Give him good praise in his house.
Hallelujah. Are you desperate for him to be with him?
Be in his presence.
He's a great god.
If you have your bibles be turned with me to Genesis 26.
Thank you so much for being in the house of the Lord today.
If you are visiting with us,
you've just stepped into an assignment.
I don't believe in accidents, I don't believe in luck,
I believe in divine providence.
I believe in a god that knows how to get me to where I need to be.
To get to me what I need to have.
And so this day has been assigned for a long, long time.
And you're here.
So thank you so much for being with us.
Again, if you are visiting before you leave today,
out those doors to my left at the welcome center,
we'll have some folks waiting for you,
to let you know how much we appreciate your being here with us today.
There are, I don't know the count,
but probably 75 to 100 other churches in Bradley County
you could have been at this morning.
And so I do not take it lightly that you are at Hopewell.
Thank you so much for coming.
Genesis 26, we'll begin reading at verse 1,
and then verse 12 through 14.
And there was a famine in the land beside the first famine
that was in the days of Abraham.
And Isaac went unto Abimelech, king of the Philistines, unto Gerar.
And the Lord appeared unto him, and he said,
Go not down unto Egypt, but dwell in the land which I shall tell thee all.
So join in this land, and I will be with you and will bless you.
For unto you and to your seed I will give all these countries,
and I will perform the oath which I swore unto Abraham your father.
And I will make thy seed to multiply as the stars of heaven,
and will give unto thy seed all these countries.
And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.
Because that Abraham obeyed my voice and kept my charge,
my commandments, my statutes, and my laws.
And Isaac dwelt in Gerar.
Verse 12.
Then Isaac sowed in that land and received in the same year,
and hundredfold.
And the Lord blessed him.
And the man waxed great, and he went forward, and he grew until he became very great.
For he had possessions of flocks, possessions of herds, great store of servants.
And I like this last little sentence here.
And the Philistines envied him.
Huh?
And the Philistines envied him.
Take that, devil.
Amen.
I want to speak to you with the help of the Lord for the next hour or so.
No, I'm just kidding.
For the next little bit on the thought, right place, right time.
Right place, right time.
Father, I love you.
I thank you for your goodness and your mercy.
I pray your blessings upon the household of faith.
Lord, I jest with the hour, but if it's your will, so be it.
I pray, Father, that we are here to receive what the Spirit would say to the Church.
So speak to our hearts as we have open hearts, we have ears that are open to hear,
so that we would hear as the Spirit speaks to the Church.
We glorify you, we praise you, and I thank you for every person in this room.
Let your richest blessings be upon each.
To you be praised forever.
In Christ's lovely name.
And the Church said, Amen and Amen.
Tell your neighbor you're at the right place at the right time.
There is a, to use a word, there's a plethora of goodness in this 26th chapter.
What's that mean?
There's a whole lot of good stuff in there.
A lot of good stuff that we're not going to have time to cover.
The reason we've skipped, because between verse 7 and 11,
there's a whole other event, an incident taking place that deserves its own time frame.
But as we're here this morning, I think about the summer.
It's starting to get hot.
It's finally getting here, isn't it?
It's late July, but that old Tennessee summer is starting to show up.
Heat index the other day of 101, 102.
Not as hot as other places in the world, but I tell you what,
I would take, I would take Las Vegas 105 over hour 95 with 95% humidity.
They don't know what hot is.
They don't know hot until it's sticky to you.
I've been out in California 105 degrees, and I thought, well, this ain't that bad.
105, give me 80.
Well, you know what I'm talking about.
Isaac is coming on the scene.
Isaac had a miraculous birth.
Isaac had a miraculous deliverance as God would have his father take him
to the mountaintop to offer him as a sacrifice.
Isaac has two sons that are struggling, and the struggle will not be over
for yet quite some time.
Time is coming along and moving very rapidly.
Isaac to be the second patriarch of the people of Israel.
But Isaac now has found himself in a time of famine.
You know what famine is?
It's, it's dread, it's drought, it's, it's despondence.
The land is not producing hunger.
Disease is beginning to spread.
And notice it's an example to that at the time of his father, Abraham.
Abraham sojourned and he went down into Egypt because Egypt is on the bank of the Nile.
So in his own mind, he's thinking he's going to follow in his father's footsteps.
