Mensa Otabil - Go Borrow Vessels (10/11/2025)
This is day number 23 of our 40 days of power. We’re making progress. This week, we are talking about building capacity. Second Kings chapter four, verse three: «Then he said, 'Go borrow vessels from everywhere, from all your neighbors-empty vessels. Do not gather just a few.'»
A widow approached Elisha the prophet for help. The widow’s husband had been a prophet, and now he was dead. The creditor is coming to take her two children into servitude, into slavery. So she goes to her husband’s boss, the prophet Elisha, and says, «Sir, I need help.» Elisha says to her, «What do you have in your house?» There’s a big lesson here. She’s looking for help from Elisha, but he asks, «What do you have?» What we learn here is that the solution she is looking for is within her own power; it’s within her own capacity. Elisha is not going to conjure something into existence; he is going to use what she has to create the miracle.
So Elisha says to her, «Go out there, go and borrow vessels from all your neighbors-empty vessels. Don’t borrow a few. Gather the vessels, go into your room, shut the door, take your jar of oil, which is very tiny, and pour into those vessels.» So the woman goes, and that’s what the prophet says. She takes the jar of oil and pours into those vessels, and the vessels get fuller and fuller and fuller. When there are no more vessels, the oil ceased. There are important lessons to learn from here because Elijah taught the woman how to take the little she has and make it into a lot.
The first lesson we learn from this woman’s encounter with the prophet is that we need to build capacity for what God gives us. The Lord expects us to contain whatever He gives us. You know, many times we pray, «God bless me, God increase me.» But where are you going to put a blessing? If God gives you an opportunity, what are you going to do with it? For example, if God opens an opportunity for me to play in the English Premier League, I would be useless because I wouldn’t be able to play; I don’t have the capacity for the opportunity. So what Elijah is teaching the woman is that if you’re going to receive a miracle, you must have the capacity to contain it and make use of it. Go and get a container, and that’s the first thing we learn. Secondly, he says to her, «What you don’t have, go and borrow from others.»
The lesson there is if you don’t know it, learn from someone else. If you don’t have the ability, borrow someone else’s ability. Get people to help you. Go and learn, go and apprentice, go and work under somebody who can help you develop a bigger capacity than what you have. Many times, we want to do it all by ourselves, but in this miracle, the woman couldn’t do it all by herself; she had to borrow capacity from others. The third thing is the only things you can keep in your life are the things you can contain. If you can’t contain it, it will be wasted. Interestingly, in this woman’s miracle, the oil ceased flowing when there were no more vessels.
This is a very important lesson: whatever we call the blessing of God, the grace of God will stop flowing in our lives when we don’t make good use of it. When we don’t create a container for it, we don’t create the ability to harness it and use it well. That’s why it’s very possible for you to be so blessed and so poor at the same time; because you have something, but you don’t have the capacity to use it well. May the Lord help us to increase our capacity so His blessing can be contained in our lives.
Let’s pray. Say with me, «Heavenly Father, help me to contain the blessings You pour into my life. Show me how to increase my capacity.» In Jesus' name, Amen.