Articles by Paul Scanlon

Levels of Life

‘Sometime later the brook dried up because there had been no rain in the land. Then the word of the Lord came to him: “Go at once to Zarephath of Sidon and stay there. I have commanded a widow in that place to supply you with food.” So he went to Zarephath. When he came to the town gate, a widow was there gathering sticks. He called to her and asked, “Would you bring me a little water in a jar so I may have a drink?” As she was going to get it, he called, “And bring me, please, a piece of bread.”

“As surely as the Lord your God lives,” she replied, “ I don’t have any bread, only a handful of flour in a jar and a little oil in a jug. I am gathering a few sticks to take home and make a meal for myself and my son, that we may eat it and die.”

Elijah said to her, “Don’t be afraid. Go home and do as you have said. But first make a small cake of bread for me from what you have and bring it to me, and then make something else for yourself and your son. For this is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: The jar of flour will not be used up and the jug of oil will not run dry until the day the Lord gives rain on the land.”

She went away and did as Elijah had told her. So there was food every day for Elijah and for the woman and her family. For the jar of flour was not used up and the jug of oil did not run dry, in keeping with the word of the Lord spoken by Elijah.’ 1

This is a story about a desperate, broke, suicidal widow, who was nearing the end of her tether. Into her world God sent the prophet Elijah with a proposal that would shorten her tether even further.

It’s a story about how people can get stuck at a certain level of life and how God helps them to get unstuck; it’s a story about people’s plans and God’s plans and how different they can be. It is a story about all of us at various times in our lives and whether or not we, our churches and ministries will plateau and die at the level we are on, or move up to the next level God has for us.

The truth is that God could have kept supplying Elijah where we find him in this story. He was living by a brook and surviving on its water and food delivered by ravens. But, for reasons best known to him, God had another plan that was so ridiculous, unreasonable and unrealistic that it had to be of supernatural origin. After all, no sensible person would come up with a plan to ask a starving person to give away the little they had in a time of famine. But God was taking Elijah to another level and decided that this would include inviting a desperate, out of options widow to move to another level too.
This widow represents you and me in the story; the moment she enters the picture we all enter it too. That’s because I can’t relate to being fed by ravens and having a supernatural water supply like Elijah, but I can relate to being stuck at a level of life I hate and being asked to do the ridiculous in order to release the miraculous. People like this widow, who are willing to do the unthinkable in order to change to another level, are a rare breed. So rare in fact that as Jesus explained, though there were many widows like her in Israel at the time, Elijah wasn’t sent to any of them but to this Gentile widow in Zarephath. 2 Not one widow in Israel, which typifies the church, was open for God to introduce a new and radical idea in order to break the deadlock of famine and death in the land.

God saw seeds of faith in this woman’s heart that maybe even she didn’t realise were there. She had a different spirit and God found her. In every generation God is looking for, and will always find, those who are willing to risk everything they know in order to grasp what they could never know until they let go of what is not working and embrace his plan.

Whose plan?

God had a plan to take this woman’s life to another level but couldn’t do it alongside her plan to die. It’s not that she didn’t have a plan, it was just that her plan was so far removed from God’s that it had to be one or the other; it could not be both. God’s plan wasn’t complimentary to hers, neither was God trying to fit his plan in with hers. These two plans could never be mistaken for each other, they were radically different.

Some of you reading this need to realise that God’s plan to get you to the next level for your life and destiny isn’t anywhere close to your particular plan. Many of you desperately need to move to another level but it is impossible to ever do so based on your plan. You need to know that you can keep your plan but you can’t keep yours and have the benefit of God’s plan as well.

Until you do what God is asking you to do, you are stuck at the level you are on. You can either break your ‘Alabaster jar’ or protect it, but you can’t protect it and have what happens when you break it. You can’t have your cake and eat God’s cake too. You can’t have Canaan and keep Egypt. You can’t keep company with fools and have what happens when you walk with the wise. As Naaman discovered, you can either storm off in bad attitude or dip seven times in the Jordan and be healed. But you can’t have both. 3 God operates on the principle of ‘I will if you will’ and ‘I won’t if you won’t’. Not ‘I will even though you won’t’ or ‘I will if there’s a possibility you may do later’. He said ‘draw near to me and I will draw near to you’, or in other words, ‘I will if you will’.

Going down and down

Over the past 30 years I have learned to ask people who seem to be stuck at a certain level two basic questions. Firstly, what is the last thing that God told you to do? And secondly, have you done it yet? You can keep your plan to disobey God but it is wrong for you to keep your plan to disobey God and then ask others to counsel you in your disobedience.

People like this remind me of Jonah. Looking back over my life and ministry, I have tried to help many Jonahs who were on the run from the last thing God told them to do but I will never risk doing it again. It is foolishness to counsel into their disobedience. So, to every ‘Jonah’ reading this article I say, go back to the last thing you know God told you to do and do it. Please don’t jump on board anyone else’s ship to escape from God, Jonah did and everyone suffered.

From the moment Jonah rejected God’s plan for his life everything went down hill. We read: ‘But Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went down into the ship and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the Lord. Then the Lord sent a great wind on the sea, and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up. All the sailors were afraid and each cried out to his own god. And they threw the cargo into the sea to lighten the ship. But Jonah had gone down below deck, where he lay down and fell into a deep sleep.’ 4
If you read on you discover that God took Jonah even lower than he planned to go himself. God took him down into the sea and then down again into the belly of a whale. Don’t be surprised if when you decide to run from God that he takes you lower than you imagined possible. God will do this until like Jonah you vow to never run from him again. The Bible records that Jonah cried out in repentance to God from inside the whale whilst wearing a seaweed hat!5 Here is a piece of advice for you: if you’re wearing seaweed, it’s time to get a new plan for your life.

When the sailors discovered that he was a fugitive from his destiny and the source of the storm they were enduring, they made a bad call. Instead of throwing him overboard they tried rowing him out of trouble. But things just got worse. Every time I have tried to row a Jonah to safety, things just got worse.

I remember years ago a family joining our church who had moved to England from Australia. Their lives were one disaster after another, so much so that we called them in for a talk and it transpired that they were on the run from their home church back in Australia. Some years earlier they had got into difficulties with their pastor and eventually left in bad attitude. People from the church kept lovingly reaching out to them, close friends and family pleaded with them to come back but they refused. Eventually like Jonah, they boarded a vessel bound for England and finished up in our church with their lives in tatters.

To cut a long story short we got in touch with their original pastor in Australia and instead of trying to row them away from trouble we paid for the family of five to go back home to Australia and be reconciled with their spiritual family and do the last thing God told them to do. Some weeks later we received an amazing letter from them telling us how when they landed at the airport in Australia, the entire church were waiting there to greet and embrace them back into fellowship. Almost immediately their lives turned around, the blessing of God returned and complete restoration took place. This story has stayed with me for over 20 years and it is the first time I have ever used it to illustrate a point. I tell it here to urge every Jonah to swallow their pride, hurt and offence and get back on track with God’s plan for your life; it’s never too late to do it.
I am not, of course, advocating foolishness or knee-jerk attempts to go back and obey the last thing you know you should have done. Always take wise counsel before doing anything dramatic but wherever possible, find a way to bring closure to any significant outstanding obedience.

Act before you feel

Every time I have had a significant change of level in my life, God has asked me to do something really difficult to get there. He’s asked me to give something up, let someone go, change my mindset, break a habit, suffer some loss, abuse or misunderstanding.

I taught a message some years ago entitled ‘Separation: The First Act of Possession’ based on the statement that God made to Joshua, ‘Moses my servant is dead’.6 This was not information to Joshua - he already knew Moses was dead - it was separation. It was separation from the past, from Moses’ leadership style and from a culture and mindset that were incompatible with the future. The point is that we always have to leave something in order to possess the next thing.

Like the widow of Zarepheth I have often had to do something unthinkable, while still feeling awful about my current situation. It is easier to do something difficult while you feel happy, safe and comfortable, but when you feel afraid, insecure and disoriented it becomes much harder. Some of you are thinking about what you know you should do but are waiting until you feel stronger, safer and more confident before you do it. But months have passed and those feelings haven’t arrived yet. I have discovered that right feelings follow right actions, so the quicker we obey, the quicker we release all the great emotions that come with obedience and living at the next level of God’s will for our life.

The reality is that we can either obey now and press through the pain of change, or obey later when we feel better about it and endure being miserable in the mean time - and some people’s ‘mean time’ is years! It is not a matter of pain or no pain; it is more a matter of ‘pick your pain’. You can either have the pain of staying where you are, or the pain of change. One pain brings great reward and the other great ruin. The choice is yours.

All the room is further up

When describing how the temple was to be rebuilt, Ezekiel tells us that it was to have three ascending stages such that the rooms became larger and wider as the building went upwards.7 In other words, all the room was higher up.

If your life feels cramped or tight then there is only one way to go and that is up. There is plenty of room for you to flourish further up; there is plenty of room at the top. Hotels don’t put their largest rooms in the basement, they are higher up the building. Similarly, airlines don’t put the biggest seats at the back, the seats with all the legroom are up front. Does your life feel like a tight squeeze? Then you are due for an upgrade from economy class Christianity to serious business class Christianity and beyond. However, I do need to tell you that the price difference between the two is huge. But if you can pay the price you can have the room. I used to rely on getting free upgrades on the airlines but I rarely got them, so now I pay for the room I want. Stop waiting for a free upgrade for your life because if it costs you nothing it’s not worth having. For every new level there is a new devil, and the cost we pay between levels is the purchase price of the strength and wisdom needed to beat that new devil.

It’s time to lift the level of your life and God has a plan for you to do it. Embrace his plan for your life, leave behind whatever should stay on the last level and move up higher. Begin to do whatever God told you to do, do it now, do it today because nobody wants a Jonah in their world. You were born to fly, you are an eagle not a turkey. So look up and take off, the sky is the limit and there is no limit on the sky!

1 - 1 Kings 17:7-16
2 - Luke 4:24-26
3 - 2 Kings 5
4 - Jonah 1:3-5
5 - Jonah 2:5,9
6 - Joshua 1:2
7 - Ezekiel 41:7