Suddenlies (Digging Ditches, Part 4)

Last week we left off with the “call to dig ditches”; today we are picking up with what happens when we dig. I believe you’ll find encouragement in this message! Please read the portion below from 2 Kings 3.

⁶ And he said, “Thus says the Lord: ‘Make this valley full of ditches.’ ¹⁷ For thus says the Lord: ‘You shall not see wind, nor shall you see rain; yet that valley shall be filled with water, so that you, your cattle, and your animals may drink.’

¹⁸ And this is a simple matter in the sight of the Lord; He will also deliver the Moabites into your hand. ¹⁹ Also you shall attack every fortified city and every choice city, and shall cut down every good tree, and stop up every spring of water, and ruin every good piece of land with stones.”

²⁰ Now it happened in the morning, when the grain offering was offered, that suddenly water came by way of Edom, and the land was filled with water.

Can you say, “suddenly”? You know, there are many “suddenlies” in Scripture, but every one of them is preceded by something. These apparent “suddenlies” don’t just happen out of the blue. Think of: “Suddenly on the Day of Pentecost.” “Suddenly they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues.” There was something that preceded the suddenly.

God loves to involve man in His miracle-working process on earth. Man is an instrument. We are part of the enterprise; we are God’s entrepreneurs. We are the ones whom God has put here to manage, oversee, and take risks in order to conduct a successful work here on the earth for the Kingdom and glory of God! God has called you to this endeavor, be it business or ministry . . . guess what? They’re one and the same. Every business has ministry implications, and every ministry has business implications. If you don’t believe me, ask anybody who runs a ministry, and they’ll tell you that there are business aspects to it. Ask anybody who owns a business if there are opportunities for ministry, and you’ll get the same answer. God calls us to be part of this enterprise. There is something for us to do that precedes the suddenly of God. What was it that God told the people to do before the suddenly occurred?

In this case, we’re talking about digging ditches in the middle of the desert! That’s kind of like building an ark and nobody even knows what rain is yet. Why would anybody dig ditches in the middle of the desert? Well, the best reason I can come up with is because God said, “Do it!” That should be all the reason we need. If God said to do it, then He is up to something, and we should do it because He is about to suddenly do something. The Word of the Lord said they weren’t going to see the wind or rain, but that the ditches were going to be filled with enough water so that their armies and livestock would be satisfied. Suddenly, water came by way of Edom, and the land was filled with it.

I’m telling you, I’ve been to this part of the world, and it has some of the most dry, barren land you’ve ever seen. There are small riverbeds (wadies), but they are totally dried out. They don’t get but only a few inches of rain a year, and oftentimes it will come all at once. The water comes running through very quickly, and they tend to dry up just as fast. A lot of times the water is captured and held under the surface. There’s a high level of calcium in the soil, and it will solidify and actually capture the water under the ground. Suddenly, the water comes, and the wadi is filled, and the ditches that the armies have dug out are brimming with water.

²⁰ Now it happened in the morning, when the grain offering was offered, that suddenly water came by way of Edom, and the land was filled with water. ²¹ And when all the Moabites heard that the kings had come up to fight against them, all who were able to bear arms and older were gathered; and they stood at the border.

Here we find the Moabites standing at the border of Edom and Moab. There is a river that is at the ancient border. On that particular occasion, the river had become so full that the overflow ran into the ditches that the Lord had told them to dig.

The Moabite leaders were standing at the borders looking out, and they saw a peculiar sight. They saw that the entire area was filled with water that the sun was shining on, and it appeared to be blood. As a result, they assumed that their attackers had actually turned the sword on one another. So the Moabite leaders said, “Look, the Israelites that were on their way to attack us have turned the sword on each other. Let’s go and take the spoils of their battle.”

When they got down there, they found that the Israelite army was preparing for warfare! The Israelites began to kick tail and destroy the Moabite army (who at that point had been taken by surprise and started to run). They began fleeing back to Moab with the army of God chasing them. The Israelites were on the verge of taking their city and laying siege to it, and the Moabites and their king were under great distress! He didn’t know what to do.

The King of the Moabites took his son up on the city wall and offered him to Chemosh, the pagan god. He killed his son in plain view for all to see. This act incited the army of the Moabites who retaliated against the Israelites with a surge of indignation. The Israelites chose to call off the whole siege of the city and go back to their homeland.

There are some lessons in this story for us:

1) It’s always best to consult the Lord before we launch the attack. This is how we guarantee success, and the victory will come as long as we act according to His will.