We're in famine, so we're going to where there's plenty.
As he's making his journey and beginning to set himself to go toward Egypt,
the Lord appears unto him and he says, go not down to Egypt,
but dwell in the land which I tell you.
When we think about famine, this trouble, this difficulty, hardship and trials,
understand that in times of famine, everyone is tested.
For this, it's not a question of will hard times come, but how we will respond when they do show up.
You and I, we cannot control what comes and goes in our life to a great degree.
But how we respond to what does enter into our life will determine whether we go forward or backward
in our faith and relationship with God.
Growth is the product of active resistance.
If we never experience resistance in our life, we will never grow.
If you never experience resistance to your faith, your faith will never grow.
What are you talking about, pastor?
I'm talking about if the enemy never comes against you,
then you won't know that God is greater in you than he that is in this world.
And so your faith will not grow in the fact that God is the victor.
And by virtue of God being the victor, you are his.
And so therefore, you become the victor.
But if you never have the devil come against you, then you'll never know that your faith is enough.
It's not just that we have faith in faith, but yet we have faith in God.
And my faith in God is enough because there's nothing.
We've sung it to the heavens today.
There's nothing too hard for him.
There's nothing that he cannot perform.
There's no deed that he can't bring to pass.
So that means there's nothing going on in your life that he cannot be God over.
So if we never experience resistance, we will never grow.
We do not determine growth by what we avoid in life,
but what we overcome in life.
Now, I don't know why, but I'm starting to notice a trend.
When we first arrived here four and a half years ago, there was one muscle man in the church, Brother Randy Standup.
I mean, he's pretty good size, fellow.
He's armed by the size of my leg.
And so he's practicing resistance.
But I've noticed there's a few more resistors starting to show up.
Brother Ryan, stand up.
Brother Michael, go ahead and stand up.
You're a resistor.
Brother Sean, you two boys might as well just stand on up over there.
Yeah, stand on up.
You're a resistor.
Brother, you're a resistor.
See, there's some active resistance going on.
Muscles do not grow without resistance.
Y'all can sit down now.
I've done my spectacle out of you.
I would have some.
Brother, oh boys, he wears a big coat, so his resistance doesn't show as much.
But he's a resistor, too.
You can tell I'm not a resistor because I eat everything that gets in front of me.
Muscles only grow through pressure, not just pressure, but resistance against pressure.
When they get on that bench press and 200 pounds, whatever they decide to work out with,
that gravity force begins to put pressure.
And the resistance against that pressure of their arms and their back muscles and all that triceps,
biceps and all this begin to resist the pressure that's coming down on them.
Are you with me?
So they've been resisting pretty good because you can tell by the growth of the pressure
and resistance that's been going on.
They're doing it more than just once a week.
It's once a day, three, four times a week.
They're in active resistance against pressure.
They put themselves in position to be in resistance.
I'm not going to put myself in that position.
That's pretty obvious, isn't it?
But without challenges and tests to our faith, it would be impossible to measure growth.
They have measurements with their workouts.
They have things that they try to achieve and goals that they set out before them.
And it takes active resistance against a certain amount of pressure to reach them.
Can I tell you in the life of faith, there isn't a resistance that comes against you.
Amen.
There is a pressure that's in your life.
And the amount of resistance you put against it, it causes your faith to begin to grow.
And it begins to excel so much so that it's noticeable.
You can't be around these guys without noticing it because they wear these medium shirts.
All you fat brethren, stand up and shout with me.
Hey.
You don't see one of us with a medium on.
Hey, baby, it's two X or none.
How I'm going to preach now, I don't know.
It's a good thing this brother got saved before I got started.
I guess the Lord knew.
Right place at the right time.
Oh, Lord.
They don't. They're larges.
You know, God's got to have a sense of humor.
He really does.
He calls somebody like me and puts me up here in front of y'all.
He's got to have a sense of humor.
Without challenges, I may have a challenge when I get out of here to outrun them all.
Without challenges and tests, it would be impossible to measure growth.
Trouble does one of two things in our life.
Famine will do one of two things in your life.
It'll either make us more sensitive to and more aware of our weakness and our dependence upon God
or to make you dull and insensitive and self-absorbent.
It will cause you to withdraw.
It'll cause you to pull away.
