1.4 | Knicks in 5!

Y'all....just listen to figure out why it'll be Knicks in 5.

Rejoice with those who rejoice.

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Welcome back to the Leah effect. I am your host, Sharnell, and I am so glad that you can join me for another episode on today. Yes, we are still with the season of the Slepton, where we highlight people in the Bible who are simply not popular. aka the Sleepers. And sometimes, if we're being honest, the Forgotten. Today, though, we'll go as far as to focus on someone who is nameless. She's identified only as the Shinamite woman. Now, before I even set the scene, I must preface. But when they ask me who my favorite person or character in the Bible is, the Shunammite woman is in my top five. Let's proceed and allow me to set the scene. So, the Shunammite woman comes from the city of Shunem. Now, Shunum belonged to Issachar, one of the 12 sons of Jacob. Issachar's mother, Leah. Fun fact. Justice for Leah 2026. I will be putting that on a t-shirt. Anywho, now, Shunem was a city that was frequented by the prophet Elisha. Elisha. Elisha. There we go. The prophet being the one who hears from God and speaks to the people to heed the word of the Lord. Now we find ourselves in the book of 2 Kings, chapter 4. The prophet Elisha comes to Shunim, and a well-to-do woman is there and urges him to stay for dinner. Whenever he comes by, because he comes by to Shunem often, he would stop by her home to eat. She speaks to her husband one day and says, I know that this man who often comes our way is a holy man of God. Let's make a small room on the roof and put in a bed, a table, a chair, and a lamp for him. Then he could stay here whenever he comes to us. So that is exactly what is done. Elisha the prophet now has a home in Shunim, thanks to the Shunammite woman. So one day when he comes over, he goes to his room and he lays down. He asks his servant, who is essentially his right-hand man, Gehazi, to call for the Shunammite woman. And Elisha instructs Gehazi to ask the Shunammite woman, What can we do for you? Because you've done so much for us. You've gone through all this trouble to create, you know, essentially another wing of the house for us. What can we do for you? Can we speak on behalf to the king for you or to the commander of the army? And the Shunammite woman says, I have a home amongst my own people. I'm good. So Elisha and Gehazi are brainstorming. And Elisha's like, what can be done for her? What can we get for her? What can we do for her? And Gehazi notices that she has no son, and her husband is old. His words, not mine. So Elisha says, Call her. Call her back. And Elisha prophesies to the Shunammite woman and says, About this time, next year, you will hold a son in your arms. And immediately she refuses. No, my lord, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Please, please, please, man of God, do not get my hopes up. Do not mislead your servant. But the word of the Lord comes to pass, and about the same time next year, she gives birth to a son, just as Elisha prophesied. Now the years have passed and the child has grown. Okay? One day he goes out early in the morning with his father, who is with the reapers, and he starts to exclaim, Oh, my head, my head, father, my head. So his father tells his servants to bring the child to his mother. Yeah, I know. The servant carries the boy all the way back to his mother, lays the child on the mother's lap, and the child is sitting on her lap until around like noon, then died. Yes. Died. Mercy. The mother gets up and carries the child to Elisha's quarters in the house, lays him on the bed, shuts the door, and prepares to leave. Much like any woman on a mission, she has no time to waste. She calls her husband and tells him, Send me one of your servants and get me a donkey, word to Shrek, so I can go to the man of God quickly and return. And the husband's like, What what why why go to him today? It's not the new moon, it's not the Sabbath, like nothing special or unique is going on, right? And she says, It's alright. So she saddles up her donkey, ready to go get Elisha, and tells the servant these instructions. Go forward. Do not slow down unless I tell you to slow down. So she begins her journey to find Elisha and finds him at Mount Carmel. Mount Carmel from Shunem is about twenty to twenty five miles. So riding on a donkey with a little pep in its step, that could take around maybe five to seven hours. So yeah, it's been a long day to say the least for the Shunammite woman. And as she arrives to Mount Carmel, Elisha sees her from a distance and shouts out to Gehazi and says, Look, there's the Shunammite. Run to her and meet her and ask her if she's alright. Ask her if her husband's alright. Ask her if her child is alright. Gehazi does exactly what is asked of him, and the Shunammite woman's response to all these questions is it is well. The Shunammite woman continues to find Elisha personally and reaches him at the mountain and grabs a hold of his feet. Now here comes Gehazi, who mere minutes ago tried to come to her aid to gauge what the situation was. And Gehazi is pushing her off of Elisha. And Elisha says, Gehazi, leave her alone. She is in bitter distress, but the Lord has hidden it from me and has not told me why she is in bitter distress. Which seconds later, he now knows why she's in bitter distress because she just blurts out, Did I ask you for a son, my Lord? Didn't I tell you, don't raise my hopes? And in response to that, Elisha says to Gehazi, Tuck in your cloak and your belt, take my staff and run. Don't greet anybody you know, and if anybody greets you, don't answer. Go back to the house in Shunim, lay my staff on the boy's face. And the child's mother, the Shunammite woman, says, Listen, as surely as the Lord lives, and as you live, Elisha, I will not leave you. So Elisha gets up and he follows the Shunammite woman home. Mind you, Gehazi is sprinting to the house at this point. Remember when I said that Shunum is about 20 to 25 mile distance from Mount Carmel? Yeah, the man is running a little less than a marathon. A marathon is 26.2 miles. He's sprinting the whole way there, literally moving in silence because he was ordered not to speak to anybody, or it would slow him down. So Gehazi arrives to the house first, obviously, and he makes his way up to the room and places the staff on the boy's face. And nothing happens. No sound, no response. So Gehazi finds Elisha and tells him the boy has not awakened. So Elisha finally gets to the house and sees the boy lying dead in the bed. He goes into the room, shuts the door, and begins to pray. And then gets on the bed and lays on the boy. Much like we have to stand through that TSA scanner, so it's like hands above the head, feet shoulder width apart, lined up with the child, mouth to mouth, eye