2) We see the value of teamwork. Israel and Judah weren’t exactly getting along back in those days, and they certainly were not getting along with the Edomites. In fact, there had been recent war between Edom and Judah, but they solicited the partnership of others in order to destroy a common enemy. So there’s value in partnership, just know with whom you’re partnering.

3) Don’t wait to get into trouble before consulting the Lord. Now, we can do that, but there is an easier way. You’ve heard me say it many times. A whole lot of problems could be avoided if we consulted the Lord before we experienced the difficulty. Our natural human tendency is to wait for the problem to come, and then we get real spiritual and cry out to God.

A lot of our problems are self-imposed and self-inflicted. We never consulted God whether we should do it; we just did it! Why? Because it made sense to us. Many times we just don’t want to do it if it doesn’t make sense. I say these words to my wife a lot, “You know, it just doesn’t make sense to me; if I could just understand.” When we do get into trouble, it’s okay to consult the Lord. “Is there not a true prophet that we can go to?” Then what did the prophet say? “Bring me a musician.”

Sometimes we need to calm ourselves. We get all wrapped up in the problem and stay in turmoil. There are times we go to sleep in turmoil. We wake up thinking about the same problem and are still in turmoil. We’re being driven by circumstances and not being led by the Spirit of the Lord.

“For the Kingdom of God is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.” What’s going on inside of us can be a good standard by which we can judge our state of affairs. If you don’t have peace, I suggest you stop until you get some! STOP, just STOP! We have a hard time stopping. We think the more we go . . . STOP! Elisha said, “Bring me a musician.” He was obviously troubled in his own soul, and he wanted to be certain that he heard the Word of the Lord. So the musician came and played, and the prophet discerned a Word from the Lord that was totally contrary to human logic: dig ditches in the middle of the desert.

Maybe God has brought you to a place of digging ditches in the middle of the desert. I can think of no tougher place to do so than the south end of the Dead Sea! That ground is hard, it’s hot, it’s rocky, it’s dusty, it’s dirty. I’m sure some of those soldiers were thinking, “What in the name of Jehovah God are we doing digging ditches in the middle of this God-forsaken desert?”

So if God’s called you to dig ditches, bless God, be the best ditch digger you can be and maintain a Christ-like attitude! Digging the ditch means one thing . . . there’s a miracle coming! If you’ll just dig the ditch, your suddenly will come upon you. You probably won’t see or hear it approaching, but suddenly that water will come down and fill those ditches, and you’ll be filled with fresh life! Don’t worry about where it’s going to come from or when it’s going to get here, just dig the ditch! Don’t ask why. Dig the ditch. “Why”? “Because God said so!” “DIG”! “How deep”? “Don’t worry about it, just keep digging.” “How wide”? “Just DIG THE DITCH”! We want to ask a thousand questions. Simply take the shovel in your hand and dig the ditch, because digging it can only mean that God’s going to send the rain. He’s going to send the water! In that water you will find provision, and you’ll find new life.

Grace and peace,
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Digging Ditches, Part 3

Greetings from the harvest field! I’ve had the distinct blessing of ministering in several churches in Puerto Rico this past week. The Lord truly blessed us with His presence and several visible miracles. I am very glad to report that the fire of God is permeating the land and people of this lovely place!

“Digging Ditches” has been the subject we’ve been dealing with in the last few articles. Please see Parts 1 and 2 if you’ve missed any portion of this series. We’ll pick up with 2 Kings 3:14.

¹⁴ And Elisha said, “As the Lord of hosts lives, before whom I stand, surely were it not that I regard the presence of Jehoshaphat king of Judah, I would not look at you, nor see you.”

Note that he’s talking to the king! Did you ever wonder what you’d say if you were in the presence of a king? There was Elisha, the prophet/man of God, and he looked at the King of Israel and was like, “You know what? If it weren’t for the King of Judah (Jehoshaphat), I wouldn’t even look at you. I would totally ignore you. You would not even be here.” Look at what was said next in 2 Kings 3:15.

¹⁵ “But now bring me a musician.”

This is important. Even prophets need to calm their souls once in a while as they can get wound up pretty tight. If you read the preceding chapter, you’ll find out that Elisha had just taken part in an altercation before this happened. Then here came “We Three Kings,” and they wanted the Word of the Lord. Elisha saw the son of Ahab and Jezebel coming to inquire of him, and he seemed to be a bit stirred up. Let’s look at the last part of verse 15.

“Then it happened, when the musician played, that the hand of the Lord came upon him.”

There is a God-ordained connection between music and the calming of the soul. Now, I’m not talking about Led Zepplin and Metallica! I’m talking about calming and soaking music. People have asked me, “Why do you soak?” I do so because it has a calming effect, and it puts me in a position/posture to hear more clearly from the Lord!

Elisha knew that he dared not speak forth the Word of Lord without knowing that he had received the Word of the Lord! The first thing the prophet needed to do was to get his soul calmed down. Do you know that one of the best things we can do is to quiet our soul? We think we’re hearing from God, and oftentimes, we haven’t even consulted Him! We assume we’re being led of the Spirit! So when things go wrong, our immediate reaction is to blame God! “Well, God brought us here.” Did He? Did God call you to that endeavor? “Well, the Lord put the two of us together!” Did He? Oftentimes we do not consult the Lord or seek to discern His will until we’re neck deep in a problem, and then suddenly we’re humbled and come on bended knee to inquire of the Lord.

So the prophet understands the value of calming his soul in order to hear the Word of the Lord! We need the Word of the Lord. So often we go consult others to give us His Word. Nothing wrong with that . . . sometimes people will come to me for advice and say, “I need you to pray about this and let me know what you feel God is saying.” Quite often the counsel I give is, “You need to go quiet yourself, seek the Lord, and see what He has to say about this, and HE will give YOU the answer.” It is not for me to answer all of your questions. I don’t have all the answers. Many times, Jesus won’t give the answer! I believe I’ve made this statement before: if you study the life and ministry of Jesus, you’ll see that He responds with many more questions than He does answers! A lot of times, He’s really giving the answer in the form of a question because He wants us to look within ourselves. Let’s continue with verse 16.

¹⁶ And he said, “Thus says the Lord: ‘Make this valley full of ditches.’"

We need to understand something about the geography in the region to which we referred. It was a very dry, barren land, particularly around the south side of the Dead Sea (it still is today). It’s very dry and has many craggy rocks . . . quite rough terrain. The man of God said, “Make this valley full of ditches.” This was a very difficult task.

I’ve named this series, “Digging Ditches,” and I believe it’s very relative for us today. Oftentimes God brings us to a place of digging ditches. I don’t know how many of you have ever been involved with digging literal ditches. When I was a young man, I did all kinds of labor in the hot Florida sun to include everything from digging, to roofing, to building tennis courts. I labored! When I was a young man, I WORKED HARD! If some of you wonder why I don’t work so hard anymore, I WORKED HARD when I was young. I remember living in a place called “Weeki Wachee, Florida.” I assisted with putting in the new water and sewer lines. There was a whole lot of ditch digging, and it was DIRTY work!

When it comes to digging ditches, I don’t care if we’re talking about digging physically, digging spiritually, or digging from a business perspective, there’s a reason for digging them! It just may be the Lord Who calls you to that place. Don’t despise the day of ditch digging; it is preparation for something! You can’t expect a miracle if you won’t dig the ditch. The ditch digging precedes the miracle!

Now that I have whetted your interest, next week we’ll find out what happens when we begin to dig!

Thank you so much for keeping our family lifted up in prayer as we seek to accomplish all that the Lord is directing and guiding us to do in Dominican Republic and elsewhere.

Grace and peace,
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Digging Ditches, Part 2

Hello! We’re just coming from a weekend of great ministry here at OceanSide! My wife gave a powerful word to the ladies on Saturday, and the men had an opportunity to serve those wonderful women that God gave us! It’s such a great privilege to be where God has placed us, and we don’t take it lightly.
 
In the last blog, we were talking about the Israelites and how they were experiencing trouble in the midst of their journey, and as a result, concluded that it was “God’s doing.” Let’s pick up right where we left off . . .
 
Jehoshaphat—remember, he’s the King of Judah—said in 2 Kings 3:11: “Is there no prophet of the Lord here whom we may inquire of the Lord by him?” Things got tough, and finally someone said, “Let’s inquire of the Lord.” It’s amazing how often we wait for problems to get so big that we can’t handle them and then we turn to God to see what He thinks about them. Is anybody listening to me? Nobody consulted of the Lord before they even embarked on this whole journey!
 