It'll cause you to get up off the bench if it's too much to resist it.
But I'm here to tell us this morning there is a right place and a right time so that the help that you need to show up at the time of resistance when pressures coming against you,
that'll help you to resist and push the trouble away.
There is a positioning for us and that positioning.
These brethren do this because of a passion that they have.
They have a passion for help and they have a passion for strength and they push themselves to that point to be what they are.
I don't have that type of passion. My passions are directed in other directions and at other things.
My passions go a different way.
But our faith all has to be, it has to be passionate toward God and nothing else.
Your faith cannot be diverted like we all have.
I walked out into the parking lot this morning and I told someone, I said there's probably not another church in town that their parking lot looks like ours.
There's two boats and a honey wagon in our parking lot this morning.
If that ain't a real church, I don't know where else you need to go.
Hello? Two boats and a honey wagon.
And it means that the people of God, whatever the necessities of life have come,
they put some things aside for a few moments that they may have their passions in alignment to the glory of God.
Oh, I'm going to go fishing, but I'm going after my soul is fed.
I'm going to go to work, but it's after my soul is fed.
I'm aligning my passions so that my resistance against the pressure of life is honed and I have the strength that I need to overcome.
If famine, trial and tests bring us greater revelation of God,
then they have served a greater purpose and goal in our life of ease and comfort.
If they bring you closer, if famine gets you closer to God,
if trouble and trial and tests and these temptations that come against you cause you to grow closer to God,
then are they not more beneficial than a life of ease and comfort where there is no enemy coming to pursue you?
I'm telling you because of the enemy, my faith is strong.
Because of the enemy, my resistance against him prevails.
Because I know that he that is in me is greater than he that is in this world.
Because of the faith that I have in God, when the pressure of life comes on,
when trouble comes on, when drought comes on, when trial comes on,
I know I can lift up my eyes into the hills and know that whence my help comes from,
my help comes from the Lord who is the maker of the heavens and the earth.
I know that at that moment I can whisk myself away and dwell in the secret place of the most high
and dwell in the shadow of the Almighty and know that he is with me.
I have resisted.
Because of being at the right place at the right time.
The greatest revelation of your life is probably hidden in the greatest trial of your life.
The greatest revelation of your life, the revelation of knowing God and God revealing himself to you
is hidden in the moment of your greatest trial of life.
Because if you don't give up, he will prove himself mighty in your life.
And in order to do that, you have to put yourself at the right place and be there at the right time.
Happened that way for Isaac. Isaac knew if he could get to Egypt, everything was fine in Egypt.
There was water in Egypt. There's no famine in Egypt.
But something stopped him in his progress going toward Egypt.
We all know that Egypt is symbolic of the world and being out in sin and being out in the world.
And when we stop to understand this, think about Isaac going down to Egypt.
But I'm so grateful for a God who intervenes in our going because he appeared unto Isaac and said,
Do not go to Egypt.
But now you have a dilemma on your hand.
What are you going to do if you can't go to where relief is at?
Well, hear me. If God has given you a word, then you have to resist being driven by the famine.
Because if God has spoken something into your life, if he says dwell here, honey,
there is no river wide or deep to keep you in his grace.
But if you stay even in a barren place where he has established your going,
he will meet you there and he will bless you there.
Greatest revelations of our life make their way through the greatest trials and tests of our life.
It's up to you and I to refuse to be famine driven.
You have to refuse. You have to resist the pressure to be driven by the famine.
Now, we have spiritual famines that come about in our lives, too.
There's been a famine for the word of God before.
A man across the land throughout the dark ages.
God seemingly was silent, but God wasn't silent.
God's never been silent. Why? Because he's always had a remnant.
Even throughout the dark ages. Amen. There were those.
We heard last week firsthand that there's a remnant in China,
even though communism is running rapid and lives are being taken day by day.
But yet there are millions, millions who have not bowed their knees.
There are millions who are the remnant.
It doesn't seem like the word of the Lord is going through China,
but there's an undercurrent. We heard it.
That underground church, there's a current.
There's a rushing raging river of the Spirit of God that's flowing beneath the surface in China.
And souls are being saved and lives are being changed.
Make your way down to Indonesia. There's a Pentecostal revival.
Hundreds of thousands are giving their hearts and lives to the Lord.
