SPEAKER_01 0:10

Last week here we started this uh this idea or this question of how far are you willing to go, and we were looking at the story of Elijah and Elisha just before Elijah is taken away. And uh we started that whole discussion. Uh there uh these two Old Testament prophets they go on this weird journey just before Elijah is taken up in a whirlwind and chariots of fire and Yeehaw. It's a big spectacular thing, and we're gonna get into that today a lot. But uh when we were looking at all of that, we asked the question of why is this in the Bible, right? What why is why is this this tour of Israel in the Bible? And and we had some discussion around that about how I believe that it's there for a reason. It's there for us to learn something from it. And if you start looking at these places, all of them are pivotal areas in the formation of the nation of Israel. So therefore, I think we can kind of apply that to our lives as pivotal points in our lives. So that's what we started looking at. Um let's jump back into that. I'm gonna read part of what we read last week, and then we're gonna cover the two areas for people who missed, and uh we'll uh we'll go from there, okay? So let's read it. It's in 2 Kings uh chapter 2, if you want to turn there in your Bible. And I thought I find this funny before we get into this, we're gonna get to this later on today, and the reason I want to say this up front is Elijah goes to Elisha to uh select him to be a prophet in 1 Kings chapter 18, I think it is. So for five chapters, four in Kings, one in First Kings, we've not heard anything from Elisha. It just says he's his assistant, okay? Later on we find out that he's the guy that this king says, oh, he's the guy who poured water over Elijah's hands. I don't even know what that means. That sounds weird, but he was his assistant, and uh so we've not heard anything from Elisha until we get into 2 Kings in the second chapter there. So let's pick that up. And it says, when the Lord was about to take Elijah up to heaven in a whirlwind, Elisha and Elijah and Elisha were traveling from Gilgal, and the Lord said, and Elijah said to Elisha, Stay here, for the Lord has told me to go to Bethel. And but Elisha replies, As surely as the Lord lives, and you yourself live, I will never leave you. So they went down together to Bethel. Then, verse 4, it says, Then Elijah said to Elisha, Stay here in Bethel, because the Lord has told me to go to Jericho. And Elisha replies, Again, the same thing, as surely as the Lord lives and you yourself live, I will never leave you. So they went on together to Jericho. Verse 6, they're in Jericho. And Elijah says to Elisha, Stay here, for the Lord has told me to go to the Jordan River. But Elisha replied, As surely as the Lord lives and your shelf live, I will never leave you. So they went on together. So this is that weird journey we were talking about, and we and we and we talked about the fact last week that it doesn't even make sense, right? I had a map we looked at. Gilgal is on the banks of the Jordan River. We're ultimately getting back to the Jordan River. Why did they turn and go the opposite way from the river to go to Bethel, which you've got to go through Jericho to get to Bethel if the roads are the way we think they are back then? Why don't we go all the way to Bethel to come back to Jericho to come back to the Jordan River? There has to be something to this. And like I said, it's not a random trip. It's uh it's it was a symbolic trip, I think, of our lives, because I believe that things like this are in the Bible for us to learn from. Uh it's not just an insignificant tour of Israel. Uh, it's not random. I think what we need to get out of this is we are seeing Elisha reach his purpose through this this trip. I think that Elijah is taking him on this trip to be symbolic of ways we find our purpose in God and why we we are here, why we were created at this time for a certain purpose. Uh so we've we talked a little bit about Gilgal last week, and Gilgal represented separation. Gilgal is significant because it's the first place, right after the children of Israel cross the Jordan River out of the wilderness, they make a memorial at Gilgal. Two major things happen there. They make this memorial out of a bunch of rocks out of the river. Twelve guys go out in the river, they pick up rocks, they come and they build this memorial, and Joshua says, We're building this so that your children's children will ask, What does