Elisha cooked his oxen with wood from his plough to do his farewell as he joined the ministry.
So Elijah went from there and found Elisha son of Shaphat. He was plowing with twelve yoke of oxen, and he himself was driving the twelfth pair. Elijah went up to him and threw his cloak around him. ...
He took his yoke of oxen and slaughtered them. He burned the plowing equipment to cook the meat and gave it to the people, and they ate. Then he set out to follow Elijah and became his attendant. 1 Kings 19:19-21
He prepared to go all the way with Elisha. He released the weights so he could go the long haul with Elijah. Wherever Elijah wanted to go, there was nothing holding Elisha back.
And when Elisha would ask for a thing, it was the anointing he coveted. He had released the weights and this empowered him to seek only the things of God.
Gehazi, on the other hand, followed the man on God, but his eyes were on the gifts that people brought. It became a weight on him, and he became a weight to Elisha. Elisha had to dismiss him from the ministry.
What weights have you been carrying from previous years, that you need to release so as to change your altitude?
If you don't know how to release them, pray for wisdom to go about it, and it will be given you.
If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt James 1:5-6
The Bible says Solomon loved many women. What is that confidence in the flesh that is in your heart. That work of the flesh in which you still take pride.
If anyone had anything in which he could boast, Paul had much more. But he had counted all those credentials of his as dung. Maybe he used to make 'iyanga' because he was educated, he was well-connected, his relatives are in the corridors of power, he came from lots of money, the world was his parish. For some, they would say, 'Do you know who I am?',
But because of the goodness, the Excellency, of the Lord he encountered, he counted all those stuff as dung. He turned around in his heart. Many still delight in the arm of the flesh because they have not encountered Excellency in Jesus, they have not seen the glory in The Lordship of Christ.
Paul's goals changed. They became, that I may win Christ, That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his suffering. That I may catch the thing for which Jesus caught me.
If God met his and asked him to ask for one thing, he would not asked to sit among the greats in Washington, he would not talk of becoming the cream of society. His dream was: 'That I may know him'.
He walked this talk. He practices what he believes. One thing he does now. He is into forgetting the things that are behind. He is teaching himself to ignore the things of the flesh. The girls will not catch him because they are pretty, nor the guys because they are rich. Even when those things shoot for his attention, he teaches himself to ignore them.
And he focus on the things that are ahead. He says, I have not yet made it. I have not yet reached my goal. If you don't ignore some things, you cannot reach your aim.
No wonder God kept as an example to the generations. The Spirit is saying, 'Imitate Paul, as Paul imitates Christ'. It is time to let some things in you die. You got to tell yourself that those things are dung. It is time to re-focus. That I may know him, and live His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings
