ridiculed it and said, “Behold, if the Lord would make windows in heaven, might this thing be?” Even so today God says we need not live in spirit ual famine, that there is plenty o f grace for every body, but this cynical generation sneers and little professors say that God is dead. They do not be lieve God intervenes in the affairs o f men. “ I f God would make windows in heaven, might this thing be?” But God says: “ Prove me now if I will not open you the windows of heaven and pour you out a blessing that there shall not be room enough to receive it.” Are we going to believe the cynics or God? But how can we find spiritual abundance in a day of famine? How did God do it in Samaria? He used the most unlikely means as He often does. In the gate of Samaria sat four lepers, as miserable a quartet as ever assembled. With Syria before them, Samaria behind them, sickness within and starvation without, they had reached the zero hour. Something had to be done. “ If we sit here, we will die of leprosy; if we go into the city we shall die of starvation. If we go forward we can do no worse than die so let us venture” . . . thus they reasoned and so they ventured to find that God had scat tered the enemy, for “ the wicked flee when no man pursueth,” and all they had to do was to gath er up the spoils of victory! You will observe that although there must have been wise men and noble men, experts and generals, in Samaria and although a King walked the walls, it was LEPERS, the lowest and most despised, who made the venture that lifted the siege. In these dark, desperate days when prominent Christians wear sackcloth in despair, some humble soul may get ahead of us all by daring to DISCOVER what the rest of us only DEBATE. King Jehoram may have plotted ways and means of defeating the Syrians but four lepers simply marched into the enemy’s camp and found them ALREADY DE FEATED ! Samaria was already delivered but no body knew it! The camp was there but “nobody home.” It is about time that Christians and churches discovered, while we crouch behind our barricades, that Satan was defeated long ago, the victory was won and the spoils are ours. These four lepers had one o f the few committee meetings that ever amounted to anything. It began with a question that should be framed and hung in every church committee room: WHY SIT WE HERE UNTIL WE DIE ? God’s greatest blessings are for desperate souls who have reached that hu man extremity which is God’s opportunity. There is a twilight hour when, like the lepers, we sit with despair around us and the only way out is straight ahead into what may look like the jaws o f death. But out o f that zero hour many a soul has risen asking “Why sit I here until I die?” and has plunged forward to find that God has gone ahead and scattered the enemy.
by Dr. Vance Havner
T h e s ie g e o f S a m a r i a was on. Before the city stood the hosts of Syria. Within the city was slow starvation. Food .was so scarce that fabulous prices were paid for the head of a donkey, as poor a piece of meat as could be imagined. King Jehoram walked the city walls wearing his royal robes without but with sackcloth next to his flesh. It is a perfect picture of our world today. We live in a spiritual siege of Samaria. The hosts of evil encamp around us. Most Christians live on the defensive like the Confederates at Petersburg as if ours were a lost cause. We call ours an affluent society but actually we are sick from spiritual mal nutrition and moral anemia, dying in slow starva tion from a famine o f food for the soul. More than one Jehoram walks the walls wearing the robes of a religious profession without and the sackcloth of a disappointing experience within. We never had more and we never had less! But there was one man in Samaria who was in touch with God, Elisha the prophet. When the angry King threatened to kill him, he sat quietly in his house and predicted that by tomorrow there would be plenty of food for everybody. Nothing could have seemed more ridiculous or impossible when women had turned cannibal and were eating their own children. The King’s right-hand man
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THE KING'S BUSINESS
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