this mean? And you'll tell them, This is where God delivered us from the wilderness, and we came into our promised land. That's important, I think, because we should talk about those things in our lives. All of us have times in our lives that we're not proud of, but we should commemorate those things. We should tell our children, this is how God delivered me from that. Or this is how God healed my body. I had this diagnosis and God healed me. That shouldn't be a secret to our children and our children's children. They should know those things. We should celebrate those things. But I think a lot of times we stuff them down somewhere and we don't ever talk about them. So that was the first thing that happened at Gilgal. And the second thing that happened at Gilgal was the circumcision. You had a whole group of men that were born during the 40 years in the wilderness and they were never circumcised. They were not in the covenant, the Abraham covenant that God made with Abraham. Therefore, they couldn't go into the promised land. They weren't in covenant. So it had to happen there. So Joshua tells all the men, hey, we've got to enter into this covenant. And they and that God tells Joshua after this, after he's completed this ceremonial circumcision with these guys, he goes, I have rolled away the shame of Egypt from you now. And that's what Gilgal means, rolled away. So to me, Gilgal symbolizes our past, the separation of our past and our new life in Christ. We're going to meet our purpose in life. We will never be as effective at our purpose if we do not have a relationship, if we do not enter into that covenant with God through the salvation that's available through Jesus Christ. And I think Sarah kind of talked about this a couple of weeks ago. You may have talent, but your talent will only get you so far. Until you have that relationship, and as we found later, as you have the presence of God in your life, you will never develop into the person to fulfill the purpose that God put in your life until you have that relationship with Christ to begin with. I mean, that's why we see so many people out there in the world who have talent, yeah. But what more could they be? That's the scary part that I always have to ask myself. What more could they be if they were in a relationship with Christ? If they had separated, if they were in a covenant now with God. So that's that's Gilgal. Uh it's a picture of our salvation. You can look at it that way. Um the second place we talked about was Bethel, because that's the second place on their journey. And Bethel, I said, represents the presence of God. Um they're leaving Gilgal, they head to Bethel. First time Bethel is mentioned in the Bible is with um with Jacob. It means house of God. So therefore, the present God's presence, how I got that. It's in Genesis 28, if you want to make a note. Jacob encounters God for the first time there. He had heard about God through his father, you know, he heard about all these stories, but he encounters God at Bethel. If you remember the story, he he's on his way to pick out his wife, and he stops in this place, and he camps out there that night, and he has a dream of the ladder, Jacob's ladder, and there's angels going up and down and up and down the ladder. And God tells him, there's I'm not just, he basically tells him, I'm not just the God in heaven, I'm connected to earth with you. Jesus throws back to that in the New Testament, and he says that basically, I am the ladder. I am the ladder, I am your connection with God. And without that connection to God, I believe we'll never meet our purpose because I'm Pentecostal, and I believe that without that connection through Jesus to God, we will never experience the Holy Spirit the way we're supposed to in our lives. And you will never reach your full potential if you do not allow the Holy Spirit to work in your life. I could not be up here right now talking to this group of people who know a lot more than I do about things without the Holy Spirit in my life. I'd sit over there and be quiet if I had it my way. So you will never reach that potential without first the connection between you and Jesus, you and God, which is available through Jesus, and without the Holy Spirit working in your life, because you now have that relationship and you can enter into that baptism or feeling or however you want to make that work in your mind of where the Holy Spirit's working in your life, and you know it. Because we all know