God is able to turn around the most challenging situation. Join Pastor John Bradshaw for “Great Expectations” and encounter the God who brings light out of darkness.

<p>God is able to turn around the most challenging situation. Join Pastor John Bradshaw for “Great Expectations” and encounter the God who brings light out of darkness.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

It Is Written

Special Edition

John Bradshaw

Three Important Steps

The Coronavirus Conspirator

Pressure

The River

Great Expectations

Five Steps to Spiritual Victory

I hope you're well and blessed and encouraged in the Lord.

If you're not, maybe you will be after we've spent these minutes together.

Come on, let's pray and we'll expect that God will speak to our hearts.

Our Father in heaven, thank you for the privilege we have to come to your Word.

Speak to us through it, we ask you, and lead us by your Spirit.

Young family had been planning a vacation to Florida's Gulf Coast for some time.

Mom and dad knew it was the time they had needed.

So they headed in that direction with a deep sense of relief.

That, ah, this is going to be great sense of relief.

They arrived on the Gulf Coast to discover the beaches they had hoped to play on and swim at were afflicted by something called red tide.

It's when the water can take on a reddish-brown color because of something called phytoplankton.

They're little things, photosynthesizing microscopic biotic organisms.

For the most part, they cannot be seen by the unaided human eye.

But blooms of these things can collect and kill marine life, fish, dolphins even.

They can infect shellfish, and they can make the beaches stink.

Our family was hoping to swim but could not.

The water, they said, would make our eyes burn and the smell was overwhelming.

Their big hopes for a fun family vacation disappeared in a red tide.

Being Alabama, you might think it was a crimson tide, but no, it was a red tide.

You were going to ask that certain someone to the senior banquet, But someone beat you to it.

You wanted to buy that house, but someone got there first.

You intended to spend Thanksgiving with your parents, but bad weather, or your job, or an illness meant that it wasn't going to be that way this year.

Athletes had been looking forward to the Olympics and straining in training.

Weddings and funerals and graduations were all interrupted and in many cases rescheduled.

We had a memorial service planned for my own mother, postponed for at least 6 months.

Big family gatherings of all kind, pushed to the side.

Well, there are times that life hands you a lemonade and then you go ahead and make lemon basil spritzer.

Well that's what happened here at It Is Written.

We had been planning meetings in Indianapolis.

We were so excited but challenges came not in the form of phytoplankton but in the form of something even smaller, a virus.

And instead of being local in 1 city, Revelation Today, Hope Awakens became global, with tens of thousands of people participating from all around the world.

When we come to the Bible, we see it's an entire book about expectations being dashed and then God bringing something good, even great, out of it.

I could talk about Revelation 10 and the great disappointment, but that's too predictable.

So instead, let's talk about some different things.

I want to go with you in the Bible to 2 Kings chapter 4, where there was tremendous disappointment, and yet the God of heaven, the great God of heaven, brought something wonderful out of that darkness.

2 Kings chapter 4, we start in verse 1, the Bible says, Now there cried a certain woman of the wives of the sons of the prophets unto Elisha, saying, Thy servant my husband is dead, and thou knowest that thy servant did fear the Lord.

And the creditor is come to take unto him my 2 sons to be bondmen.

Now a widow that were going to take away her 2 boys because her husband died owing money.

Well, we read verse 2, And Elisha said unto her, What shall I do for thee?

And she said, Thine handmaid hath not anything in the house, save a pot of oil.

All you found was a little container with what we're gonna presume was olive oil.

How could your life turn around based on that?

Then he said, "'Go, borrow thee vessels abroad of all thy neighbors, even empty vessels.

He said don't skimp get as many as you can borrow not a few that means borrow many verse 4 and when thou art come in thou shalt shut the door upon thee and upon thy sons and Shalt pour out into all those vessels And thou shalt set aside that which is full." And I notice something here, I don't want to overlook this.

The prophet didn't say have your sons go on down the road and play with their friends.

Listen, when you are praying for something as a family, involve the children.

When God answers a prayer, tell the kids.

When you're praying for rain and it's dry or praying for dry weather and there's rain, have the children pray.

And when God answers their prayers, The children are going to say, God is real, this is fantastic.

Invest yourself in involving the children in the spiritual experiences of the family and those spiritual experiences will define their lives.

Verse 5 says, "'So she went from him and shut the door upon her and upon her sons, which brought the vessels to her, and she poured out, did this take faith or what?

The prophet said, you're going to tip that oil out.

That's what I'm relying on for my survival.

It's like the boy with the loaves and the fish.

If you don't have much, bring it to Jesus and watch him bless.

And verse 6 says, And it came to pass when the vessels were full that she said unto her son, Bring me yet a vessel, bring another 1.

The Neighbors are wondering what those boys are doing, bringing vessel after vessel, jar after jar to the house.

By now, the whole place smells of that beautiful aroma of olive oil.

Series

Special Edition

Great Expectations

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Sponsor

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