And the baptism of the Holy Ghost is being poured out.
It may look like there's a famine in this world,
but honey, there's cloudbursts all over the place.
And he's pouring out wherever he will.
Disciples in the midst of their storm, Paul and Silas in their prison.
It's these great moments of intense persecution, trouble, trial,
where you may have your greatest revelation.
You may feel like you're about to go under.
Hello, but come walking across the storm of your life.
He that is walking elevated above your problem,
he walks upon the tops of the highest wave of it,
and he makes his way to where you are,
and he can look into your life and declare,
Peace be still. My God, somebody needs to hear that today.
Life's upside down and the winds are raging,
but coming on the raging winds are the one who speaks to the winds.
It's he who is the King of glory, he who is the majesty of all eternity.
He's walking upon your situation and he's able to look at you and speak,
Peace be still.
It's in those moments that I need a revelation.
It's in those moments that I need to hear God,
but what do you do when it takes a little while for him to get there?
Well, you stay there. Don't go anywhere.
Do you know what kind of faith it takes to pull off the next move
that Isaac pulled off?
He sowed in a time of famine.
Do you know what kind of faith it takes?
Because if nothing else, you can grind the seed and live a little while longer.
But I'm here to challenge somebody this morning,
don't be tempted to eat your seed,
because it's the seed of your faith.
Oh, my Lord, don't let the enemy consume
and take up the last ounce and the last drop.
Don't let him draw out of you the last trust that you have in God.
You're here this morning at the right place at the right time.
God wants you to know, just hang on.
It may take a little longer than expected,
but I've already spoken a word.
If you look at verses 2, 3, 4, and 5,
you hear God over and over and say,
I will, I will, I will, I will, I will, I will, I will.
My God, he's speaking and I will in your life this morning.
It may be famine where you're living,
but don't give up because he declares, I will.
So when you get your I will in the midst of your famine,
the midst of your drought,
as long as you stay where he told you to stay put,
you're at the right place.
Sojourn in this land, he said, I'll bless you.
Stay right here and I'll bless you.
Be a stranger.
It's only a temporary, a sojourner is just a temporary resident.
What's that mean? I'm only passing through.
I'm going to be here a little while, but not long enough to call it home.
Surely y'all ain't going to make me preach that.
This old world is not my home.
I'm only passing through.
Oh, Lord, I can't feel at home in this world anymore.
Why? Because it's not your home for the child of God, for the regenerated sin
washed.
This isn't your home.
Because of that, you know where your home is.
And because of that, you can say, Oh, Lord, you know, I have no friend like you.
If heaven's not my home, dear Lord, what would I do?
You're just so joining through this land.
What is that supposed to mean?
Don't make permanent decisions based upon temporary circumstances and situations.
Don't make a decision that's going to alter the rest of your life over a temporary situation.
One of my favorite phrases of scripture is this too came to pass.
It shall come to pass.
Whatever you're dealing with, whatever you're going through.
Can I tell you that the famine ended up being over because God sent rain?
Can I tell you there's rain going to come into your life?
Your famine won't last forever.
There was a famine in Abraham's time.
There was a famine in Isaac's time.
And there were famines in Elijah's time.
So it wasn't over, but it was only a temporary circumstance.
There's some temporary circumstances going on in somebody's lives in this room this morning.
And you're about to make a life altering decision.
Hold on until you hear from the Lord.
Isaac sowed in that land in the time of famine.
Now doesn't it take faith to sow in a time of famine?
There's one thing I have learned over the years about sowing seed.
It takes water to make it grow.
Huh?
I don't know if it only rained on Isaac's field.
I don't know how it got wet.
I don't know if God watered it from the bottom up.
You know he can do that.
I don't know how he done it.
The how is not really the matter of the fact.
The fact is he did.
It might have rained just on his 20 acres.
I have no idea.
But the Bible clearly states that he reaped 100 fold.
He had a harvest.
My Lord, in a dust bowl circumstance, there's only one farmer getting wheat or barley.
And that was old Isaac.
Why?
Because the God of Abraham is his God also.
The God of Abraham has reaffirmed and reestablished his covenant with him.
I will.
I will your seed.
I'm not talking about you wheat.
I'm not talking about you barley, Isaac.
I'm talking about humanity as the promise I made to you.