when the Holy Spirit stops working in our life for whatever reason, you know, uh, it's different, right? And when the first time you experience that, you know it's different. Something different happened today, you know. Um there was something else going on in my life, but Jesus is that connection to God that allows all of that to take place, this presence of God. So there's our review. I've spent way too much time on a review because I dig this subject. Uh today we're talking about Jericho first. Um Jericho represents our walk in faith. In our journey to reach our purpose, our potential in God, it's our walk in faith. Um it's first mentioned, of course, in uh Joshua 6. They uh uh have crossed the Jordan River, and the first city that's in their way is Jericho, and Jericho is not a very big city. I didn't know this this week. Uh it's not a very big city, but it had a wall, of course, right? We know that the walls of Jericho, but I've always thought it was just a big, old, huge city, but it wasn't, it was very small. Uh so in the most common way, if you're a mythology middle-age warrior expert, and you watch a lot of the Lord of the Rings and stuff, you you know that the best way to defeat a walled city is a siege, right? You basically camp out in front of it and you don't let anything in or out. They don't get any fresh water in unless they have a fresh water source inside. They don't get any food inside, they can't take any waste out. If you block the doors and nobody leaves or enters that city. Now, if a city's really well prepared for that, and they got a lot of groceries and they got a spring inside and they have a way to get rid of waste without having to leave the city, that can last a long time. Years. There's actually stories in the Bible of them sieging a city for years. They camp out there in front of it, and nothing, you know, they're fine and they're they're good. But if they didn't have prepare, they didn't have prepared stuff inside for them to take, be able to sustain that siege, they would they would they would starve to death, basically, is what would happen. So that's how normal walled cities are are defeated, but God does not do things normal, does he? Uh uh He's uh not in the uh the business of doing things the common ways. Now, now I want you to think about this for a second. Joshua has been the leader since Moses died, which was a couple chapters ago, and he he gets this plan from God and of how we're going to defeat this city of Jericho, and he calls together all the military leaders that have come forward during the wilderness time. He says, I got a plan. This is our plan. Tomorrow we're gonna get up and we're gonna walk around Jericho real quiet. Nobody's gonna say anything. Quiet. And we're gonna do that for six days. Every day we're gonna get up and we're gonna go walk around and be real quiet. And then on the seventh day, we're gonna walk around it seven times. On the seventh time, we're gonna scream and we're gonna defeat the city. Now, if I'm a military leader in the tribe of Judah, let's say, I'm looking at this guy who made me get circumcised two chapters ago, and I'm going, what's your problem, man? Who put you in charge? We had to do that a couple weeks ago, and now you're talking about walking around a city quietly, going on a parade. Are we having a parade? Is that what we're doing, Joshua? I can't imagine coming home and telling my wife every day, well, what did y'all kill everybody today? No, well, we just walked around real quiet. We just real quiet, just walking around. Yeah. So not only would that be hard for a military leader to follow, imagine the faith it took of Joshua to go to them and say, This is our plan. This is what God told me. Yeah. And and this is what we're gonna do. We're gonna go be real quiet and walk around for six days. That's almost a week, y'all, of just walking around one time. That's a long time to not see anything go on. And if I'm Joshua, I'm going, was this God or was this just a stupid idea I had because I'm really afraid of this city? Uh I think we start understanding why Joshua had that much faith when we read the chapter previous to the one about attacking the city of Jericho. And that's in uh Joshua 6 16. It says, Oh, I'm sorry, I mean I missed this verse right here. Whenever they're marching around Jericho, when the seventh time it says, as the priests around sounded the long blast on their horns, and Joshua commanded the people, shout, for the Lord has given you this town. Now, when I read that, I automatically thought back to a couple of weeks ago when I was talking about faith on the spectrum, and the highest level of faith was uh God has already done it. Remember? And we said that's kind of like calling things that aren't as if they are. And that's exactly what Joshua's doing right there. That wall hadn't fallen down yet. And this is their seventh day of being there, and he says, shout, because the Lord is giving you the town. That takes faith. To know that if we holler loud enough, a water, a wall can come down. If we blow our trumpet loud enough, a wall's gonna come down. That takes a lot of faith. And like I said, it doesn't even make sense, but we think we see it here in chapter 5 of Joshua. It says, when he was entering, was near the town of Jericho, he's not shared his plan with anybody yet, okay? When Joshua is near the town of Jericho, he was looked up and he saw a man standing in front of him with a sword in his hand, and Joshua went up to him and demanded, Are you a friend or are you a foe? Are you with us or are you with them? And the man says, Neither one. I'm the commander of the Lord's army. And at this Joshua fell on his face on the ground and in reverence, I'm at your command, Joshua said. What do you want your servant to do? And the commander of the Lord's army replied, Take off your sandals, for this place where you're standing is holy. And Joshua did as he was told. Joshua experienced the presence of God right here. And this is why I wanted to do this review today, talk about Bethel a little bit that we talked about last week. This is Joshua's Bethel moment. Okay? Joshua had never experienced God the way Moses had. You know, Moses, golly, he saw God. Okay? Joshua had never had that before. He just knew, hey, I'm the second guy in control, and when Moses dies, this is my my deal. He experiences God here. And it says, this commander of the Lord's army, this is what Bible scholars will tell you is a Christophami. Christophami, okay? That sounds really smart, doesn't it? It is an appearance of Jesus before the New Testament. Because y'all remember, in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God. I think so many times we forget that Jesus existed before he was the little baby in the manger. He was the commander of God's army at that time. And Joshua sees him on the outskirts of Jericho. And that so that he is in the presence of Jesus. So therefore, he is in the presence of God here. And I think it's this moment that gives Joshua this holy moment, where he has to take off his shoes for crying out loud. It's this holy moment that gives Joshua the ability to walk in faith. That's why it's so important for us to have that presence of God in our life before we try this hard walk of faith. Because you all know this. When we all first got saved, the first thing, the first time you had to have faith. I mean, you got to have faith to be saved, right? It's hard. It's difficult. But as you grow spiritually and as hopefully you get the baptism of the Holy Spirit in your life, as this moves on, your faith becomes so much more stronger because the presence of God is in your life and he gives you that ability to have faith because you've seen things happen. You've witnessed it, you understand the power that God has given you. It's the same power he gave Jesus to perform miracles. He's the same power he gave Paul and the disciples to be able to perform miracles. He's put it in you. And you understand that, and you can feel that power. So when a crazy situation comes up, when a Jericho comes along, you can look at it and go, Well, I know this sounds like a crazy plan, y'all, but this is what we're going to do. We have access to the presence of God in our lives now in such a way that, you know, I look back at Old Testament people, they didn't have the Holy Spirit in them. It says the Spirit came up on them at times, and then he'd leave. You know, how many times did the Spirit come upon Samson, as crazy as acting as Samson was, and then but he would leave. We're different than that. We have the presence of God, the Spirit of God is in us and with us 24-7. We don't have to wait for God to decide that the Spirit of the Lord needs to come upon us. We got him all the time. He's with us right now. We can call on him whenever we need to. But that is what gives us the ability to walk in faith and face the Jerichos. It's this present in our life that gives us that ability. Yes, ma'am.

SPEAKER_03 22:09

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:15

It's obedience, right? Exact I believe you're exactly right. I I believe that we let our enlightenment get in the way. We know we're too refined for something like that. We're too dignified. We're too intelligent to do something stupid like that. That doesn't make any sense. We have, we're too busy to take time to walk around a building seven times. That'd take a long time. I ain't got that much time, God. I don't know that I can do that. We're worried about what people are going to think. We're worried about, we're and I don't I think sometimes that goes even further than we're worried about what people think about us individually. I think sometimes I worry about what people think about the church here on this hill because I go there, right? And I and I look at someone and I say, you know, the Holy Spirit puts it in my mind to do something really weird. And I'm like, well, what are people going to think about this church? Maybe they're going to be turned off. Case in point. A couple weeks ago, a lot of the leadership team from Celebrate Recovery, we felt like a need to walk around the church and anoint every door on the church with oil and pray. It's just something we felt like we needed to do. Kathy was leading that. We went up here on a Monday night. We walked all the way around the church. And I remember coming around this way. Because for some reason they gave me the oil. I don't know why. I was the that's what I was the tallest one. I could reach the top of the door. That's exactly why Tammy. And it had nothing to do spiritually. Thank you. Thank God I was tall. Um I got you participate. So anyway, we're coming around this corner and I've got my oily hands. I've got only hands, and I know that when we get, we've prayed for the kitchen door front over here, and that that was okay. But I know that when we get to the front door of the church, everybody going down 70 highway is going to see us. And they're going to go, what those freaks doing up there? What are they doing? Oh, crowding around that door, laying hands on the door. What are they doing? That's weird. That's why I don't go to church there. That's why I don't go to church, period, because they're all a bunch of weirdos. And I fought with that all the way around this corner. And I finally got to the point, I was like, you know what? Really don't care. Really don't care at all. And what was so funny, it's almost like, you know, God does this kind of stuff to you. If he knows something's going to bother you, he like pokes you a little bit with it. We get up there, and not only am I up there having to put it on the top of a door, they get Tammy to come up there and stand beside me and Karen Taylor because she uh because they used to work here and they're the only people that have ever worked here that were there. So we we get them up there, and we're standing on the stoop, and everybody else is down on the ground holding up hands to where it looks really weird, okay? Are they worshiping somebody? What are we doing over here? It was strange. And and I was like, Yeah, God, I I hear you, yeah. I was uncomfortable, just was just standing around, and now you got this spectacle going on here. Um, I'm okay, I'm good, let's go. So, what I'm getting at is it's it's that presence of God, though, that works in our lives that gets us through those walks of faith where things that don't even make sense. Don't even make sense, but we've seen it work and we know that God's work at that moment, and we just go through with it, and we're like, I just I just want the presence of God in my life. That's all I really want. Uh because nothing else really matters anyway. So, um that is uh yes, ma'am. Yeah, that's uh not as often, no. Yeah. Yeah, we we don't need to let uh other people's opinion of what we believe get in the way of what we believe and acting out what we believe. And I think that we've gotten to a point, especially in this society, that where we do that a lot, but we have to have the presence of God in our life, and we have to be able to do the walk in faith, and the only way we do that is with those two things together. Yes, Dana.

unknown 27:28

I think we just hope we don't follow that really. I probably have you know, the father handled me why.

SPEAKER_01 27:39

Really? We're all shocked.

unknown 27:44

Wow. And if it wasn't just blowing my mouth, then they had to feel the presence of God.

SPEAKER_01 27:50

I I I wonder the same thing, Dana. How did they contain themselves as they're walking around? Because I believe the presence of God was with them. And it it I mean to make the whole thing pull off for six days. How did they contain themselves? How did they keep from just blowing up? Uh that's a good point. That's a good point. So um back to our Elijah and Elisha discussion. Uh the next place they reach is the Jordan. They come back to the Jordan. And this is, I've labeled this the gate to our purpose because there's a lot in here. And um I'm going to read 2 Kings chapter 2, starting in verse 7 to you. It says, Fifty men from the group of prophets also went and watched from a distance as Elijah and Elisha stopped on the Jordan River. So they've they've been to they've been to Bethel, they've been to Jericho, and they're leaving, and they're coming back. And these fifty prophets are hanging out with them. Okay, and they stop beside the Jordan River, and it says, Elijah folded up his cloak together and struck the water with it. And the water divided, and the two of them went across on dry ground. And when they came to the other side, Elijah said to Elisha, Tell me what you what I can do for you before I'm taken away. And Elisha replied, Please let me inherit a double share of your spirit and become your successor. Elijah says, You've asked for a difficult thing. If you see me when I'm taken from you, then you'll get what you request, but if not, you won't. And as they're walking along and talking, suddenly a chariot of fire appeared, drawn by horses of fire, and it drove between the two men, separating them, and Elijah was carried away by a whirlwind into heaven. And Elisha saw it and he cried out, My father, my father, I've seen I see the chariots and charioters of Israel. And as they disappeared from sight, Elisha tore his clothes in distress. Then Elisha picked up Elijah's cloak, which had fallen when he had been taken up, and Elisha had returned to the banks of the Jordan River.

SPEAKER_00 30:08

I'm sorry, I lost my place.

SPEAKER_01 30:26

So Elijah asked, Elisha, what can I do for you? And he says, I want a double portion, a double share of your spirit. And I think that's the first point, because I want us to look at some entering into our purpose. The crossing back over the Jordan is significant in this whole story. In this whole story. And if you'll notice, they had to go to all these places before Elijah even asked Elisha, hey, what do you really want from me? So that's our first point here in this entering into our purpose. There's three of these, if you're keeping notes. And it's you've got to go the distance before you can enter into your purpose. And it would have been very easy. We talked about this every single stop along this journey. Elijah gives Elisha an out to say, hey, if you want to stay right here, you can, it's fine. Actually, he tells him to stay right here. And we know that there's 50 other guys on the other side of the Jordan, too, that Elisha could have hung out with and not gone over and seen all of this. But if he did not go the distance, if he skipped one of those spots, he wouldn't be where he's at right now. And he wouldn't have been able to receive his purpose. And the verse I think about with this is in Galatians 6. It says, Those who live only to satisfy their own sinful nature will harvest, will harvest decay and death from that sinful nature. But those who live to please the Spirit will harvest everlasting life from the Spirit. So let us not get tired of doing what's good. You ever get tired of doing what's good? Because it says, at right time we'll reap a harvest of blessings if we don't give up. It can be so hard to know something, a promise God has given you. Because let's think about this for a second. We're going to go back to this in a minute. Elisha knows Elijah has picked him at the whole calling. We're going to get there in a minute. But for five chapters we talked about, he's done nothing but just kind of hang out. And it's so hard to pursue your purpose. You know God's given you a promise of something. He has something in your life. Maybe he's giving you a picture of it or a piece of it or whatever. And he makes you do these crazy things along the way. And you're like, this really doesn't, this doesn't seem like what's going to fulfill my purpose, God. This seems like just some busy work you've given me, like walking all over Israel just to go on this tour that these guys did. But Paul tells us, don't get tired during that process. Because it's real easy to get tired. It's real easy to get tired whenever you're going. This can't be the end product of what God wants me to do in my life. And Paul tells the church at Galatia, hang in there because you're going to reap a harvest of blessing at the end of that. You know, uh, when we left here, the church, and went to the city of lights to be pastors, that didn't make a lick of sense. None. Did not make a lick of sense. And a lot of people ask me why, why, why, and I'm like, look, this is what God's telling us to do, okay? I don't know what else to tell you. It's what God tells us to do. And some people looked at me like, oh, yeah, yeah, I believe that. But then other people would look at me and go, I don't know what you're talking about, man. And it's hard, it's difficult to walk that out and go that distance. And even when we were pastoring there, Tammy can tell you there's a lot of Sunday afternoons. I would tell her, ask her, what are we doing exactly? What are we doing? Uh it didn't make a lot of sense, but then I would get in the presence of God. There were so many Sunday mornings, I would go to the city of Lots, I would walk in, I'd hook up all of our stuff, have to set our sound system up, and the whole shebang, and I would get everything ready to go, and I would go up and I'd start, I'd sit on the altar and I'd pray. And before that moment, I'd be like, this doesn't make any sense. What are we doing? And I'd start praying. And then about halfway through worship, I would see people who had no hope have hope. And then God would speak to us in that moment. And I would know then, okay, yeah, I've got to go this distance. I've got to keep on doing these things that seem very insignificant and not really that important, and anybody can do that. Um but it was those things that led to the greater purpose. And I don't know where I'm headed yet. I mean, uh God has a purpose for all of us, and I don't think he shows us all of it to keep us going. But but it's those little steps along the way where you you you you're like, I'm just getting tired of doing good. I want what God wants in my life now. Yes, Jamie. I I agree with you 150%, even though that's not really a thing. Um the Holy Spirit will give you power to do things that seem insignificant, like prepare two services a week and work a full-time job. Okay? I don't know where I found time to do that during that time. I don't know where it came from, but somehow I was always ready. And and I look back on that and I'm like, well, that seems very insignificant. But it wasn't Jonathan, because I am a procrastinator, okay? I will put it off to five minutes before I walk in here. And and but with the Holy Spirit in my life, he would have me prepared when I walk in there. So yeah, I agree with you. We we think it's all jumping pews and speaking in tongues and craziness, but a lot of times it's just being quiet and doing what you're supposed to be doing, and that's the Holy Spirit power working in you. Yes, ma'am. Yeah.

unknown 37:25

And sometimes our only option is to be quiet.

