(Excerpt from Pastor’s book, ‘How to Get a Grip on God’s Promises”)
Now, the prophet of God returns to the Shunammite woman’s home and if there was any doubt about the child’s condition, 2 Kings 4:32 says, “…the child was dead.” Maybe you are thinking he was just ill. No, the Bible says, “…the child was dead.” I want you to see the progression of faith in the face of disaster. The child is dead. The mother puts him in Elisha’s room, shuts the door and runs to the prophet of God. Here comes Elisha now and he goes into the room and shuts the door.
There is something about this shutting of the door. In another story, Elisha told a woman with only a pot of oil, “And when thou art come in, thou shalt shut the door upon thee and upon thy sons…” We could take this to mean shut out unbelief, shut out what people think, understand, or misunderstand. Shut the door and pour. Sometimes the problem is that we leave the door open, so we have many distractions, voices, and choices entering in. Sometimes, you just need to go in the room, shut the door and get alone with God for yourself.
Now the prophet of God shuts himself in with the dead child. There is something else that happened right after he shut the door. Elisha prayed. Oh, the power of prayer! Elisha prayed unto the Lord. This was not a casual prayer. This was a prayer of total involvement. Many people today do not know how to pray like that. They know how to whine, or how to cry, or to tell somebody how bad things are. You must know how to hit the deck, get on your face before God, open your Bible and put your finger on a promise of God and say, “Father, this is what the Word says.” Then you pray until God gives you the assurance in your heart that everything is going to be all right. It is the only way that things are going to change. The prophet lay upon the lifeless boy and prayed, and life returned to the child. The prophet said to the woman “take up thy son.”
Take up the promise of God that you considered dead. Today, you can take a new grip on your faith. You can purpose to take back what the enemy has stolen. Get back on the Word of God. Let this be your day of renewing your grip on your faith – your faith in God’s Word and your faith in God’s promise.