Daddy, I'm carrying it over to you because I'm not going to let you fail
so that the world may know that I am Jehovah, that I am God,
that even in the midst of the famine, by faith, the harvest comes.
He said, I'll bless thee.
He had no evidence.
Write this one down, sister.
Don't miss this one.
He had no evidence, but he had confidence because he received a word from the Lord.
He didn't have no evidence.
I guarantee you when the plow went in, the ground was still puffed up dry.
Huh?
When he busted up the clods, I guarantee you it was still dry.
I guarantee you the day that he went out and began to sow his seed,
there wasn't a cloud in the sky, not a cloud anywhere.
It may have been even a week before it rained or the earth got moistened
or the heavy dew fell to cause that seed to germinate.
I don't know how God did it, but all I know is this.
He did it because he reaped a harvest of 100 fold.
I don't know how much he planted, but whatever it was, he got 100 fold in return.
It doesn't matter if it was a handful.
It doesn't matter if it was a five-gallon bucket full.
It doesn't matter if it's a transfer truckload.
He got 100 times whatever he put on the field
because he was a man who believed and trusted in God.
He didn't have the evidence, but he had all the confidence in the world
that the God of Abraham was going to be his God as well,
and he was going to fulfill his word to him.
My God, you need to hear it today.
If he said it, he'll perform it.
As long as you remain at the right place.
Over the years, you can imagine over 30 years of ministry,
I've heard about every leaving story that you could be told.
Somehow they all end up getting back on the Lord,
and if somebody tells me the Lord is sending me, I say, God bless you.
But if you start to do a little investigation, I say, well, where is he sending you?
Well, I don't really know.
But then there's an alarm that starts going off with me.
I've never known God to be puzzled about where he wants to go to church.
I've never known God to be standing around scratching his head
where he's going to show up next Sunday.
So I just got enough faith in God that if he's got direction for you,
he's going to tell you before he tells you to go
because he wouldn't want you wandering about without a shepherd.
Oh, he wouldn't want you just sitting out there.
I don't.
He's going to direct you where before he releases you to go.
I won't stop right there because that bus will really shake.
He had no evidence.
Verse six, and Isaac dwelt in the word.
That's exactly where God told him to stay.
The word garar means lodging place.
It also means combat.
He told him to stay in a difficult place.
Can I tell you, God may have you put up your tent in a difficult place sometimes
and not let you leave.
I've had a few tents pitched over the years.
When I thought it was pulling up peg time, he did.
He wouldn't let me pull the peg until it was peg pulling time.
How many of you just understood what I said?
Do I need to explain that for some of the rest of you?
In other words, God wouldn't let me leave until he said it was time to leave.
It's a sojourn.
It may not be there forever, but you're going to be there until he says go.
That's the way it was with Isaac.
It wasn't a forever place.
It's a lodging place.
It says for us that God can bless us anywhere.
God is not limited or governed by the economy.
Isaac reaped in that same year.
That's the key to it.
It wasn't next year, it wasn't the year following, it wasn't three years down the road.
He reaped in that same year.
A hundredfold.
Can I tell you, God can bring his blessings to where you are?
Whether it's a nice place or not.
One just popped into my mind of, oh, Mephibosheth been in that place called Lodobar.
Anybody ever heard about Lodobar?
It's a wasteland.
It's a wasted place.
It means nothing.
There's nothing there.
And there's Mephibosheth in Lodobar.
But when God gets on your trail, when he gets ready to bless you,
he will dispatch the blessing to where you are.
It doesn't matter if it's Gerar, it doesn't matter if it's Lodobar,
it doesn't matter if it's Cleveland, Bradley, Mags County,
it doesn't matter where you are.
When God gets ready to bless you, he's going to direct his blessing
and it will find you there.
My Lord, we're going to preach on that in just a little while.
Many times we miss the harvest, we miss the blessing, we miss what God has,
we miss the word that will come to fulfillment for us
because we quit sowing in the times of famine.
My, my, do you realize when you're dry spiritually,
if you'll come in and start sowing a little praise,
there's a promise in Scripture that will be fulfilled into your life.
He will dwell in the praises of his people.
If you'll lift him up and you begin to praise him,
he will not leave you standing there glorifying him
without him showing up to where you are.
So don't tell me you haven't felt God.
