Pay very close attention to that last sentence. “Moses was prepared to dwell with the man.” How good that is. Here’s a man he had never met ; an obscure desert clergyman and shepherd, who spent a life-time raising sheep ( and children ) in the desolate patch of land known as Midian. “And he gave his girl Zipporah to Moses. Then she gave birth to a boy, and he named him Gershom, for he announced, “I have been a sojourner in a foreign land” ( vv. 21–22 ). Moses, who would be in line to wed an exotic Cleopatra-type beauty back in Egypt, settled down with a shepherdess.

And when she gave birth to their firstborn, Moses gave him a peculiar name : Gershom. It suggests “a sojourner.” that is what Moses had become—a sojourner in a distant land, forgotten and obscure. He came into Midian without knowing any one, without knowing the ropes, not even knowing where he was going to live. But when Jethro related, “Young man, do you want to live with us?” Moses answered, “Yes, I might. I may live anywhere.” Let me ask you at once : Are you prepared to be obscure? A servant’s perspective will teach you what that angle is all about. To put it in easy terms, in the Body of Christ some people are called to be the toes.

Not everybody could be a right hand, an eye, or an ear. Some have to be the toe, or the heel, or the kidney, or the liver. These members are ( hopefully ) rarely seen. But just let one of them stop working for awhile and watch out! The entire body is in difficulty. Moses was ready to be obscure, to dwell aside from the spotlight, to accept his new standing. I ask again : Are you? God will use failure in your life to break down that intense desire in your heart to see your name in lights. And when he eventually breaks you of that lust for recognition, He may place you before the lights like you might never have imagined.

But then it will not matter. You will not care if you are prime time or small time, center stage or backstage, leading the charge or cooking the food. You are just part of the King’s military. Folk of selfless dedication are mainly available. That is plenty!

“You can’t continue to obstruct and reject the situation. If anything happens to him, I can bear the results for the remainder of my days. If we had not delayed this long, we could already have been down there and back twice with food.”.

Judah offered to take the blame, although blaming is a futile exercise. Screaming at darkness doesn’t make it light. “Dad,” recounted Judah, “if you would like to blame someone, blame me. He answered with what I’d call toleration and doubt. If you’ve got to do it, then here’s the process I would like you to follow.” See his attitude? And then he regressed back to another old pattern. He instructed them to take gifts, things that were local to Canaan.

If he had lived in the times of Solomon, he’d have claimed Proverbs 21:14 : “A present in secret subdues fury, and a bribe in the bosom, powerful wrath.”. Years before, he had done that with his bro, Esau, and it had worked. It would work with the Egyptian P. M. too. Jacob could see all types of schemes, but he refused to see God’s hand at work. He couldn’t say, “Look, boys, we do not know what all this implies, but we do know that we are confused and we need God’s help.

Let’s trust God for protection and discernment on this. Let’s ask Him to give us direction on what to do.”. Folks , this is a correct point for me to urge you to call your families to prayer. “Hey, children, let’s pray about this before we leave the breakfast table.” Or, “Let’s spend a while Sat. morning asking God for direction in this scenario. We do not know what to do.” Perhaps one of your boys or girls is edging into rebellion. Fess up when you are not positive how to reply.

This is a fun time to call to mind many lessons we will learn from Jacob’s family and Joseph’s trouble. When fogeys are passive, they may finally discipline, but by that point the delayed reaction is sometimes carried out in hate. Passivity waits and waits till ultimately, when it can wait no longer, it comes down with both feet. When that occurs, kids are not disciplined, they’re brutalized. Passivity not only blinds us to the here and now, it makes us inconsistent. There is a 2nd lesson we learn from Joseph’s teen struggles. Solomon was right when he revealed, “Jealousy is wicked as the grave” ( Song of Solomon 8:6, RSV ). Envy , if permitted to grow and fester, leads to devastating effects. If you permit envy to rage in your family or between your youngsters, you are looking for trouble.

At some point, it’ll manifest itself in damaging ways.

Let’s find in all this 1 superb lesson of hope : No action is stronger than prayer.

I understand that the biblical story doesn’t make it clear that Jacob turned to God in prayer, but certainly he did so.

How else could he have gone on with his life? Where else could he have turned for hope?

Those that are older are a source of knowledge for young fogeys and for youngsters and grandkids. Single ladies and men also have much to supply, whether inside their own extended families or in the family of the church. Certainly he knew, even at 17, that his only hope would come thru God’s constant intervention. Surely he cried out to the person who, alone, was in sovereign control of his future.

So far as Abraham was concerned the drama did not have a shock ending. The knife goes up to bring it down into his boy’s chest or across his throat, and what will occur next is the demise of his boy. This is religion in natural settings where the stakes are amazingly high—life and death.

