August 13, 2023
While I drove to work yesterday, I made the mistake of listening to the news and the news I heard wasn’t encouraging. I found out we all need to be careful lest we: burn up in global warming, freeze from the reverse effect of global warming, are invaded by the Chinese (remember how it used to be Russia?), catch a dreaded disease, lose all our money, or fall victim to some other calamity. In other words, we’re all gonna go broke, die, or worse. While listening to all this, I first wondered whether or not the newsperson delivering all this balderdash (I always wanted to use the word balderdash in a sentence) was named Henny Penny. Then, I thought of an incident somewhere in the Old Testament, but I couldn’t remember where it was, so the first thing I did when I got to work (after making coffee of course) was to look it up. It is found in II Kings 6. For context’s sake, let me set the stage for our story. Israel and Syria have been fighting a war and things haven’t been going so well for Syria. In fact, things have been going so poorly for them that the King of Syria suspects he has a double agent on his staff. Someone informs him that Israel has a secret weapon and his name is Elisha. Turns out Elisha, a prophet of God who, through information given to him by God, was telling the King of Israel all of Syria’s troop movements and battle plans. The King of Syria then sent about a gazillion soldiers to dispose of Elisha. When Elisha’s servant went outside early the next morning, he saw all those soldiers and thought, “We’re all gonna die,” (sounding eerily similar to yesterday’s newscast). When the servant told Elisha about their impending doom, Elisha told him to relax because they had more soldiers on their side than Syria could possibly bring against them. Enen though the Bible doesn’t say it, I’m pretty sure it was right about here that Elisha’s servant gave Elisha one of those looks. You know the “what are you talkin’ about Willis” looks. For those too young to understand that reference, ask your parents (or grandparents) about the TV show, Different Strokes. Then in verse seventeen, Elisha says a prayer that is the point of all this rambling. Elisha prayed that God would open the eyes of His servant so that he might see. When God answered Elisha’s prayer and opened the eyes of his servant, the servant was able to see they were surrounded by God’s army, chariots of fire and all. There are at least two lessons here. First, God has this. Whatever is going on, God’ army is bigger than the armies of our enemies and second, we too need to pray that God would open the eyes of the world around us because they have been blinded by Satan. We need to pray that God would let a lost world see Him so that they could turn to Him and be saved. So, turn off the news, be blessed and then go be a blessing . . . Bro. Andy
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