In 1 Kings 18 a longtime drought is addressed by the prophet Elijah. In specific terms, God speaks to the prophet and promises that if he risks his life by appearing before King Ahab it will trigger desperately needed rainfall in Israel. Elijah goes further than that; he challenges the four hundred prophets of Baal to a contest of worship in which a sacrificial bull is readied for Yahweh and one for Baal. The deity who answers by fire is to be acknowledged as authentic, and the loser’s prophets will be executed.

When the contest is won by God and the losers dispatched the rains still do not come. Elijah escalates his investment in the revelation he has received by advising Ahab to go home and relax in the sure knowledge that the rains are coming. The prophet again ascends Mt. Carmel to pray – sending his servant to periodically check on whether rain is visibly on the way. On the seventh check-in the servant spots a cloud “the size of a man’s fist” on the horizon. Again risking his life – he has just presided over the death of Ahab’s pagan prophets and the upstaging of his god – Elijah goes in person to the king to announce the deluge even before it arrives. Before they can get under shelter the clouds open and the rains begin to soak the parched ground of Israel.

There is an important lesson in this event and it applies especially in times of drought – whether spiritual, physical, or economic. There is simply no place in Scripture in which God does a miracle – an intervention into our lives – that is devoid of human participation. Whether we speak of God halting the Jordan River after the priests enter the current with the Ark of Covenant on their shoulders; Peter, James and John entering the room with Jesus and Jairus’s deceased daughter; or the man with five talents investing it to become ten, there is always a human role to play in believing for, contending for, and praising God for His many miracles in our lives. God causes the miracle, but He insists on our obedient and faithful participation as He directs.

California is in a very difficult economic period – a drought in the economy to match the drought in our skies. The richest state in the nation has unemployment above the national average and a killing debt in the budget. Many Californians – and many Christians – are pulling back from risk-taking and from investment of any kind in the Kingdom as well as in the economy. Workers who have jobs are being laid off and ministries of all kinds are finding their funding sources drying up. The Word of God calls for a very different approach to hard times – and God calls with an overwhelming consistency. He intends miracle, and he demands that we act while the miracle is still a cloud on the horizon if we would see it come in to water our thirst.

The audacity for which God calls in His Word becomes more outrageous as the stakes rise and the prospects dim. In Jeremiah 32 the Babylonians are about to destroy Jerusalem and anyone with an IQ in double digits can see that the kingdom of Israel is going down. When the prophet asks for a prophetic word the Lord tells him that this situation is only temporary and that he must make a prophetic act. Go, the Lord instructs, and invest in some real estate in the hometown village of Anathoth. That is the Godly way to steward this disaster, says the Lord His God.

When Jesus tells the story of the men given five, two, and one talent – respectively – He makes it clear that God favors the two who risk their money and despises the one who hangs on to his. And He says repeatedly that when we seek the Kingdom of God to the exclusion of all other things we will find that no needful thing is excluded from us. We may believe this concept is only about our giving – and indeed it is about that – but it is about our whole attitude toward investment in the Kingdom of God. That Kingdom is designed to make all things on earth as they are in heaven.

So what do we do as children of the Living God when times are tough and we can imagine loosing all that we have as the vice grip of circumstance tightens its grip on us and on our families? The first thing we are to do is to fear not: We are told in so many words in 1 Timothy 7 that God has not given us a spirit of fear; we need to husband His gifts and disregard influences that are clearly not of Him. But we need to do more than that – the same verse tells us that we are given a spirit of power and love coupled with self control. (And we know from 1 Corinthians 4 that we preach a Gospel of power and not of mere words.) That means that our giving to the Kingdom – whether to our home congregations, to parachurch ministries, and even to secular charities that we support – should be as it would be in boom times if we would be obedient to God. He will provide the deluge of blessing but He expects us to spend the seed that triggers what He provides.

Is this all about giving? It is about much more than that. The Kingdom is all inclusive – there is no concern too mundane for God to notice or care. If He would have us give to causes that bless our communities and express His Holy Spirit in us then He would have us even more enthusiastically exercise bold humility in our commercial dealings. The Great Depression was ended only by the bold and faithful spending of monies and national resolve that also brought victory in World War II. The recessions inherited by Presidents Kennedy, Reagan and Bush were conquered only because those presidents boldly reduced income taxes while relying on consumers to invest their savings back into an economy needing an authentic shot in the arm – and the American People justified that faith in themselves. The boom times of the fifties were seeded and fueled in the same way – investors making bold investments in the wake of the postwar recession of the late forties.

No responsible person would advocate wasteful or irresponsible spending, much less the kind of artificial stimulation that ultimately chokes investment when only the government undertakes new spending through tax increases or borrowing money that does not yet exist. But God challenges each of His children to choose this day whom we will serve. That choice includes a commitment to look on the world through the eyes of our (sometimes fearful) experience or through the vision of His revelation. Do we live our lives like Jeremiah – buying prophetic real estate – or like Saul – consulting a medium and even then unsure of how far to risk obeying God when the chips are down?

I come out of a ministry tradition that still hears and practices oral confession of sin to the pastor – when it seems appropriate to the penitent person. Part of the process is the assigning of what we call a penance, but is really just a concrete and pragmatic way to say thanks to God for liberation from the bondage of sin and to re-commit to His ways. I often find myself assigning a penance like this: “I want you to praise God for what He has just done in your life and then make a gift to some charity of your choice – and the amount is also of your choice, but with one proviso. You must carefully assess what you can afford to give at this time and then give more than that.” It is amazing how liberating the simple act of boldness can be – and the amount of risk is not the thing that sets free; it is the fact of risk for Jesus that releases the power of abundant life in us.

Let us recall in tough times like these that we are not – at any time – victims of circumstance. We are citizens of a Kingdom that is about good news all of the time – and composed of people who do not take offense at the Kingdom’s King. It is a Kingdom of miracles – but one in which our participation through the bold humility of our obedience – is absolutely essential to the reality of on earth as it is in heaven.

Do you want to see a cloud the size of a man’s fist that will water the plain before we can even reach the shelter of the city? Then climb the mountain and proclaim – in thought, word and deed – what God tells you is present. Our task at all times is to seed the future; His job is to give us a future to seed.

PrayNorthstate can be reached at 530-941-3470 or at praynorthstate@charter.net