SPEAKER_01 37:31

Yeah. Exactly. At the end of six days, yes. Let's move my guy. Yes, right, yeah. We want the drive in. We want to drive in. I got two more we gotta get going. Go ahead. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_03 38:04

But we think about it as going around as the wall.

unknown 38:10

You know, I think about it. I don't know. I know you're a hiker, and I've hiked the walls of Jericho here in Alabama.

SPEAKER_01 38:17

It's not easy. Yeah, they didn't have a sidewalk around Jericho. No, they didn't. It was probably on the side of a hill, too. Uh of course it was, yeah. I'm sure it was hard. Um the third thing I want to talk about about entering into your purpose is don't be afraid to ask for difficult things. Uh, we see that in our story of Elijah and Elisha when he says, Tell me what I can uh do for you before I'm taken away. He says, Let me inherit a double share of your spirit and become your successor. And then Elijah, of course, tells him, well, that's a hard thing you just ask for. Now, a lot of people will tell you that this double portion thing, uh, they get all nerded out in the fact because they go in there and count all the miracles Elijah did and then count all the miracles Elisha did, and guess what? He did twice as many as Elijah, which is pretty cool, okay? And they get all wigged out about that. Oh, it's a double portion. See right there? Yeah, cool. Okay, but you've got to understand in context what Elijah, Elisha is asking Elijah for. Because if you look at double blessing in the Bible, this is what a firstborn son gets when the father passes away. They get a double, remember the whole uh prodigal son thing, right? He got a double portion, I'm gonna get a son. Give me my portion, the younger guy said. Give me my portion, which would have been a third, right? Because there's two sons. Uh in the deuteronomy, the law declares that this happens. The firstborn son gets twice as much inheritance as all the other sons get. So Elisha knew this and he asked for it. Was he really his son? No, he wasn't his son at all. He wanted to be viewed as Elijah's son, though. He wanted to, and in that he wanted a double portion of his anointing. I think too many times we're afraid to ask our heavenly Father for a double portion. Just whatever you'll give me is enough. I don't want to be too much of a burden, God. Just give me a little bit over here. Uh and we're like, He's gonna get upset with us for saying, hey, I want twice as much as you give everybody else. That's what I want. I want twice as much as what you give my neighbors. I don't think we need to be afraid of that. He wants us to act as if we're his firstborn son and get that double portion. He wants to give us to that. He wants to give us that double portion. And that double portion is going to lead you into that purpose that he designed you for a long, long time ago. And he and he's and it that's his desire for you to get to. Number three. Entering into your purpose. When your anointing presents itself, don't be afraid to pick it up. The cloak of Elijah represented his anointing or his mantle. That's what King James calls it, the mantle. Um this was common among prophets. It wasn't like this is Elijah thing, and he's the only one that had one of these. It was not, and it's not, and I think a lot of times we just think of it like a prayer shawl. I know in the flannel board days, it was like this blue piece of fabric that he wore around his. I don't know why we picked that color, but we did. When you research it, it's more like the coat that Leonardo DiCaprio wears in the remnant when he kills the bear. Have y'all seen that? Okay, it's not a very pleasant movie, but he kills a bear and he wears the bear as a coat, okay? That's kind of what the cloak was. It was hairy. Because in one place in 1 Kings it refers to Elijah as wearing a furry coat. So it was a like a bear jacket, okay? So what's interesting about this cloak is when Elijah first calls Elisha, he puts the cloak on him. And you see that back in 1 Kings. It says, So Elijah went and found Elisha, son of Shaphat, plowing a field. And there were 12 teams of oxen in the field, and Elisha was plowing the field with the 12th team, and Elijah went over to him and threw his cloak across his shoulders and walked away. How odd is that? Take off your jacket and just throw it on somebody and keep on walking. That's so Pentecostal, isn't it? I mean, how many times have we seen that happen in church? This is why it's scriptural. That's why we do it. And it says, Elijah left the oxen standing there and ran after Elijah. And he said to him, First, let me go and kiss my mom and dad goodbye, and then I'll go with you. He says, Go, go on back, but think about what you have done. And so he just throws his coat on him, and the coat represents the anointing. But then he has to give it back to him. It's not like Elisha got to keep it, Dana. Oh Lord.

