When Your Brook Dries Up: Lack Is a Clue Your Assignment Changed

Sermon outline

You are a very important person on a God-given assignment, and even your enemies and your dried-up brooks are God's signs moving you up and on to the place where your provision is guaranteed.

1. 3. What grieves you is a clue to what you are assigned to heal and restore

   Compassion is always a signal to the place where you belong. What makes you angry or makes you cry points to the problem God has qualified you to solve, whether in politics, education, medicine or administration.

   Illustration: If shoddy work and poor administration make you angry, maybe you are meant to be an administrator.

   “What makes you cry is a clue to the problem God has qualified you to heal.”

2. 4. What you love the most reveals the greatest gifts you contain

   Passion is a path to your wisdom, because you only have wisdom for something you love. What you love to talk about, think about and learn about is the place of your God-given assignment.

   Illustration: If you talk about cars from sunup to sundown and dream about them, it is a clue that you should be a car dealer.

   “You'll only have wisdom for something you love.”

3. 5. Your assignment is geographical

   Where you are matters as much as what you are. Geography controls the flow of favour, because who sees you determines who will promote you, so go where you are celebrated.

   Illustration: A beautiful whale out of the water is in trouble. Abraham left his father's house, and Ruth left Moab, followed Naomi and met the man of her life.

   “Where you are matters as much as what you are.”

   • Genesis 12:1
   • Ruth 1:16

4. 6. You will only succeed when your assignment becomes an obsession

   Paul was obsessed with preaching the gospel to the Gentiles and wrote almost two-thirds of the New Testament. Don't be mediocre: let people see your passion for Christ and His church in your voice, your worship, your church attendance and your giving.

   “Paul was a great man because he was an obsessed man.”

5. 7. Your assignment will require seasons of preparation

   He congratulates the young people studying for degrees, because study is preparation for their assignment. Every Christian will pass through insignificance, isolation, waiting, warfare, persecution, injustice and silence, but also promotion. Jesus spent 30 years preparing for three and a half years of ministry, so don't be in a hurry for promotion or waste your energy on trivial fights.

   Illustration: Good wine takes time. A chihuahua is all bark; keep away from dog fights and save your energy for bigger dreams.

   “When God sets His heart to promote you, no man can stop you.”

   • 2 Timothy 2:15
   • Luke 3:23
   • Romans 10:2

6. 8. Your assignment may be misunderstood by your own family

   Even Jesus' brothers did not believe in Him. Your family is your school: you may not like them or agree with them, but they are training you. Surviving all these years is proof that you will survive your future.

   Illustration: He says the enemy tried to stop him with attack after attack and disappointment after disappointment, yet he is still around.

   “If the enemy could not stop you all these years, he won't stop you now.”

   • John 7:5

7. 9. Your assignment will always have an enemy

   Your enemies are as necessary as your friends: friends provide comfort, enemies provide promotion. When people gossip about you to the boss they are telling him something he didn't know, and the more they slander you, the more room they make for you. God is an elevator that only goes up, and if you don't get into the devil's lift, you are not going down.

   Illustration: Goliath promoted David, an unknown shepherd boy his brothers told to go home, until the women sang that Saul had slain his thousands and David his tens of thousands.

   “Your friends provide comfort, your enemies provide promotion.”

   • 1 Samuel 17:28
   • 1 Samuel 18:7
   • John 10:10
   • Proverbs 4:18

8. 10. Your assignment is the only place your financial provision is guaranteed

   God sent Elijah to the brook to be fed, and then the brook dried up, not because God failed or the confessions stopped working, but because the assignment had changed and Elijah was sent to Zarephath. Lack is a clue that God is changing your assignment, not that He has forsaken you. Don't sit at the brook and cry: ask God for a new idea, think outside the box and diversify.

   Illustration: Someone who says they have only ever been trained to bake cakes for 30 years is told: change, God is a God of diversity. In Zarephath a starving widow was waiting for Elijah so she could receive her miracle.

   “Lack is a clue that God is changing your assignment.”

   • 1 Kings 17:1-16
   • Hebrews 13:5
   • Ephesians 4:30