Set the Atmosphere for Miracles
The Shunammite believed that all was well. This was based not on her feelings, but on the never-changing, eternal Source of her peace. This belief allowed her to set the atmosphere for a miracle.
Another way to put this is to say she held her peace. She avoided the temptation to accuse God of evil. In the place of contentment all those years she had learned the discipline of keeping her mouth shut and keeping her tongue under control. The tongue, as James tells us, is like a rudder that will steer us toward different situations depending on how we use it. Often people fail to loose the atmosphere of resurrection glory because they are talking too much and complaining and allowing self-pity to consume them. Hold your peace.
If you cannot move positively, it is better to be in neutral than to be negative. If you do not know what to say, say nothing. We need to learn to discipline ourselves so that at the very least we are not doing more harm than good. We should not let the atmosphere be determined by our circumstances, or the atmosphere will soon be filled with fear or panic or other soul-ish emotions.
If that happens, we will revert to the strength of the flesh and we will lose the miracle. If the Shunammite had voiced soulish emotion, then her culture would have moved in and driven the scenario in an entirely different direction. The mourners would have come, and the household and community would have swept her into the belief that “The child is dead. Bury the child.” She took charge of the situation. She did not let others define the terms in her time of challenge. She went and laid him on the bed of the man of God and shut the door upon him and went out. Where the glory had been, she had full expectation that the glory would come again. She was fully expecting resurrection.
Now we have every right to feel a wide range of emotions during these times of trial. But it comes down to two choices: living in the circumstances or living in faith and anointing connected to the divine Presence. Miracles come out of the realm of anointing, the invisible realm, the realm in which faith is the substance, the evidence. The Spirit of God was dwelling in her house and had done something in her body. From her service and worship, she made a place for the anointing, and the promise came. She had embraced the promise. That anointing helped her go on to pursue resurrection glory.
Don’t Get Off Your Donkey
The Shunammite gave this word to the servant who brought the donkey: “Go! And don’t slack unless I tell you to.”
What about you? Has God assured you that a loved one will be healed? Has He led you to form a new business? Has He given you the first indications that your wildly dysfunctional family will be restored to wholeness? Has He shown you how to move in a new area of ministry? Then don’t be jarred by the bumpy ride. Don’t be discouraged that you need to detour past a watering hole now and then. Don’t worry if your pace slackens when you are climbing that mountain. Stay on the donkey. If you have sight of the goal, circumstances should not compel you to turn back.
We are used to instant this and instant that. Microwaves for cooking. Jets for flying. A one-hour TV program needs to have all its loose ends neatly tied up in the time allotted. It takes maturity to hold the course—and possibly an ironclad posterior when you consider the Shunammite jostled along for sixteen miles on a trotting donkey! But don’t stop now. Keep riding. Get to the One whose Temple mount is established as chief of the mountains (see Isaiah 2:2). We see Jesus as He set His face like a flint to go up to Jerusalem. We draw from His determined strength and the victory He wrought for us on the mount of Calvary. With Him as our example we set out toward and conquer our miracle mountain.
Remember, in this vein, that little acts of faith release the miracles of God. You might want to picture yourself, wherever you are, riding along with the Shunammite on her donkey. It does not hurt to say to yourself: “I’m getting on my donkey to get my miracle.”
It is also helpful to have someone to agree with you, someone who is along with you for the ride, as the servant was for her. In other words, a prayer partner, someone to agree with you, someone who believes with you, someone who understands the vision, someone who carries the same vibration from the glory. Perhaps an elder or pastor can encourage you with wisdom, guidance or counsel. The Shunammite’s servant would have known how to handle the donkey.
Realize That This Is a Journey
If you have spent much time on this journey, making room for the glory and the anointing of God, you are learning to possess your relationship with God as priority. And you are also likely to see that God has you in the process of an ongoing redemptive work.
Often the most important leg of the journey begins when we’ve come to the end of ourselves. Do you remember Jonah?
