how we conduct this, the institution of the Lord's Supper, and how we conduct this, the institution of the Lord's Supper and how we must examine ourselves. He wants to have fellowship with us and he does that through his word, he does that through communion, he does that through other people. So the point that I'm trying to make rich or poor. See, god is no respecter of person. He's going to do the same to you as he does with me. He's going to do the same for a barrister that's rolling in the Benjamins, or maybe Sir Charles Cord when he was around, or anybody Sir Charles Cord when he was around, or anybody, or it could be someone who's actually unfortunately come on hard times and they're living on the street.
Speaker 1:God is still there. He never leaves us, nor forsake us. We're the ones that walk away from him. So if you want to examine yourself today and look at it, is there a problem that you have in your life that you can't solve yourself? Nothing is impossible to God. Take your request to him and I say this over and over and over again okay, make your request known to him.
Speaker 1:God is the author and the finisher of our faith. We can do all things through Christ, who strengthens us. So when we are weak, we can do all things through Christ, who strengthens us. So when we are weak, he is strong. When we are sick, he is well. When we are poor, he is rich. He is the owner of a thousand cattle on a thousand hillsides. You know nothing. Nothing at all is impossible to him. But remember, don't be that person who is.
Speaker 1:Oh, when someone asks you what's going on in your life, it is not a lack of faith when you tell them exactly what's going on in your life. It is not a lack of faith when you tell them exactly what's going on in your life. It's a lack of faith if you don't have enough trust to share your problems with someone who can also take that to the Father on your behalf. Corporate prayer is a very, very powerful thing. Personal prayer is just between you and God. But I know for a fact if someone come up to me and said how are you feeling today, pastor Phil, I would say this is what I'm going through in the natural, this is what I'm believing for. Oh, when is God going to do that for you? Well, that I don't know. You know it's all. It's in his timing.
Speaker 1:Don't put God in a box. I'm running out of time at the moment, but I might actually mention this next week, if, if I remember this. But but the thing is, there was a story that I read about two people that were in captivity, and they were identical in every way, except the fact that they weren't related. And one didn't, because the one that survived knew that in Luke 4, 18 and 19,. It says the spirit of the Lord is upon me because he's anointed me to preach the gospel, to heal the brokenhearted, to set those that are in captivity free and to declare the acceptable year of the Lord. Activity free and to declare the acceptable year of the Lord, whereas the other one put God in a box and said you know, I know you're going to liberate me and it's going to happen here. No, it's going to happen here. No, it's going to happen here. And every time it didn't happen in that person's timeline what it did. It actually made them suffer and eventually it broke that person's will to survive.
Speaker 1:All right, food for thought, all right. So just remember, nothing is impossible for God and he knows all things. But he wants to know what is in your heart. What is it that you want God to do for you today? All right, god bless for now, and we'll talk to you next week.