Nobody asked the Lord which route they should take. Nobody asked the Lord if they should even attack the Moabites. God was not consulted until the going got tough, and then suddenly they fell on their knees, got all spiritual, and cried out to God. They probably sounded something like this: “Oh God, what would Thou havest me to do? Here I am, your humble, broken servant.” Hello? Why do we wait for the going to get tough before we go to God when He’s always there and willing to be consulted?
 
So one of the servants of the king of Israel answered and said, “Elisha the son of Shaphat is here, who poured water on the hands of Elijah.”
 
I read that and said, “Goooolly (spoken like Gomer Pyle), well, lookie there! Elisha just ‘happened’ to be there!” What do you make of that? Talk about spiritual kingdom coincidence! Elisha could have been in one of ten thousand places, yet there he was in the middle of nowhere just waiting for somebody to come and consult the Word of the Lord.
 
Prophets have an uncanny way of being in the right place at the right time. Sometimes I wonder, “What has happened to the true prophets?” You know, I remember being around prophets thirty years ago, and it made me nervous. I didn’t like being around them. Nowadays, everybody is a prophet. If it isn’t a “good word,” then it isn’t deemed a Word of the Lord.
 
We tend to be like the Israelite king and say, “Oh, I don’t like that prophet because all he ever does is speak bad things to me. I like prophets who say good things.” Today, the world is full of prophets who have nothing but goooood things to say: “Oh, God loves you and wants to bless you, and He is giving to you and pouring out, etc.” Whatever happened to, “Turn from thy sin, and the Lord will bless you.” When I used to be around some of those prophets from back in the day, I always thought they knew things about me that I didn’t want anybody to know. Come on, you act like you’ve never had anything in your life that you didn’t want anybody else to know! We all have had things that make us think, “Hmmm, I wonder if he’s going to be reading my mail; I’d better repent before I go have lunch with this guy.” Anyway, enough about prophets, and I’m not saying that they can’t prophesy good words. I’m just saying that it seems like all we hear from these days are what I call, “Pop Culture Prophets.” There are far too many of them on the scene today.
 
¹² And Jehoshaphat said, “The word of the Lord is with him.” So the king of Israel and Jehoshaphat and the king of Edom went down to him.
¹³ Then Elisha said to the king of Israel, “What have I to do with you? Go to the prophets of your father and the prophets of your mother.”
 
See, this is what I’m talking about: the prophet looked right at the King of Israel and said, “What do I have to do with you?” He then sneers at him and treats him with a level of disdain. Elisha says, “Go the prophets of your father and mother.” Anybody know who his mother was? The king’s mother was Jezebel! At this point, she was still alive and continued to be so throughout this guy’s entire reign. 
 
But the king of Israel said to him, “No, for the Lord has called these three kings together to deliver them into the hand of Moab.”
 
Do you know that sometimes we speak the same curses over our own lives? Many times we think the worst of our own situations, and oftentimes we don’t realize that we’re thinking the same about God!!!
 
Whatever happened to, “Speak the Word only and my servant shall be healed”? Huh? Whatever happened to, “Where is the Word of God . . . what would Jesus say about this situation”? If we don’t know what God says, we ought to open the Scripture and find out! It seems that our first inclination is oftentimes to speak words of cursing over our own lives, families, ministries, and businesses. It’s almost like, “Well, I guess we’re all going under.” God’s not called us “to go under”! We might not always “go over,” but bless God, He’ll always bring us “through”!
 
Look how the king blames the Lord:

“¹⁰ And the king of Israel said, “Alas! For the Lord has called these three kings together to deliver them into the hand of Moab.”
 
I don’t recall anybody asking the Lord anything before they started this whole journey! The Lord didn’t do that! That was the king saying, “You owe us money, and since we want it, we’re coming after it.”
 
I’d better stop here. Thank you so much for joining me on this journey. Let’s continue to look for God’s hand in our lives and to seek Him early!
 
Grace and peace,
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Digging Ditches

Greetings from the North Coast of the Dominican Republic! We’re starting a new series today called, “Digging Ditches,” and we’ll begin in 2 Kings 3.

This is a message that is really intended for those who have an entrepreneurial spirit. What is an entrepreneurial spirit? What do you think about when I say that word? I might ask you, “Are you an entrepreneur?” You may respond, “Oh no, I’m in ministry.” The word “entrepreneur,” by definition means, “One who takes responsibility, oversight, and risks involved with an endeavor or an enterprise.”