SPEAKER_02 44:05

Maybe it's the anointing of God on her blessing earth and taking care of her back.

SPEAKER_01 44:14

Yeah. Well, it's scriptural. Here it is. He has to give it back. He doesn't get to keep it, right? And the reason he has to give it back is because he's not ready, because I think that's what Elijah means right there when he says, think about what you have done. If you go with me, if you're accepting this, think about what you're what you're going to be dead to this life. You're saying goodbye to your mom and dad for the last time. You're no longer the plow guy out here plowing. You're something different now. So think about what you're doing. Don't take this lightly. But if you go with me, you have an opportunity to discover your true purpose in life. Why you were created, Elisha. You were not created to plow a field with the twelfth group of oxen here. You have a purpose to be a prophet just like me. So what I want you to see is this time when they cross the uh the Jordan, it's different with this cloak. Because Elijah's taking up and the cloak says it says it falls to the ground. It doesn't fall on him, it falls to the ground. Somehow I always thought it fell on him. I don't know, I don't know if I was just like made that up in my mind in Sunday school or whatever, but it says in the Bible it fell to the ground. And Elisha has to go over and pick it up this time. No one throws it on him. He goes, Okay, now I'm ready. Because I've been to I have been to Bethel. I have left Gilgal, I have separated, I have been to Bethel in the presence of God, and I and I've walked a walk of faith with this guy for however many years it's been, and now it is my turn to pick up this anointing and put it on me. I am ready and I'm ready to walk into my purpose and to finish this up. Jesus talks about this the same way in his last night with the disciples. He says, Now that the time has come for the Son of Man to enter into glory, and I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat is planted in the soil and dies, it remains alone. But its death will produce many new kernels, a plentiful harvest of new lives. So those who love their life in this world will lose it. Those who care nothing for their life in this world will keep it for eternity. Anyone who wants to serve me must follow me, because my servants must be where I am, and the Father will honor anyone who serves me. Jesus is basically telling them, I gotta lose my life, so guess what? If you follow me, you gotta lose yours. Does that mean we all have to die? Well, eventually, yeah, but not by making this determin this choice in our lives. We're gonna have to cross Jordan. We're gonna have to die to our old selves. We're gonna have to sacrifice in our lives. Our plans have to change into what God's plan for our own life is for us to reach that purpose. We have to be willing to die to our previous life and start living this new life. This last scripture, I found this verse this week. It's been there the whole time. I just found it. It's in Psalm 2032, 8. And I think this kind of just wraps the whole thing up. And this has like become my new favorite verse, at least for this month. It says, The Lord says, I will guide you along the best pathway for your life. And I will advise you and watch over you. In other words, I'm not just going to tell you the way to go and go, good luck. See ya. I'm going to advise you and I'm going to watch you the entire way. So that way when you lose that path, I can say, hey, hey, hey, hey, get over here. Get over here. You're running off the path a little bit. And I think that right there kind of sums up this whole thing. If we put our trust in God, get rid of our own agenda, start following his way, he will guide us along the best. And that's underlined for a reason. Because sometimes we think what's best for us is what we got. No, it's what he's got. He's going to guide us on the best pathway, and he's going to advise us and watch over us the entire way. Okay.