When Famine Strikes - Martin Wiles

Now there was a famine in the land, and Abram went down to Egypt to live there for a while because the famine was severe. Genesis 12:10 NLT

One million people died, and another million left the country.

History records it as the Irish Potato Famine, and it occurred between the years of 1845 and 1849. Since two fifths of the population depended on this crop for various reasons, the famine led to mass starvation and disease. When it had run its course, twenty to twenty-five percent of the island’s population disappeared.

Thousands of years before the Irish Potato Famine, another famine struck the land of Canaan, the land that God had called Abram to leave his homeland for … the land where God promised to make him great by giving him numerous descendants.

But when the famine struck, Abram ran to Egypt. That’s when the trouble started. Abram’s wife, Sarai, was beautiful. Abram knew the king of the land would see her, kill him, and then take Sarai as his wife. So Abram devised a plan … a half-truth. He told Sarai to tell the king she was his sister.

Sure enough, the king took her as his wife. But God wasn’t pleased. And neither was the king when he discovered he had taken a married woman. He released her and told Abram to leave his land. Famines—whether physical or spiritual—lead us to do unnatural things.

Our personal famines show up in what the Bible refers to as a sin nature. Our souls experience a dearth because we are not rightly related to our Creator. Sin separates us from Him. We long for God as those in famine lands long for food and water.

Yet, instead of eating of the Bread of Life and drinking from the Living Water as Jesus invites us to, we often turn to other things, thinking they will satisfy our hunger and thirst. They won’t, and they leave us hungrier and thirstier than we were before.

What the Irish people needed was something to replace the potato—or something to kill what was killing the potatoes. What Abram needed was to trust God and stay in the land God told him to go to. 

What we need when the famines of our souls come is to turn to God. He alone has what we need. He alone can give us wisdom for our situations. Whatever the famine has stolen, He can restore.

When famine strikes your life, go to the One who can provide for your need.

Prayer: Father, we thank You that no famine is so great that You cannot sustain us in these times of drought.

Tweetable: Has famine struck you? 

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