Obadiah’s Wife
Read Time: 5 Mins
Now a wife of one of the prophets appealed to Elisha for help, saying, “Your servant, my husband is dead. You know that your servant was a loyal follower of the Lord. Now the creditor is coming to take away my two boys to be his servants.”
2 Kings 4:1 NET
There’s a lot we could take away from this story and text. A widow comes to Elisha and says that her husband, a fellow prophet he knew, had died, and now she and her sons were in debt and threatened with the idea of her sons being thrown into slavery because of it. Elisha asks what she has in the house, and she says that she only has some oil, so he tells her to get as many jars as possible from her neighbors and to pour the oil into the jars. As she pours, the oil keeps stretching, and it’s enough to pay off her debt and sustain the lives of her and her children for years to come.
We could talk about how God can find a way to rescue us from situations that seem impossible to get out of. We could talk about how, like the little boy with the lunch when Jesus fed the multitude, this lady was instructed to give God the little she had and trust Him to stretch it. We could talk about her having the courage and belief to go to her neighbors and ask for help, or the idea that she shut the door so that no one could distract or discourage her while she was living out her faith. But I don’t want to talk about how she got out of debt. I want to spend some time talking about how she got into it.
The Bible says she was the wife of a prophet, but it doesn’t explicitly express who her husband was. However, Jewish tradition gives us a theory. Many rabbis actually believed that her husband was the prophet Obadiah. Why do they believe this? There are a few clues. For one, the woman’s description of her husband. She talks about him as someone Elisha would’ve known and uses the same words to describe him as the description used when we hear of him in 1 Kings 18.
So the question is, how would Obadiah have been in so much debt if he were a government worker who supervised Ahab's palace? Remember, we are told that when Jezebel was killing the Lord's prophets, Obadiah spent his time hiding one hundred prophets in two caves and sustaining them with food and water. This is something Obadiah seems very proud of, as he told Elijah of it during their discourse in 1 Kings 18, but I’m sure feeding one hundred people during a nationwide food shortage was not just dangerous but costly. Rabbinic tradition and Jewish historians argue that Obadiah sold all of his possessions and went poor to accomplish this goal for the three years of the famine. This passion for ministry led him to go into debt at the cost of his family's safety and sanity. If this is true, it would make sense why this woman finds herself in such a tough situation.
So why did I feel the need to sit down and write about this? Well, it’s because as I was preparing a teaching for my church on this story, I started getting personally convicted as usual. As a passionate minister, I could see myself being like Obadiah and pouring all of myself into something I thought was the right thing to do, but as a new husband, I also cringe at the position this put his wife and children in. I think this is a blind spot many passionate ministers have. They give all they have to the church but forget their family. They're proud of their sacrifice without counting the cost of the severe impact it has on their first church. Their kids see them have time for board meetings but not basketball games. They give their all for baby blessings but give the scraps for birthday parties. They give everything to the ministry at the cost of their marriage. They give their all for God’s bride while neglecting theirs.
I’ve written other places about this, and you can check those out later (Link Here), but long story short, I appreciate Paul’s counsel to Timothy that says a pastor's priority should be the health of their family. He argued that if you haven’t shown fruit in pouring into the people closest to you, you don’t have the qualifications to lead other people spiritually. I’d rather be a Noah that spends his whole life doing ministry and sees their whole family saved than be an Eli who spends his whole life doing ministry and sees their family be lost.
So this stuck with me. I’m not in debt because of ministry and don’t think I’ve gone completely overboard yet, but I’m honest enough to admit that that part of my life should be monitored and guarded. I started my Thoughts By Pace devotional as a jobless college student, essentially paying for a website and another phone bill to send out Devotionals to my friends for free. While donations helped, they’ve never covered the majority of the cost. I don’t know where the money came from, but I gave my all, and God kept providing. And as time passed and impact grew, things got more expensive. Domain names, website hosting, editors, texting two thousand people a week, and paying for some of their carrier fees… salvation may be free, but ministry costs.
It wasn’t just the Devotionals. I maxed out my credit card for the first ROAR. My Co-Founder, Salima Omwenga, and I realized that over the last few years, we’ve given tens of thousands of dollars to have ROAR events in different cities, transport, house, and feed 16 band members and singers, and pay venue fees for our free worship events. Some of those events were heavier faith walks as we poured while jobless. While ministry is my passion, and I love investing in it and pouring my all into it, I can’t ignore the toll.
As a college student and a young single pastor, I was ok living in the hood and seeing how long I could last with an air mattress and no furniture as I gave whatever I had to write and publish books that I’d give away from my trunk, but now that I’m married, I feel like I have to prioritize in a different way. Same passion. Same dedication. Same investment but a different boundary. I don’t want to be Obadiah and potentially have my wife and future children bitter, burdened, and begging my friends for help because I gave everyone else more than I gave them.
So, I’ve been considering how to move forward. For a while, I’ve been being told to make my Devotionals a paid service. I understand the push, but I don’t want to. I’m thinking of the students at Oakwood and little old ladies at my churches, who I wouldn’t want to charge. We’ve been told to charge tickets for ROAR, but I don’t want to put a paywall between people and rooms where they can encounter the Holy Spirit. As you can tell, this is difficult for me.
As I’m walking through this, I’m asking that you prayfully partner with me by making a monthly donation. A handful of you already have and are, and I truly appreciate you; however, with those donations, we still aren’t yet breaking even. With your help, we can sustain and grow this ministry and ROAR to a point where we can continue to push content for the thousands God has entrusted us to steward influence with. We want to impact the lost and inspire the found with the gospel of Jesus, shown simply and practically in their lives. I’m dreaming of conferences, retreats, and movements. That’s the goal. We’d love to get to a point where we can compensate our ROAR team instead of asking professionals to take off work, take time off school, and leave children at home for free so that we can help others experience the God we have. I’d love to create more opportunities for community and discipleship. I’d love to be able to pay editors and get out more personalized and consistent audio, visual, and written content. But it’s going to take your support.
2 Corinthians 9 says to decide in your heart how much to give. I would love to give numbers to tell you exactly how many people I need to give what to proverbiaally keep the lights on, but I’m not just asking for the bare minimum. I don't just want to sustain, I want this ministry to grow.
Don’t give reluctantly or out of peer pressure, but because you feel God leading you to support this ministry and its mission. I promise that, as it says in Malachi, God tells us to test Him and see that He is telling the truth when He said supporting His ministry will lead to Him opening a window of heaven and pouring out blessings you can’t contain. The Bible says that when the Israelites built the temple, Moses had to ask them to stop giving because it was too much to contain. I don’t even think I’m asking for that yet. I’m just asking that you prayerfully support the ministry that has blessed you so that it can bless others. Thank you in advance.
Find the Donation Link Below.