We have our own theory about why the Ninevites decide to listen to Jonah. It is probably not so much the anointing on the man of God as the fact that he has been processing in the saliva juices of a fish for three full days.
Jonah does not want to be a minister of mercy and grace to the people God is sending him to. He wants them all to die. He wants to call down fire from heaven. But God has something else in mind. So Jonah gets a ticket on a ship going in one direction, and God sends a storm and a fish to take him in the other direction.
It is when he is in the belly of the fish that Jonah gets his great visitation of God. All of a sudden, he is God’s man of faith and power, ready to do His will. But at that particular moment he is in the belly of a great fish with seaweed wrapped around his head. Can you imagine what it smelled like in there? People have actually done experiments with fish saliva and have determined that the first thing to go would be his clothes. Then his hair. Then the first few layers of skin would begin to dissolve. That is the state he is in when, by about the third day, the fish vomits him onto shore.
So now here is this naked, hairless, leprous-looking man of God lying in a pool of fish vomit on a sandy seashore. Imagine him walking to town! Have you ever noticed that God kept him in the belly of that fish for as many days as it was going to take him to cross the city with the message? It keeps him moving forward: He does not want to go near the sea!
Thus, when Jonah walks into Nineveh saying, “I have a message for you from God,” people are amazed. They say, “We had better listen or that’s going to happen to us!”
Or think of the process for Abraham, who tries to manifest the promise with Sarah’s maid and winds up with a thirteen-year-old-oops!-work-of-the-flesh to deal with and
still
does not possess the promise. But he has heard the voice of God calling him, saying, “I am God, Shaddai, Almighty, the God of the mountain. Walk in My Presence and be wholehearted.” He receives the promise, and when God calls him to journey with that son of promise up the mountain and sacrifice him on the altar, Abraham can comply because he knows God will resurrect the promise to life.
Wrestle It Through
We could follow this principle of God’s delight to fulfill His promises in His people further throughout the Bible—Job, Hannah, Joseph, Jacob, Anna. God looked for earthen vessels who were willing to follow Him with wholehearted commitment even when it looked as though His promise could not come true.
Their response to His promise—and our response—produces a covenant with conditions that both parties must honor. God’s part is unbreakable and unbroken, but our part tends to waver with the challenges of wrestling against principalities, powers, spiritual forces of wickedness in high places as well as dealing with our own flesh. Yet if we are faithful to gird up our loins and wrestle for the blessing, we will see things that the fathers of our faith hoped for, lived and died for. Jesus Himself wrestled through the days of His journey on this earth that we might have the promise of the Father, His Holy Spirit, and do greater works than He did. The Shunammite became the steward of a gift. When the gift was taken away she went to the Source in search of its life. In Him she was confident that “all is well.” In His Presence she found the consolation she sought.
Like the Shunammite, we are stewarding something. We are containers of the last-day miracles of God—salvations, deliverances, healings. In her case it was a son. In your case it may be a dead marriage, a dead business, a dead ministry. Whatever it is, put it on that bed where the double portion has slept. Then go forward, never slacking until you get your answer. Will you face hindrances? Yes. But if you are alive and if you are full of hope and if you have been anointed, you, like the Shunammite, can expect the “miracle plus.”
But Christ has indeed been raised from the
dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen
asleep.
1 Corinthians 15:20, NIV
The Shunammite Speaks . . .
As the donkey gradually slowed under her burden, the servant began walking alongside, keeping pace. For more than a half-day’s journey I had ridden, and with every jounce another word of intercession left my lips. I had hardly taken my eyes off the mountain. That peak became for me Sinai, and the man of God, Moses. The ancients tell us that God had wrapped Himself in His
tallit
and come down to meet with Moses. When the deliverer descended that mountain, the reflected glory still shone on his face. Would my face shine today? Would God come down to me? Would I see His glory?