All of a sudden , at the last possible moment, God arbitrated. But the angel of the LORD called to him from heaven and said, “Abraham, Abraham. “And he announced, “Here I am.” he revealed, “Do not stretch out your hand against the kid, and do nada to him ; for the moment I’m sure that you fear God, since you’ve not withheld your child, your sole boy, from Me.” ( Genesis 22:11-12 ). As the Lord stopped Abraham’s hand midplunge, he announced, actually “You’ve passed the test, My true buddy.

You have proved to Me who is first, My aging boy. You have also revealed that your religion has reached full maturity. Your eagerness to surrender your only boy has demonstrated that while you love the present, you like the Giver more.” Then Abraham raised his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him a ram caught in the underbrush by his horns ; and Abraham went and took the ram and offered him up for a burnt offering in the place of his boy.

Abraham called the name of that place The LORD will supply, as it is recounted to this day, “In the mount of the LORD it’ll be provided.”. After this, centuries and traditional sands have covered the site. this very mountaintop would one day accommodate a city and a church. Moriah, Jerusalem, the place where another Dad held His Boy loosely, laid Him on an altar, and sacrificed Him for us. Rodney Howard Browne explains that on this mountain in the area of Moriah—a place renamed “The Lord will provide”—a ram became Isaac’s substitute, and Christ became ours.

Job was a man who was respected by everybody. Why? As he was blameless, upright, God-fearing, and clean living. He had 10 kids, thousands of head of cattle, acres and acres of land, a lot servants, and an important heap of money.

No one would reject that he was “the best of all of the men of the East.” His name was Job, a synonym for integrity and godliness. Yet, inside a couple of hours, grief slid on this fine man like a landslide of jagged rocks. He lost his stock, his crops, his land, his servants, and all 10 kids.

Sanctified be the name of the LORD ( Job 1:21 ).

Rodney Howard Browne points out that the logical questions are, Why did not he? What kept him from resentment or thoughts of suicide? At risk of oversimplifying the situation, I recommend 3 basic answers that I have discovered from looking thru this book. He suspected the Lord who gave had each right to take away ( Job 1:21 ; 2:10 ). Job looked up saying his Lord’s right to reign over his life. 2nd , he counted on God’s guarantee of resurrection. “Even after my skin is demolished, yet from my flesh I shall see God” ( Job 19:26 ). Job looked forward, relying on his Lord’s guarantee to make all things bright and pretty in the life beyond.

Third, he admitted his very own shortage of understanding. He did not feel obliged to elucidate why ( Job 42:2-4 ). Rodney Howard Browne explains that Job looked inside, admitting his inability to put it all together. He rested his difficulty with God, not feeling made to answer why.

How long has it been since you developed a new skill? How many new perspectives have you adopted? Are you forced to approach an issue the same way each time? Have you lost that enthusiastic zest for discovery or adventure? Are you becoming dependent on predictability? Rodney Howard Browne shares with us a secret : Living and learning go together ; existing and expiring do too.

If you’re exclaiming to oneself, “Well, that is just the way I’m ; I cannot change,” then you’re limiting God, discounting His power and rejecting His presence. He is offering you an “abundant life,” and you are settling for a tasteless diet of incongruous existence. Now I am not advising you go out and do foolish stunts to prove your unpredictability.

However, why not turn your day to day issues into creative projects? Why not take life by the throat and reach mastery over a couple of things that have haunted and stressed you long enough? Why not broaden yourself in some new way to the larger glory of God? Remember Caleb? He was eighty-five and still growing when he seized the challenge of the future. Rodney Howard Browne explains that at a point when the ease and comfort of retirement looked predicted, he fearlessly faced the “invincible” giants of the mountain.

Every new dawn introduced another reminder that his body and a rocking chair were not made for one another.

If you’re determined and work quickly, you can keep the concrete of predictability from setting up around you.

But if the risks of sailing your ship in the massive sea of doubt make you seasick, you’d better stay close to the shallow shores of security.

In today’s passage, God teaches us about His relationship with His kids. He asserts that He is going to deal with us as a potter works along side us and we, like the clay, are in His hands. ( Jeremiah 18:6 ) God is molding each one of us into the image of His Son Jesus. Second, he is shaping us for a particular purpose, one that is individually designed and brings about our usefulness in building His kingdom. Our part as clay is to submit ourselves to His purpose.

As the potter, He may take away something from our life – like removing mounds from clay – or He may speed up the pace until we feel as if we are spinning. Or, wanting a new shape for His “vessels,” he would dramatically rework our pattern of living to start us in a new direction. Our responsibility is to accept any changes from the Master Potter. Rodney Howard Browne teaches that we can do this confidently as we are in God’s hands.

