Hello friends! This is Pastor Troy. I’m the pastor of Generations Church in Los Angeles, San Diego, California and also Yangon, Myanmar. Just want to bring you a word of encouragement today as we are dealing with the COVID-19 all around the world. I just want to encourage you with a couple of stories from the Bible that reference how we can trust in and have hope in Jesus and hope in our Saviour.

The reference is in 2 Kings chapter 4: there's a woman there and the prophet comes and says, “Err …you know, what do you have? Why don't you feed me?” And she goes, “Well, all I have left in the house is this jar of oil.” And then the prophet gives her instructions and says, “Go get all the vessels you can. Bring ‘em back and then you and your sons, when you come back into the house, make sure to shut the door behind you.” Now what's interesting is right before that, she basically told the prophet: the creditors are coming; they're going to take my sons as slaves because I can't pay what they're asking. But yet the prophet gave her a word, “What’s in your house?” 

I want to encourage you today that there are things in your house. There are things you can believe in, in the natural, because the great story is that as they went out and got vessels, they came back in and they began to pour. What do they begin to pour? They begin to pour the oil. The oil is a reference to the Holy Spirit. He is the anointing; He is the oil; He is the overflow. And so as they began to pour the oil, the Bible says that as long as they had vessels, the oil continued to flow. So we are also references of vessel in the Bible; we are the temple of the Holy Spirit. And we are a vessel and we contain the Holy Ghost or Jesus on the inside. So just as long as there was a vessel available, there was oil that would flow.

And I want to encourage you today that in the natural realm, things might look a little tough with the COVID-19 and people can be in despair and questioning what is happening and is God mad at the world? And I just want to encourage you today God is not mad. The Bible says the devil comes to steal, kill and to destroy and this is a demonic virus that is killing people and causing people to be inflicted by this virus. And I just want to encourage you today there is hope in the house and there's hope inside of you because you have Jesus on the inside of you.

As we continue with the story: as they came back and started filling the vessels, then the oil began to, or when the vessels ran out, the oil – the boxes – the oil, ceased. So we gotta constantly bring ourselves as a vessel ready to be filled with His oil, ready to be filled with the Holy Spirit and speaking in the natural, we can trust God and have faith that He is going to provide for us. He is our hope. He is our refuge. He is our strength. He is our joy. And He'll bring you joy when you're feeling down and you get a little bit discouraged and depressed, when you're questioning, “How, may be money, is going to come in?” But God will provide in every way.

The other way we can look at this is from a spiritual perspective – the Holy Spirit being the oil. The other thing I find interesting is they were going to come after her sons. The demonic realm of the devil, he's always trying to come after the next generation, and we have to protect the next generation. We've got to preach the gospel to the next generation. We've got to make sure that the next generation knows about the oil and knows about the Holy Spirit. The cool thing is when we read the end of the story because there was so much oil and so many vessels were filled, the prophet said, “Go pay all your debts and, you and your sons live off the rest.” In other words, when we’re obedient to do what the man of God or a prophet or God tells us to do; when we're obedient to him, there's an overflow of prosperity and blessing that not only come to us but as a downpour to our next generation or to our sons and daughters. So it's important to train them up, the Bible says, in the way they should go so they learn how to be a blessing to their kids and then to your great grand-kids and so on and so forth. The Bible says in John 14: 17, it says, “And I will ask the Father and he will give you another Saviour, the Holy Spirit of Truth who will be to you a friend just like me—and he will never leave you. The world won't receive him because they can't see him or know him. But you will know him intimately, because he will make his home in you and will live inside of you.” This is talking about the Holy Spirit. He is the Holy Spirit; He is the anointing oil. He is who we can go to when we don't know what to do, we can pray in the Holy Spirit.

What I also find interesting about this story is it seems like God's always asking us to look in the house: what's in the house or what's in your hand that He can use to be a blessing. Just like in the Old Testament, we read this story in the New Testament. The disciple said, “Hey! what we gonna, how we gonna to feed all these people? There's over 5000 people.” And Jesus turned and said, “Well, what’d we got? What's in your hand? What's in the house?” And they said, “Aa … oh! All we have is five loaves and two fish.” I'm sure you know the story. He said, “Well, just begin to distribute that and you go feed them.” In other words, it's in your hand to do the miracle manifest. As soon as you start to give it, the miracle will manifest in your hand and everybody was fed that day from five loaves and two fish; just like that woman from one jar of oil, blessings came into her family.

So I just want to encourage you today even though there's despair and questioning and turmoil and all kinds of things going on in the world around us, there is hope when you go to the oil; there is hope when you go to the Holy Spirit; and there's hope when you put your trust in Jesus. Have a great day!