to eye, hand to hand. And the child's body begins to get warm. And that's all for the moment. So Elisha gets up, starts walking around the room for a bit, then lays down one more time. The boy sneezes seven times and opens his eyes. Elisha tells Gehazi to call the Shunammite woman, so when she finally arrives upstairs, Elisha says, Take your son. And she comes in the room, falls at the feet of Elisha, and bows to the ground. And she gets her son, and they walk out. And that's the story of the Shunammite woman. Now, what exactly is the Shunammite woman effect? Well, before I can put catchy language to it or just a brief phrase, I want to highlight three Fs. First, there's faith. Now, faith, by the biblical definition, is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. There's fog. Fog in this case is anything, and I do mean anything that can cloud your mental, emotional, or spiritual clarity and judgment. And finally, there's focus. Focus is a point of concentration. Focus is directed attention. And one thing we can ask ourselves after learning about the Shunammite woman is this. What is affecting our focus? Faith or fog? And what are you going to allow to be bigger than the program? And I wholeheartedly never mean to sound like an out-of-touch youth pastor trying to relate to the kids, but I'm I'm serious. Which one affects how you move? The Shunammite woman is essentially giving us a masterclass in faith. She's known for her wealth and status. She's known for her hospitality and her friendship and reverence for the prophet of God. Yet when Gehazi first observes her, he immediately notices what she lacks. What she doesn't have. The one thing she had carried in her heart for years had been met with such disappointment. She had wanted a child, but after so much waiting and so much unmet hope, she had become content with the possibility that it would never happen for her. But notice what she didn't do. She did not allow disappointment to corrode her spirit. She found contentment in what she had and in who she was. She continued serving. She continued living. She continued being generous. But deep inside, she buried what she truly wanted. Then God does something remarkable. Imagine being in the right place at the right time and discovering that God heard the prayer you stopped praying years ago. Imagine receiving an answer to a request that was never even on your mind when you decided to devote your service or devote your gift. And God made you aware that He will answer your prayer with a deadline attached to it. Hello? Hello? This is the moment where we start singing for every mountain, right? This is where we start singing goodness of God. This is where we start running around the church. I'm speaking for myself personally, okay? This is when we start rejoicing with those who rejoice, as the scripture tells us to do. But after all this said and done, tragedy strikes. And the promised child grows up and experiences a pain in his head and suddenly dies. A headache. That baby had a headache. Something so ordinary became the thing that pulls her away from the very gift God had given her. Now, fog is something we can all relate to in one way or another. The circumstances and situations that consume you on a regular basis, regardless of where they fall on the scale. Whether you lose your job, lose a loved one, or simply lose your house keys for a couple of hours. The mental fog that comes with disappointment, frustration, fear, or grief can cloud your judgment, distort your motives, and alter your posture towards God and others. But this is what amazes me about the Shunammite woman. Throughout the entirety of the story, she never says the child is dead. And had she revealed that information too soon, or even at all, to the people around her, even though they meant well, the fog could have overtaken her focus. Fear could have dictated her next move. Grief could have convinced her to bury what God intended to resurrect. Instead, she kept moving toward the source. She hadn't made up in her mind that her son will live. And this is purely faith kicking in here because Elisha could have been anywhere in the northern kingdom of Israel at this point. And with all that could have fogged up her mind, she decided that she was going to get that donkey and that servant and find him. And not only find him, bring him back to Shunam to see about her son personally. She knew there was only one person she had to reach to get her answer. So Gehazi coming and doing a whole pre-screening questionnaire by orders of Elisha didn't do anything. It didn't change anything. And quite frankly, at Mount Carmel, Gehazi is more of a barrier than a bridge. Anyone who wasn't Elisha, anyone who wasn't God's selected mouthpiece, could not give her the words she needed in this time. The one who said it is the one who was going to see it through. And she walked that thing out. She knew she needed to reach the one who can truly make it well. This was a situation that only God could handle. So she and Elisha make their way back to Shunnah, only to find that the laying of the staff on the child didn't work. So Elisha returns to the room, and the Shunammite woman, the wealthy wife, the hostess with the Mostess, the mother is waiting, hearing footsteps pacing in the upper room. And when she's called to go upstairs, she sees her son alive again. And she drops to the ground in gratitude. Not a single second of her time felt wasted because she believed. She had faith. She didn't let the fog of grief, the fog of disappointment, the fog of uncertainty hold her back from getting what was promised to her. Because faith, if you let it, will ignite your focus. Faith is not a mechanism used to deny the very real things we deal with in this life. Faith. The fog is not bigger than the program. And I'll say that again. The fog is not bigger than the program. And when faith becomes greater than the fog, you'll keep moving toward the source until you see God's word brought to fruition. That is the Shunammite Woman Effect. And that, my friends, is another episode of the Leah Effect. Thank you all so much for listening and supporting. It truly does mean the world to me. Please stay locked in with me by following the Instagram page at underscore the Leah Effect and subscribe to our YouTube page. And also, also, also, also, also. Before I go, I just want to say that yes, today's episode is about faith and fog and focus. And if you are a New York Knicks fan, you know about the faith and the fog and the focus because game four, fourth quarter with 1.2 seconds left on the clock. And y'all were able to secure the victory. Yeah, I'll say it again. The fog is not bigger than the program. And let game four of the 2026 NBA finals be a reminder of that. Always remember there is more to the story, and the effects are truly endless.