Scripture describes them as creative hands whose efforts is displayed in nature, hands filled with righteousness, hands that give life and take it away, mighty and strong hands that saved Israel from Egypt and us from slavery to sin. Hands that protect us, hands that were pierced so we’d be made new. Rodney Howard Browne explains that when we think about being clay in God’s hands and about how God deals with us, we will be able to relax knowing “in His hands” is precisely the place we wish to be.

Rodney Howard Browne uses Saul as an example. King Saul is a personality whom we don’t regularly prefer to think about – though we see in him our own best successes, we also recognize our most sour mess ups. Few men in Scripture had as promising a start as Saul. Elected by God to be Israel’s first king, he is presented as the best man in the state. Saul was beautiful, charming, selected by God, anointed by the soothsayer Samuel, and given a position of prominence unlike any in Israel till that time.

Rodney Howard Browne shows how Saul’s life took a wrong turn. Actually , Saul had a promising beginning. However, somewhere on the way, his life started to curve off course. He became more envious and self-focused. He started to do whatever he wanted instead of what God had called him to do. And, fully, his insubordination drove him insane. Saul shows us what takes place when sin creeps in and starts the destructive process of religious erosion.

My pal, do you suspect this can’t happen to you? Do you believe that you are so religious and “mature” that you can duck these landmines that devastated King Saul? There’s no woman or man alive who can forestall the erosion that comes from sin lingering in the human heart.

Rodney Howard Browne points out that the devil is in no large hurry to destroy your life ; he is content to have patience and watch you make one mistake after another until the day comes when you can not even recognize your life. Don’t wait till the end of your earthly existence before you notice erosion. Commit yourself to regular “heart checks” to make certain your soul is clean from the troubling, destructive presence of sin.

Rodney Howard Browne talks about how God teaches us about His relationship with His kids. He asserts that He is going to deal with us as a potter works along side us and we, like the clay, are in His hands. ( Jeremiah 18:6 ) God is molding each one of us into the image of His Son Jesus.

Second, he is shaping us for a particular purpose, one that is individually designed and brings about our usefulness in building His kingdom. Our part as clay is to submit ourselves to His purpose. As the potter, He may take away something from our life – like removing mounds from clay – or He may speed up the pace until we feel as if we are spinning. Or, wanting a new shape for His “vessels,” he would dramatically rework our pattern of living to start us in a new direction.

Our responsibility is to accept any changes from the Master Potter. Rodney Howard Browne explains that we can do this confidently as we are in God’s hands.

Scripture describes them as creative hands whose efforts is displayed in nature, hands filled with righteousness, hands that give life and take it away, mighty and strong hands that saved Israel from Egypt and us from slavery to sin. Hands that protect us, hands that were pierced so we’d be made new. So when we think about being clay in God’s hands and about how God deals with us, we will be able to relax knowing “in His hands” is precisely the place we wish to be.

300 Foxes – Samson’s Revenge

In Judges chapter 15 verses 4 + 5

Samson took 300 foxes and set fire to their tails and let them loose in the fields of the enemy and destroyed their crops.

I see this as a great story of wisdom in destroying the enemies fields

( the works of the devil)

I am looking for 300 foxes ( Evangelists to put fire in their tales ) and see them loose in the enemies fields decimating the works of the devil by the fire of the Holy Ghost.

One of the things that I got to think about concerning this was the fact that when he caught the foxes, lets say that there was a fox with one eye – he did not let that stop him from his quest – he just set fire to the one eyed fox and turned him loose – now I understand that they went in two’s, however I want to prove a point here. 

Then let say he caught another fox that had mange – his hair was falling out – that did not stop him he put fire on his tale and turned him loose.

Another was crippled in 1 leg and he limped – so we see he basically had a 3 legged fox – however with fire in his tale even a three legged fox moves – foxes with fire in their tales move with a sense of urgency.

Then lastly let say he caught a fox with no teeth – that did not stop him – he put fire in their tales - 

What am I trying to say – if you are a one eyed – hairless, crippled, toothless fox – there is nothing wrong with you that the fire of God would not cure.

Don’t look at your failings and shortcomings and setbacks but allow the Lord to light your fire and run through the enemies fields and reek havoc and bring in the harvest of souls for the time is short and Jesus is coming very, very soon

Please come to the Calling all Evangelists conference in Tampa -http://www.revival.com/www/r.aspx?p=39 and let the Lord touch you a fresh and use you – we need you – Jesus needs you – the Harvest is ripe – the time is now.

IF NOT NOW – WHEN ?

IF NOT YOU – WHO ?

It’s time to bring in the great harvest of souls!