Don't tell me you haven't been in his presence
because you're telling on yourself.
It tells me you've not been in his word, you've not been in prayer,
you've not been in praise, you've not been in worship
because you cannot go there without finding him there.
There are times that you won't feel anything at church.
There are times that you may attend for weeks or months on end
and it seemed like everyone in your circumference
is just drenching with his glory and you leave out dry as a powder cake.
What are you going to do?
You're just going to go look for another place
without being sent, without being released?
I'll tell you what part of the problem in our modern day church is
we've got too many people seeking a worship experience
without a God encounter.
Let me tell you what that means.
Let me tell you my definition of that statement.
We want to go to the place that appeases our flesh.
I want to go to the place that the songs make me feel good,
that they got the lights set just right.
I want to go and they engage me in worship.
Well, I'm here to tell you right now.
Worship has nothing to do with you other than being a willing participant.
Worship is about him and him alone and it becomes idolatry
when you've got to feel good, when it's got to sound good to you,
when it's got to be the right note, the right key, the right genre,
when it's got to be just right for you.
It's no longer about him, it's about you.
We've got people running all over from door to door, place to place,
looking for an appeasement in worship without encountering the God
in whom they are to be worshipping.
Because the more I worship him, the lower I feel like I've got to get.
The more I praise him and the weight of his glory that moves in,
puts me at the right place at the right time.
It's not about us.
We think it is, don't we?
Because we'll shut down.
I'll tell you something that irritates me to no end.
When I go to places and the singers are just bouncing all over the place.
I mean, they in it to win it, you know what I'm saying?
If it gets slow, they get low.
When the bread of life is broken, they're nowhere to be found.
Can't even buy an amen from them, but they want you hooping when they're hoping
and hopping when they're hopping.
But when you break the bread, they're gone, getting a drink of water.
I'm going to be real careful right here, but I'm going to tell you the truth.
If that's all you've got, I don't want what you've got.
I don't want you leading me anywhere.
Because if the word isn't the central focus part of your life,
your worship is empty and vain.
You won't get a lot.
That's a little golf clamp, but that's about all you can get for preaching like that.
I've seen it.
I've watched it.
When I see it, it irritates the life out of me.
David was a man of the word and worship.
I think you can do both.
But his desire for God outweighed his heart playing.
And at the right place, at the right time, so many of us, we forfeit the blessings,
the eye wheels of God, because we begin to back up.
Back up in prayer.
We back up on the word.
We back up on our giving.
Back up on our confessions and needing his grace and glory.
So we begin to murmur.
The word murmur means to back up.
Many times at the point of our breakthroughs, we break down.
Because instead of praising and glorifying and magnifying God and demonstrating our faith in his promise,
we begin to murmur and doubt and become discouraged and we back up.
You'll be amazed to do a little word search on the word murmur and see how many times it's used through Scripture
and how many times the people of God murmured and backed up.
Murmured and backed up.
Instead of breaking through, they broke down.
But you know, we serve a faithful God, don't we?
And we're going to sow, Pastor, because he always brought them back around to another point of breakthrough.
So why are you telling me that for?
I'm saying because if you've murmured and backed up, you're coming toward another breakthrough.
It's time to begin to sow so that you may reap.
Oh, it's already 12.
I just now got to my five points.
I'm going to give them to you.
You write them down real quick.
You ready?
Being in the right place at the right time.
Requirements for positioning yourself for blessing.
Number one is the right place.
Be where God tells you to be.
Geographically, spiritually, in any other way.
Be where God tells you to be.
Obey his direction.
You must be where God has told you to be in order to get what he's promised to you to receive.
If you're not there, you're not going to get it.
First Kings 17, three and four.
Get the hints and turn the eastward and hide yourself by the brook Cherith.
That is before Jordan.
And it shall be that you shall drink of the brook.
And listen, I have commanded the Ravens to feed you there.
Now, if he camped over at Mouse Creek, the Raven wasn't going to find him.
If Elijah went to Candy's Creek, set up, waiting on supper, he fasted that night.
Why?
Because it was not Cherith.
He commanded the Raven to go to Cherith.
He told the prophet to go to Cherith.
Animals got more sense in listening to God than most people do.
How do you know?
Well, he told a whale, a great fish, whatever you want to call it, go swallow that backslidden prophet of mine.
