There is a story in 2 Kings where a widow had two sons. Her husband had died and a creditor was coming to take her sons to be his indentured servants. That's pretty horrifying debt-collection, but you couldn't declare "bankruptcy" in Israel. So the widow went to the Prophet Elisha for help.

(2 Kings 4:1-4 NKJV)  A certain woman of the wives of the sons of the prophets cried out to Elisha, saying, “Your servant my husband is dead, and you know that your servant feared the LORD. And the creditor is coming to take my two sons to be his slaves.” So Elisha said to her, “What shall I do for you? Tell me, what do you have in the house?” And she said, “Your maidservant has nothing in the house but a jar of oil.” Then he said, “Go, borrow vessels from everywhere, from all your neighbors—empty vessels; do not gather just a few. And when you have come in, you shall shut the door behind you and your sons; then pour it into all those vessels, and set aside the full ones.”

(2 Kings 4:5-7 NKJV)  So she went from him and shut the door behind her and her sons, who brought the vessels to her; and she poured it out. Now it came to pass, when the vessels were full, that she said to her son, “Bring me another vessel.” And he said to her, “There is not another vessel.” So the oil ceased. Then she came and told the man of God. And he said, “Go, sell the oil and pay your debt; and you and your sons live on the rest.”

The widow had a small flask of anointing oil. So Elisha told her to borrow empty jars from everywhere she could get them and to use the little oil she had to fill them, and the oil would continue to pour until they were all full. So she went and did as he said. 

There are so many ways Elisha could have helped her. Perhaps he could have taken up a collection from the "School of Prophets" which the widow's husband was a member of.  Maybe they could have helped her gather empty jars. 

Nope. As we often see in Scripture, God rarely does it all. It seems in Genesis that He worked six days during creation, and then He rested on the seventh. After that, God told His people what to do, and they got to work. Adam had to get to work naming all the animals. He told Noah to build the ark, and Noah got out his tools. He told Abram to leave his father's house and land and go to a place He would show him, and Abram set out. 

When Moses was at the burning bush, the LORD asked him, "What is that in your hand?" just as Elisha asked the widow, "What do you have in your house?" That staff would be used extensively.

Later, when Moses came out of Egypt and was blocked by the Red Sea with the Egyptians pursuing them, he cried out to the LORD and the LORD told him to lift his staff, divide the sea, and tell the people to go forward, and Moses did. God didn't divide the sea for them, without the help of Moses (Exodus 14:15-16).  

When the temple of Solomon was completed and Solomon prayed, the fire of the LORD fell from heaven and lit the altar ablaze, then the priests were told to keep the fire burning. 

The LORD started the miracle for the widow in the story above. In other words, He provided her a blank check to go as far as her faith would take her. She had several choices, she could tell Elisha to stop wasting her time and leave. She could beg for handouts, or half-commit, find one jar, and end with a little more oil than she started with. Or she could gather every empty jar she could find in the town and have enough to pay off all their debts and live comfortably for a long time. She chose the latter. 

God Almighty is all-powerful and could do it without us, but He chooses to include us in His miracles. If you study the Bible through you will find that He rarely creates something from nothing. Oh, He can. He is able. But most of the time you will see that He multiplies what we have. Some examples:

- The widow in Zarephath had a handful of flour and a few drops of oil that fed her, Elijah, and her son for years during a famine.

- Jesus took five barley loaves and two small fish a boy had brought and fed over five-thousand people. He didn't create food from thin air. He asked for what they had, and multiplied what was given Him. 

- At the wedding in Cana, Jesus asked the servants to fill the huge pots with water. Then turned them into the best wine they had ever tasted. It was an abundance of wine, but it wasn't something from nothing. 

- When the disciples had been fishing all night and caught nothing, Jesus told them to throw the net on the right side of the boat, and He directed a large school of fish into their net. He used what was already there.

For each miracle, the people were involved. The widow had to surrender her last bit of food. The little boy had to give up his two fish. The servants had to fetch water to fill the pots at the wedding. The disciples had to throw the net where Jesus told them. He could have done it all, but He won't... He starts with giving us a task. The LORD takes care of things we cannot do, like salvation, but in other things, we participate.

When Sylvia and I felt we should start an online church in 2014, we sat down on the couch with a laptop and calculated what it would take us to get started in an Excel spreadsheet. Sylvia loves Excel, and it is her go to with numbers. There was software to buy and plugins to license and such. We wanted a Prayer Network which would have to be custom written. We calculated that we could get it online with $2,500 if we repurposed some of the old equipment we had from our computer business. 

Sylvia and I prayed about it and both felt that is what the LORD wanted, so I pulled an old Dell Power Edge R900 out of the closet, put it on our kitchen table, and began installing Linux on it. Within 30-minutes, someone came to the small WordPress website we had built for Refreshing Hope and donated exactly $2,500. We had not told a soul about our plans.

The LORD gave us a task, and we started to work on it. Then His provision came to complete the vision He gave us. Years later, I talked with the person who had donated to RHM that day, and they told me they were desperate. They had prayed about what to do, and the LORD told them to give that amount to Refreshing Hope so they did. Two-weeks later, their grandad passed away and wrote them into his will on the last day of his life leaving them $260,000. The LORD gave them a task. What they chose to do determined what they received. 

Can you see the pattern? The widow who was in debt at the top of the story determined her destiny by her actions. Faith that does not cause action brings no reward. Little faith with a little action brings a small reward. Great faith accompanied by action brings great rewards. Isn't that what Jesus said?

(Luke 6:38 NKJV)  Give, and it will be given to you: good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be put into your bosom. For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you.”

 The Apostle Paul said:

(2 Corinthians 9:6 NKJV)  But this I say: He who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.

Don't expect God to do everything while you do nothing. Of course there are exceptions to anything, but David had to face Goliath to kick-start his destiny. Work with God to turn dreams into reality.

Our dreams don't work any harder than we do. 

You can pray this with me if you like: 

Prayer

Prayer: Heavenly Father, I love You and thank You today. I accept Your challenge. Speak to me in a way that I understand, and I will get out my tools like Noah. Show me what I have that can be multiplied. Fulfill Your perfect will in my life. In the name of Jesus Christ, I pray. Amen!