As we probably did earlier, shall we inspect the significancy of the name of this place where the soothsayer was told to go.

Zarephath comes out of a Hebrew verb that suggests “to melt, to smelt.” curiously in noun form it implies “crucible.” The place might have gotten its name seeing as there had been a smelting plant found somewhere near there ; we do not know for sure. But whatever the source of its name, Zarephath would turn out to be a “crucible” for Elijah—a place designed by God to refine the soothsayer and make a big difference in the rest of his life.

It was about as if the Lord were asserting to His servant, “I first took you to Cherith to wean you away from the bright lights and the general public platform, where I could cut you down to size and reduce you to a person who would trust Me, in any case. But now it is time to do an even deeper work.

Now, Elijah, I am going to turn up the heat in the furnace and melt you so I might mildew you much more exactly into the kind of man I need to meet the purposes I have in mind.”. And as fast as you climb out of one cooking pot thinking, “Okay, I made it thru that one,” you are dropped into another, where the flame is even warmer.

This is exactly what the hymn writer were considering when he wrote:. The flame shall not hurt thee ; I only design,. Thy degs to consume and thy gold to refine..

But what did He reveal? Verse twelve tells us : he said His written word. The very first thing God gave to this person who met up with Him was His truth in written form. Nobody has ever had in his possession a more valuable document than this. Moses possessed the autograph of Deity—the autographa etched in stone by God’s own finger.

God gave His folks the Word of the Lord that they’d know His mind and obey. He gave them the design for the church that he’d come and dwell among them. He didn’t wish to stay detached high up on a mountain. He learned that it takes discipline and preparation to do so.

It’s one thing to grasp what to do ; it’s quite another to basically do it. What percentage of us take a course on prayer but infrequently pray, or learn the methods of evangelism but rarely share our faith? In this account of Moses’ life, we might have learned small new, but we’ve been challenged with some profound reminders from the Lord God’s Word. We don’t need a creative new strategy quite as much as a swift kick in the pants.

We need a rebuke from the Lord God Almighty, as we are so slothful and slow and knackered when it comes to climbing that mountain and meeting for 30 minutes with the Lord. Regardless of our bad track record, may He stop us this moment with the reminder that we might become far stronger women and men of The Lord God if we’d only maintain a period of meeting with Him. It could be on a craggy mountain top, in a closet, or, as with my personal mummy, in a locked loo with a “Do not disturb” sign on the door.

God isn’t particular in the least about the place you select or the quantity of time you spend.

First surprise. Next puzzlement, followed by fear, like icy fingers round the heart. When Moses’ well-tended secret hit the prime-time networks, he got the shakes. And acting on fear, the biblical account states that “he left from the presence of Pharaoh.” Why did he run? Verse fifteen tells us, “Pharaoh attempted to kill Moses.” Now that Moses had tipped his hand and shown his true duty, Pharaoh couldn’t stomach having such a threat around. In the king’s eyes, a faithless and out-of-control prince was better off dead.

What terrible consequences grew out of Moses’ ill-considered action. It is truly possible that you, too, have been forced to address such consequences. Your track record may reflect a pattern of great aspiration but tiny information. Great need but tiny discernment. Great hopes but small mildness. Great fervour but tiny knowledge. And so you’ve got to run the rabbit trails right to the sour dead-ends, one after another. You have run quicker every time, but never succeeded. None has taken you where you wanted to go. And if the truth were known, your rash actions have led to an intolerable situation. In my book, there’s just one thing worse than being at the end of a self-directed life, and that is being in the middle of one. You assert, “Well, I am in my thirties, I ought to understand better than that.” Moses was 40.

You assert, “Hey, I’m no novice! I have got education and coaching like you would not believe!” Better than Moses? Remember, by this time in his career, he was “educated in all of the learning of the Egyptians.” Our electrifying resum is a part of the difficulty. Infrequently we are educated beyond our own intelligence.

We know more than we are safe to handle! The reality is, when you depend on the flesh to find employment done, you do not need more schooling. You do not need another degree. You do not want more coaching conventions. Plain and easy, you want knowledge. So do I. So do all of Almighty God’s folk. But discerning knowledge needs time. It takes some major bumps in the road. It takes enduring some failures and swallowing large and sour applications of modesty. Welcome to fact.