Get Ready To Be Equipped

Get Ready To Be Equipped

I Kings 19:15-21 1 Kings 2:1-15 Bridge City Church 2/4/2024

Have you ever been put in a situation in which you felt you were not equipped to do what was expected of you. I was in seminary, working a part time job at a fast food restaurant. I went in for my training, and my job was to fry the fish fillets.

I was confident and ready to do it and looking forward to it the next day. I arrived at work just before everything got hectic at lunch time. Just as I was going over to my fryer, the manager told me, someone had called off, and I would have to handle the grill preparing the hamburgers.

I knew I was not ready to do this especially with a lot of orders coming in. I tried flipping my first burger, and it landed on top of another one. The same thing happened again and again and I couldn’t separate the burgers.

The manager came out and started yelling at me about my poor performance. I kept my cool, took off my hat and apron, handed them to her and walked out the door. Because I wasn’t equipped, I gave up and quit. You see I had one expectation, when I went to work, but my expectation was different from the reality I faced.

Sometimes when we make the decision to follow Christ, our expectations of what we think we’re entering into, do no match the life we are about to face. In our church’s discipleship wheel, one of our focus areas is equip. If we are to grow in Christ we need to be equipped with the word of God and with the experiences of others so that we can do the ministry God has called us to do. You see not only are we called to do ministry, we are called to be ready to equip others to take our place.

In our Scripture reading this morning we were introduced to Elijah and Elisha. These were two great prophets in Israel. Elijah was the prophet who multiplied a widow’s flour and oil in the midst of a famine. He called for a drought on the land lasting several years. He had food brought to him by ravens. He raised a woman’s son back to life.

He challenged and won the fight against the 400 prophets of Baal. He took on the battle with Ahab and Jezebel. He was only one of two people who is seen alive in both the Old and New Testament when he appeared with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration. When Jesus asked the question, “Who do people say that I am?”, some answered that he was Elijah.

Elijah’s ministry was coming to an end, and God wanted him to equip a successor. Before God calls us, God already has somebody in mind to help train us for our mission and our ministry. The question is, “will our pride cause us to believe that we do not need a training or equipping process.”

It’s funny how almost everyone believes they know how to have a great marriage, until they get married. Studies have shown, that if you as a couple attend one marriage retreat together, your odds of getting a divorce drop dramatically. Yet people often will insist, “I don’t need anyone telling me how to be married.”

God told Elijah, go and anoint Elisha, to succeed you as a prophet. When he finds Elisha, Elisha has a pretty comfortable life. The fact that he has twelve yoke of oxen, means he had some money in the bank. He was plowing the field with the 12th pair of oxen, and that means he had some employees working the other 11 pairs and quite a bit of land.

Elisha had no idea that his life was about to make a dramatic change. He obviously had heard about Elijah because he was the number one prophet of the time. He would have been the preacher on Facebook that everyone was posting comments about.

Elijah goes up to Elisha and then throws his cloak around him. Throwing his cloak around him was symbolic of the reality that he was being called to the office and position of a prophet. His business days and farming empire were coming to an end. Elijah throws his cloak on Elisha and turns and walks away.

Elisha has a decision to make. As he looks over his property, his land, his business, and his status, He has to ask himself “Do I want to leave all this behind and go follow Elijah to who knows where?

The workers who are plowing with the other oxen are looking at him to see what he’s going to do. They know the meaning of the cloak. God has chosen Elisha, but now the issue becomes will Elisha choose God’s plan for his life.