II KINGS

Today is Sunday!  I love Sundays.  I get to preach God's Word and be with God's people.  It is a blessing to me!  Today, I am in II Kings and here are some thoughts I have from the ten chapters I'm in today:

1) FAITH WITH BLISTERS- In II Kings 3:16, it says:  "And he said, Thus saith the LORD, Make this valley full of ditches."  Three kings have gone through the desert to fight Moab.  When they get three days into the desert, they are out of water.  They cannot go back without water, and they will not meet the enemy well if they are out of water and faint from thirst.  Jehoshaphat asks Elisha what to do and the verse typed out is the answer.  God is going to provide the water, but you have to make the valley full of ditches.  It wasn't going to rain, and their would be no wind or clouds, but God would fill the ditches with water.  They just had to dig the ditches in faith.  They had to have faith with blisters!!  Digging is no easy task.  Blisters are part of it.  We want faith to come easy and sit back and watch God at work, but most of the time, God wants to bless our work.  God gave a great victory to these kings, because one godly king thought to ask the man of God for the answer.  They applied themselves and God blessed their obedience in digging the valley full of ditches.  Let us be about digging our ditches too!!

2) A POT OF OIL- In II Kings 4, we see the miracle of the pot of oil.  The widow woman has nothing.  Her deceased husband was of the prophets, and now the creditors want to take her sons as payment towards the debt.  Enter Elisha!  He asks:  vs. 2 "And Elisha said unto her, What shall I do for thee?  tell me, what hast thou in the house?  And she said, Thine handmaid hath not any thing in the house, save a pot of oil."   She had sold all she had and had only one pot of oil left in the house.  The solution:  vs. 4: "Then he said, Go, borrow thee vessels abroad of all thy neighbours, even empty vessels; borrow not a few."  We are just like that pot of oil.  We are not much, but just one pot of oil.  Notice this:  a. This is what we are.  (a pot of oil) or (a vessel in which the Holy Spirit lives.)  b. We should pour ourselves into other vessels.  (spend your life pouring yourself into others)  c. After having emptied your vessel throughout your life, it is now someone elses turn. (when we die, someone else can keep pouring into others lives.)  and d. Pour all you can, while you can!  (Let our lives fill the lives of others around us.)

3) DON'T HOLD YOUR PEACE- II Kings 7:9 tells of three lepers who live outside of the city of Samaria.  The city within is starving to death.  The enemy has surrounded the city in a siege for many, many months.  These lepers come to a decision... stay where they are and starve... or go towards the enemy and they get fed, or die.  They will die if they stay put, but they could die if they go forward, but the decision is to go forward!  (Always the wisest decision!!)  They go forward and God according to His recent word to the prophet has run off the enemy and everything is left of their goods.  The lepers go from tent to tent eating and hiding goods to later recover, BUT, they they come to this decision in verse 9:  "They they said one to another, We do not well:  this day is a day of good tidings, and we hold our peace;..."  Today, dear friend, is also a day of good tidings.... Jesus Saves!!  We too do not well, if we hold our peace.  They will die without Christ and go to Hell forever IF we hold our peace.  They may not get saved if we say something, but we must say something about the good news of Jesus Christ and His free Salvation.  Let us be in the small crowd who is doing well!!

Well, this is all for today.  Hope your Sunday is wonderful!  Blessings on you my friend!  Pastor Mike Mutchler