A famine is defined in the bible as a time where there is lack of resource or provision which in turn causes us to hunger. Webster defines a famine as a great shortage or an extreme scarcity of food. I want to bring you into awareness that famine is not limited to the physical but can come to any area in your life that needs to be “fed”. There is famine that affects the body; there is famine that afflicts the soul (the will, emotions and intellect) and famine that impacts the spirit.
How do you know if you are in a famine? Well there are the obvious signs in our land today. There are companies that are closing on a daily basis, unemployment is on the rise and the cost of living is increasing. The shortage of financial resource which is impacting so many other areas of our lives at the moment is only one aspect. But let’s look at this concept of famine another way.
Have you ever heard the phrase,” starved for attention”? In the three realms of the soul there are things that can be impacted by famine. There are the issues of relationships. You may be in one but may not be getting the emotional nourishment that you need. That’s called famine. You may be in a situation where you are starving for affirmation, validation, confirmation and or approval and the very people that you seek it from seem to be oblivious to your needs and withholding of the nourishment that your soul requires to be sustained. You’re in a famine.
 Finally you may be in a situation like the priest Simeon or the intercessor Anna who had waited all their lives to see the consolation of Israel. Anna had been widowed at a very young age and instead of remarrying had given her whole life to praying in the temple. The spiritual climate of Israel had been dry for four hundred years. A fresh word or move from heaven had been nonexistent in their lifetime. Their land was being occupied by foreigners, the people were apostate, injustice and corruption was everywhere. They were standing in faith on the written and prophetic word that the Messiah would come. They had seen self proclaimed messiahs come and accomplish nothing but increase the persecution of the occupying army. Everything they saw and heard was opposite to their spirit’s cry for revival and the establishment of the kingdom of God. They were in spiritual famine.
So the question is asked, how do you survive in a time of famine?

1. You don’t move from the place God has placed you.

In Ruth the first chapter there is a famine in Bethlehem. The husband of Naomi decides to leave Bethlehem to go to Moab, which means the desirable land. When in famine, whether in a marriage, job, business, school or church, our perception can become skewed. We can begin to see and hear how there is plenty some place other than Bethlehem, which means the house of God. That can be a literal thing or the situation where God has placed you. The spirit, soul and body demand nourishment. We begin to hear about how there is plenty in Moab (the place where desires are being met) and are led to believe our desires whether they be of the spirit soul or body will be met elsewhere. In verse 6 of the same chapter Naomi hears that there is bread (that which nourishes) in Bethlehem. When she returns to her home we see the result of this deception and the truth of the matter. Naomi states, “I left full but have returned empty”.  If you’re going to survive a famine don’t leave the place where God placed you.

1. Obey God and watch Him provide.

In 1 Kings 17 Elijah obeys God, by prophesying a drought and hiding by a brook, right into a crisis. The brook dries up and King Ahab is after his head.
Now many of us at this point are saying to ourselves, “I know you told me to do this, where is the promise. Why am I in a crisis of lack”?  If you will listen He brings you to a place of provision until the famine is over, just as He provided the widow for Elijah.

1. Don’t eat your seed during a time of famine.

Another strategy that we can pull from the story of Elijah and the widow was that the widow gave to God what she was to use as her last meal before she died. In doing so she was able to live for the duration the famine. The story tells use she had enough flour and oil to sustain her household and the man of God because she obeyed the word of the Lord and not her instinct to horde for herself what she thought was only enough for one meal before she died. The word of God says,”He gives seed to the sower”. The Word also says the seed is to be allotted for making bread and for sowing. We must sow because we need to be sustained for the future, not only the immediate. In famine you need to sow not horde.

1. Do not allow rebellion and unbelief to rob you of the promised blessing.
2. Kings 6:24 tells us about a famine based on warfare. Israel is being besieged and all that sustained life was cut off. The people were so disparate that they began to eat donkey heads and the dropping from the doves. Donkeys represent rebellion and stubbornness; the droppings represent old or other moves of the spirit (courtesy of M.Pitts). When you begin a steady diet of rebellion and comparison you misjudge the situation and through impatience and unbelief and miss the very promise that you are waiting for like the kings officer in verses 6:33 through 7:20. The prophet told him,” you will see it but will not eat it” and it came to pass. In famine you must cast down imagination and trust God in the warfare.
3. In famine you must understand what God is confronting and come into agreement with Him. In 1 Kings18 we see the culmination of a three year drought that caused great famine. By calling for it not to rain for three years God was judging baal the god of rain that was supposed to bring the rain that would grow crops and feed humans and animals alike. He hit them at the very core of their existence to bring them to a place of repentance. God will use famine to confront things other than Himself that we use to sustain ourselves and place before him, things that we perceive as good as well as obvious sin. He says,” You shall have no other Gods before me”. Whether it is something we use to medicate ourselves, drugs, alcohol, sexual perversions of any kind, shopping etc. God is saying I am bringing you to a place of decision. Either I am God or those other things that you are going after is. Ultimately He wants to prove who He is in your life, first by fire and then by rain. The pattern here is repentance (rebuilding of the altar), purification (the fire) then the provision (rain). In a famine you must determine for yourself that God Is God.
4.  Understand that God is using it to position and place you for greatness.

In Gen 41 God uses famine to elevate Joseph to a place of destiny that was a fulfillment of his dreams. He had been rejected and betrayed by the ones whom he loved, enslaved, falsely accused, imprisoned and forgotten. But in God’s appointed time, a time when there was an extreme lack of nourishment in the land, God placed Joseph where he was destined to be from the beginning of time. But remember Ps. 105: 17-19 tells us that the word of the Lord tested him until it came to pass.
In famine know that God is using it to place you into your destiny.
Finally we must be like Jesus. We must be sustained by doing the will of the Father. Jesus said,” My meat and drink is doing the will of My Father”. If we are to survive in a time of famine, we must strive to do the Fathers will and be sustained through obedience.
                                      Prophet Marcos Flores CWCLA