God Sent Ravens

There was a drought in Israel, and God's plan to keep His prophet alive was a flock of ravens.

Read that again.

Not a wealthy patron. Not a kind neighbor with a full pantry. Not bread falling from the sky the way it did for Moses and an entire generation.

Ravens.

1 Kings 17:4-6. “You will drink from the brook, and I have directed the ravens to supply you with food there.” So Elijah did what the Lord told him. “The ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning and bread and meat in the evening, and he drank from the brook.”

Here is what we skip when we read that story too fast.

Ravens were unclean. Under the law, a Jew could not eat one and was not supposed to touch one. (Leviticus 11:15) Ravens were scavengers. Thieves. The bird you chased away from your food, not the bird you trusted to bring it.

And that is exactly the delivery system God chose.

The Package Almost Always Offends

God could have used anything. He owns everything. He picked the one option guaranteed to make a religious man flinch.

That is not a one-time thing. It is a pattern.

He fed a nation with bread that showed up on the ground like dew.

He won a battle with trumpets and clay jars.

He provided tax money out of the mouth of a fish.

He saved the firstborn with blood smeared on a doorframe.

None of those are how a reasonable person would have designed it. Every one of them worked.

I call this an unlikely delivery system. It is the way God consistently sends what you need through a vessel you would never have chosen, in a package you might be tempted to reject.

The Seriousness Of The Time

I have been saying for a while now that the ground is moving. The pace of change is not slowing down. The tools are not getting simpler. The world your kids are stepping into is not the one you were trained for.

Here is what concerns me.

God is going to send provision and direction into this season the way He always has. Through unlikely delivery systems. Through ravens.

And I think a lot of good, faithful people are going to starve standing right next to their own miracle, because they could not get past the fact that it came in on the wrong bird.

They wanted clean. God sent a scavenger.

They wanted obvious. God sent strange.

They wanted the delivery system to look spiritual. God sent something that looked like the last thing they would trust.

This is the part most believers miss. The test is rarely whether God will provide. The test is whether you will recognize the provision when it lands in front of you wearing feathers you do not like.

Four Weeks

I want to spend the next four weeks on this with you.

Not because it is a clever idea. Because I think it is one of the most important things you can understand about the season we are actually in.

Over the next three emails I am going to walk through why we reject the delivery because of the package, what that costs us, why the most disruptive delivery system of our lifetime is already at the door, and finally the most unlikely delivery system in all of human history. The one God sent that an entire religious nation rejected and crucified, because He did not match what they were expecting.

Stay with me. This one matters.

One More Thing

This whole idea, ravens and algorithms and the unlikely ways God delivers what we need, is the heart of a book I just released.

It is called Ravens and Algorithms. It is the clearest thing I have written on how to recognize God's provision in a world that is changing faster than most of us are ready for.

If this email landed on something, the book goes much deeper.

Click → RAVENS AND ALGORITHMS 

God has not stopped providing.

He has just never asked your permission about the packaging.

Onward,
Chris Behnke

P.S. — Notice what Elijah did not do. He did not argue with God about the menu. He did not refuse the meat because of who carried it. He ate, and he lived. The drought did not kill the prophet. Pride would have. Do not let yours.