At last, the sun having traveled a good portion of the sky, we were making our way through the wild rockrose and thorny broom that had turned the hillside pink and white and yellow. The final stretch of our journey led through calliprinos oaks, which crouched like so many dusty green beasts conferring with one another up and down the incline and out onto the plain where their acorns had blown in past seasons.
I saw a figure coming down the path to meet us. It was Gehazi. That day I thought he had the face of an angel, for his appearance meant that the prophet was here. Gehazi reached us and expressed his master’s concern for me and my husband and the boy.
“All is well,” I said and strained to look farther up the path.
Clutching the horn of the saddle, my dress bunched in an unwomanly fashion about me, I clung to the sloping back of the animal as we ascended the final steps to the terrace of Elisha’s house.
And there he stood.
I clambered out of the saddle and ran to him. Falling at his feet, I clutched Elisha’s ankles, clinging to them as if clinging to the life breath of my son.
Gehazi’s hands reached as if to pull me away.
“No,” said the prophet. “Do not restrain her. She is in deep distress and the Lord has hidden it from me.”
“Did I ask you for a son?” I finally screamed between pent-up sobs. “Did I not beg you not to deceive me? Did I not ask you not to lie?”
Then the prophet knew.
“Gehazi! Take my staff.” Elisha held out the rod of wood that he had so long leaned upon. It was like Moses txending it in power over the Sea of Reeds. “Speak to no one. If anyone greets you do not even reply. Do not be detained for any reason but run now to Shunem and lay my staff on the face of the child.”
Just as Gehazi tucked his garment up into his belt and clutched the staff of power with both hands, thunder rolled in from the sea. I suddenly remembered the key! I had shut up the room. I fumbled in the folds of my dress. Catching his hand, I pushed my key into his palm. He started down the mountain at a run.
Then Elisha helped me up.
“Return Shunammite,” he said simply. “Go back. Return to your house now. I have sent my servant to wake the boy.”
But I would have none of it. I fell down upon his feet again and wrapped my arms around his legs. The edge of that hair coat that had clothed the man of God for many seasons filled my vision.
“No, my lord!” I told him. “I shall not return. I will not leave here until you return with me!” I would stay there on that mountain for one or two or three days believing. As long as it would take, I would not relent. I would stay until he handed my son back into my bosom.
I looked up, and the clear hazel eyes of the prophet met mine. They were full of kindness and understanding. Elisha raised his face to heaven. When he looked back at me again he consented.
“Let’s go down,” he said.
Back over the plain we rode in silence, the prophet and I. The slowness of our journey was torturous, for the servant led the donkey at a pace that would ensure its stamina for the miles ahead.
When we came at last within view of Shunem the sun in the west was setting beneath the suspended storm. The harvesters with Joktan did not look up as we walked silently by. I could hear them singing to one another as they threshed and separated the sheaves. Their hearts were glad. God had blessed their increase and had held back the storm as well. They were intent upon their work. Soon they would light torches and continue into the night.
Gehazi was coming out to meet us. “The boy has not awakened,” he told the prophet.
I turned my face away and covered it with my veil.
Elisha swung his leg up over the donkey’s neck and slipped down.
“I shall go up to him alone,” Elisha said.
I nodded, dismounted and followed him into the house.
I could not sit down at any chaise or settle by the hearth. Instead I stood uncomfortably like a visitor waiting to be received. The housemaids said nothing, but I imagined that by this unusual activity in the house they had guessed at the severity of the child’s illness. I could tell they prayed. I did not see the scene that followed, but the whole household soon learned of it from the prophet himself.
Inside the room the lamp cast pale light over the motionless body of the boy. His face was serene, his hands folded gently one on top of the other.
Elisha went cautiously near, as if a sudden movement might disturb the child. He stood over the bed that was his own place of repose. The bed where the word of the Lord for Israel had come in dreams often. The very bed from which the promise of this boy’s life had come.