In other words, an entrepreneur is someone who is willing to take some oversight and risks. The similarities are striking between being in business and being in ministry. A lot of people think that they’re worlds apart, but they are not. The person who is in business basically has the same attitude and outlook as the person in full-time ministry. Even those who are missionaries are of an entrepreneurial spirit, and they’ve already proven it by taking the risk. So let’s not be confused thinking that only those in business are entrepreneurs.

Now, I believe this message will speak to all of us. Every person who has this type of mindset will be involved with what I call, “Digging Ditches.”

Our biblical account begins in 2 Kings 3:1.

  3 Now Jehoram the son of Ahab became king over Israel at Samaria in the eighteenth year of Jehoshaphat king of Judah, and reigned twelve years. ² And he did evil in the sight of the Lord, but not like his father and mother; for he put away the sacred pillar of Baal that his father had made. ³ Nevertheless he persisted in the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who had made Israel sin; he did not depart from them.
⁴ Now Mesha king of Moab was a sheepbreeder, and he regularly paid the king of Israel one hundred thousand lambs and the wool of one hundred thousand rams.

In other words, the King of Moab was a type of vassal king, and in that role, he was required to pay tribute to the King of Israel. He was not a ruling/reigning king in his own right. He was forced to pay tribute to Israel in return for not being utterly destroyed and wiped out. That pay-off, or bribe, was paid to the true ruler.

  ⁵ But it happened, when Ahab died, that the king of Moab rebelled against the king of Israel.
⁶ So King Jehoram went out of Samaria at that time and mustered all Israel. ⁷ Then he went and sent to Jehoshaphat king of Judah, saying, “The king of Moab has rebelled against me. Will you go with me to fight against Moab?”

So I want to draw the picture and make it plain. The King of Moab declared that they were not going to pay tribute to Israel anymore. Historically (and for quite a length of time), no tribute was paid. They owed Israel a lucrative amount of tribute from the wool of these rams. In fact, this particular king of the Moabites raised the best sheep and rams. They were renowned for the quality of their wool, and the people were heralded for their sheep-breeding skills. They also had the best pastures for raising them.

The Moabites said, “We’re not going to pay tribute to Israel anymore.” So the King of Israel said, “Okay, if you’re not going to pay us our money, then we’re going to come after you.” Please note that the Kingdom of Israel at this point of history was divided in two. The two kingdoms were Israel and Judah. The King of Israel went to the King of Judah (Jehoshaphat), and he asked him, “Will you go with me to fight against Moab?” And he said . . .

 “I will go up; I am as you are, my people as your people, my horses as your horses.”  ⁸ Then he said, “Which way shall we go up?”

Basically, the King of Israel was telling Jehoshaphat that there were two directions from which they could approach Moab. They could go around the Dead Sea to the north, which would have been a bit of an easier journey, or they could go the southern route that was more difficult, but it would have made the attack of Moab easier. The great fortress stood at the northern border of Moab, and that’s where the armies of Moab were logically situated. The Moabites never expected an attack from the south because of the terrain, as it was much rougher. Nobody in his or her right mind would attack from the south.

Jehoshaphat, drawing on his own logic, said, “We will take the southern route, and we’re going by the way of the wilderness of Edom. They were going to go through Moab to Edom (Edom and Moab were separated by a stream). So the King of Israel went with the King of Judah to approach the King of Edom. They had recruited the Edomites to fight with them.

There is one thing that will bring two enemies together: a common enemy. Many covenants have been established upon the commonality of an adversary. We may have two people groups who hate each other, but they will join in an alliance in order to go after a common enemy. So, they recruited the King of Edom and marched on that roundabout route for seven days. We see that it was very circuitous. There was no water for the army or the animals that followed them.

  ¹⁰ And the king of Israel said, “Alas! For the Lord has called these three kings together to deliver them into the hand of Moab.”

So the immediate response to the King of Israel was, “God has brought us together so we could all die together.” Isn’t that amazing how some people’s inclination is towards the negative? “We’re all gonna die.” Not only was he making the claim that they were all going to die, but he also blamed God. “God did this to us. He brought us together so we could die of thirst together.”

It’s amazing how often God’s people blame Him for adversity in their lives. They’re saying, “God did this,” when in reality, God was not even consulted. Up to this point, nobody had even asked God what He thought about the whole plan.

Now we have built our premise for the continuation of this series, “Digging Ditches.” Vickie and I pray for those of you who receive these emails! May God bless you mightily in all of your endeavors.

Grace and peace,
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