He just got thrown out of the boat.
What did the whale do?
He told Jonah. Did he not?
Do you realize that whale went around for two and a half, three days with a belly ache?
You swallow this obedient prophet and see what happens.
Then he hears the greatest voice again say, go speed him out on dry land.
My pleasure.
Guess where Jonah landed?
Dry ground.
Right?
What about the, what about old Balaam?
What about old Balaam?
I'm going to do the New American Standard version for you.
He was riding his donkey.
He was riding his ass.
Indirect disobedience from God.
And the donkey, the donkey's got more sense than a backslidden prophet.
Cherish out of the way.
Keeps him from getting killed.
He can't see it because he's blinded. Right?
Goes a little further.
And here's an angel in the way with a sword and his donkey's not having that.
So he scrapes poor Balaam's foot on the wall.
He commences to beat the donkey.
And God opened the mouth of the donkey.
And the donkey preached a three-point sermon to a backslid prophet.
The donkey.
Wouldn't you love to been there?
Have I ever failed you before? I can see Balaam like.
Have I ever run your foot against the wall before?
Have I ever done that before?
Could you not see that sword out there?
I tried to save you and here you are beating on me.
Oh, I'd have loved to heard that one.
The donkey.
A rooster.
Peter the cock's up.
Three times to you. You've denied me, son.
First time he tried. I thought he made his point.
A little rougher. Third time he just flew into a cussing fit.
You better go read it.
I'm not one of them.
The old rooster crows on command.
Huh?
And at the right place at the right time.
The raven was told to go to Cherith.
Not any other place, not any other spot.
He was told to feed him at Cherith.
God has a commanded blessing looking for you.
It may have flown over your head a dozen times,
but it won't land on you until you're in position.
You won't bless. Get out of your back slidding condition.
Number two. Right time.
You have to have faith in God's word and in God's timing.
Well, when is the right time? When it shows up.
It won't be early. He won't send it early.
It will never be late.
Don't you know he's an on-time God? Oh, yes, he is.
Huh?
In the fullness of time, Mary gave birth.
When the time was proper.
In other words, when it was time on God's calendar,
on his clock in the expanse of eternity,
when the moment arrived, not before, not after,
but the fullness of time.
So what does that mean? You have to wait.
And you have to wait patiently.
What happens if I have to wait a long time?
Well, the brook will dry up.
Didn't Elijah's brook dry up?
There come a day when there was no water to drink.
But he stayed at the right place until he got a word in the right time.
Okay, now I want you to go to Zarephath,
because over there I've commanded a widow woman to feed you there.
Not Bethel.
Not Nazareth.
Not Jordan.
Zarephath. That's where you've got to go.
Ecclesiastes 3 and 1,
saying there is a season, a time to every purpose under the heaven.
You and I must believe that our harvest will come.
You have to believe that there is a time of his saving grace,
his healing power, his delivering hand, and his provision.
Galatians 6 and 9, part of our responsibility,
let us not grow weary in well-doing for induced season.
We will reap if we think not.
Stand and I'll finish these other two quickly.
Number three, you've got to have a right attitude.
That'll preach one.
Y'all glad I've run out of time.
You must allow God the freedom to use whatever means
whereby he chooses to get the blessing to you.
You have to accept the method.
He may plant you here and make you have to listen to me for a while.
Curling inhumane.
The right attitude.
Jesus healed by various methods.
Hear this.
To reject the method that he used was to reject the on-time healing in the moment.
He spits, make a mud ball, and is going to wipe it in the eyes of a blind man.
If the blind man heard him, and he comes toward him, he says,
What are you doing? Well, I've made up some mud.
Did you spit in that?
Well, yes.
Well, you're not putting that on me.
To reject the method was to reject the healing.
I don't know what he's trying to get through to you,
but if he's trying to get through to you, you've got to have the right attitude.
Can you imagine Elijah turning down the food from the raven?
The raven was a nasty bird.
It wasn't like a dove or something like that bringing him food.
It was an old raven.
I know what would be in the back of my mind.
What carcass did he pull this off of?
It's a scavenger, but in a time of famine, who can be too picky?
Folks are starving to death all around you. I'm talking about famine.
Don't reject the method. Get the right attitude.
Then there's the right action that follows the right attitude.
You've got to be obedient. You've got to do what he says do, how he says to do it.
What Mary says to those servants whatsoever he says unto you, do it.
Naaman, go dip seven times.
He said, well, that Jordan's a kind of nasty place.
There's some prettier water over across the hill.
Well, you can go on over and dip all you want, but you're going to be a leper when you come out.
If you won't heal, you dip seven times.
Not five. Are you hearing me?
It took seven.
What about the little widow woman? Borrow vessels, not a few.
Get the pots. Go aggravate your neighbors.
Get as many as you can get your hands on.
Remember, all you've got left is a little cruise of oil.
And I want you to pour out of what you've got left. Are you hearing me this morning?
I want you to pour out of what you've got left until you run out of vessels.
It's a supernatural resource that you have.
Make those ditches. Dig your ditches. They were in the battle of their life.
Go out in the field there and dig a bunch of ditches.
Well, why are we digging ditches?
See, that's where we are flesh and our humanity gets it.
Well, why do you want me to dig a ditch? If God says dig a ditch, it doesn't matter why.
God says go to Hopewell. It doesn't matter why.
You just go to Hopewell. You just get yourself there and you wait.
You'll see when you dig the ditches, he fills them up with water.
And the glorious sunrise is on it. Beautiful.
I can imagine as the warriors are looking, man, what a sunrise today.
It could be our last day. This could be the last sunrise we ever see.
And what a splendor it is.
And it begins to shimmer and sheen on the water and it looked like puddles of blood.
And the army flees at the sight. They never had a lift of hand.
It takes the right action. You got time for one or two more?
Fill the waterpots with water is what Jesus told them.
He told Joshua to step into the Jordan.
You tell those priests that are bearing the ark to get out front and get in.
Lord, that don't make no sense.
How many times do we have to learn his ways are not our ways?
His thoughts are not our thoughts. They're so much higher.
How many times do we have to hear that he'll take the foolish things and confound the wise?
One of my favorites is the little fat bumblebee.
Aerodynamics is not in his favor.
According to science, his little wings aren't big enough to carry his little body around.
But do you know why the little bumblebee goes like this?
Because the Lord created the bumblebee to fly.
And that's why the bumblebee flies.
Because he says so.
Here's a good one.
Here's what I want you to do.
Joshua, you tell them I want them to march around the city once a day for six days.
Tell them not to say a word.
Boy, if I had time to camp right there, we'd go all the way back to that little word murmur.
And back up.
God had already had them back up once over some grasshopper comment.
Forty years, he finally got them back.
Finally got them across, and I said don't say a word, because y'all will ruin this.
And on the last day, I want them to march seven times around.
And when you get the seventh time around, I want the trumpeters to blow and the people to shout.
And just watch what I do.
Right action.
So right place, right time, right attitude, right action will lead you to the right response.
And that right response is a response of praise.
You have to praise him through.
And you have to praise him as though you're experiencing the blessing now.
Because he has promised it.
And if he's promised it, it will come.
When?
At the right time.
With us being in the right place.
With the right attitude.
With the right action.
With the response.
Prior to the promise.
Praise tells God that you believe his word.
You realize praise is the purest form of faith.
Because we exalt God, we glorify God before God does anything.
Father, I love you this morning.
You may be here this morning saying, well, the ground's too dry.
It's too hot. I'm afraid.
But in the same breath, you tell me that I know I've heard from God.
You've heard God say, I'll be with you and I will bless you.
I don't know. You may be here out of position this morning.
God tells Isaac not to go to Egypt, that he was going to bless him right where he was at.
In spite of the conditions, in spite of the circumstances.
And in spite of his own desire.
I'm going to bless you there.
I need to know this morning.
Are you at the right place and ready for the right time?
I do know this by you being here today. The Lord has spoken a word.
Man, I'm telling you, he dropped it in my heart.
Some of you may be struggling in a dry season, in a time of famine.
You haven't felt God seems like for quite some time.
But he's not left you.
Because his promise is he will not forsake you.
That he'll be a friend that sticks closer.
Closer than a brother.
So pastor, I need to touch this morning.
I need to get back in position and get ready for the right time.
I need a little attitude adjustment.
I need to let my faith be my action and my action be my faith.
And my praise be prior to the promise.