Telling the Truth for Women

Jill Briscoe: We were talking to some women today, Stuart and I, just in an informal way about some avenues of Christians or some groups of Christians that don't believe the Bible is the word of God. And the difference in those people's lives when trouble comes, because there's nowhere solid to go and nothing sure to believe.

I came out of that thinking about it all afternoon and just thanking God so much for my Christian heritage that brought me to never, ever doubt that you can know what God thinks and know what God feels and know what God says is true. And how that is life-changing. Not only life-changing but life-anchoring when things are a problem.

God, knowing that, grieves for us when we run here and we run there and we turn to this philosophy or that book or some earthly wisdom instead of going where He knows our help can be found. And that spot by Him, that place by Him, is waiting for us. Now, we're thinking about a situation where God wants His word to get to His world. That's the story of the Bible. That's the history of it.

God is a revealing God. He doesn't sit in heaven having games with us and saying, "Go on, guess." He leans out of heaven and says, "If you want to know what I'm thinking, I'll tell you. If you want to know what I'm like, I'll show you. If you want to know how to live, I'll lay it out in words of one syllable so that even a little child can understand." It isn't man trying to figure God out; it's God saying, "Look at Me. Listen to Me."

In the Old Testament, when He had to do that through prophets and writers and poets, in all sorts of ways, it was still clear. But in case it wasn't as clear as crystal, He came Himself, the living word, to show us Himself. And if we have the written word and we have the living word, what else do we need to figure out this wild world that we live in?

For God has a plan. There is a war going on. I'm talking about the war between good and evil. There is a war without us going on. It's the war that happened when man fell and sin came into the world. But there's a plan in effect. And there's a person that God wants to use to implement that piece of the plan right where we are. And that person is you, and that person is me.

The problem is, of course, there's a war within. Because the man that God wants to use to implement His plan, to bring His words to this world, often is like Moses stuck in the backside of a Christian desert, not wanting to be the vehicle that God wants to use.

And what God has to do is look at this war without and say, "Well, I know the answer, and I've got these instruments. If only I can get them in My hand and they'll let me use them, and they'll say, 'Here am I, send me.'" But they are struggling with their past, with all the things that have happened to them in their life. Like Moses was, remember?

Just awful things that had happened in his past, including a murder. You can't get much worse than that. And he'd perpetrated it. The guilt and the problems and the "if onlys" that he must have gone through in those 40 years. And God had to work with the man that He chose, just like He has to work with you and me, and help him to realize he had a permitted past.

Do you know you've got a permitted past? God has permitted it. He had every power to stop whatever it was happening. He did in Moses' life, but He didn't; He permitted it. And He took those permitted things that had happened in somebody's past, and He turned them to His account and to the account of the plan that He had in mind.

When we can come to terms with our permitted past, then we're going to be useful in the hands of God for this very interesting and exciting present that has a wonderful future in heaven. So there's a war without, there's a war within. But it's a war that's won when we stand on holy ground and we face God, and we take our little shoes off and we say, "I'm standing here in the presence of God and God has got something to say to me and He's going to use me."

We take off our spiritual sandals and we realize that no, we can't do it, but we have a great big God who can do it in us. I took some of these messages down to a conference in North Carolina, and there was a man leading the music, a wonderful brother in Christ. And to my amazement, he began to give a testimony of something I had said a couple of years ago.

I couldn't remember I'd said it, and I went up to him afterwards and said, "What did I say? Would you mind writing it down so I have a copy of it?" I've never done that before; I really felt rather stupid. But I thought I'm sure I didn't say it quite like that. And so he wrote it down for me, and I brought it here because it was a little message that I'd been speaking on about Moses standing in front of this burning bush on holy ground.

Jehovah came to him and presented Himself to him. Of course, the name Jehovah means "I will be all that you will need as the occasion arises." And apparently, this is what I said: "I am the God who will be all I need Him to be when I need Him to be all that I need. The God who will be all that I need Him to be when I need Him to be all that I need."

That's what the name Jehovah means. And when Moses, in all his inadequacy, with all his guilt, with all this permitted past that God had permitted him to have, came to the point of realizing "I'm going to need a whole lot of things," but if He promises to be all that I need Him to be when I need Him to be all that I need, then here am I.

Even though he started off saying, "Here am I, send Aaron," he got to going along as well and was able to say for the rest of his life, "Here am I, send me." And remember he went on an offensive mode and he stood in front of Pharaoh and he said, "Let my people go." We talked about prevailing prayer, and that's what we've got to do on the behalf of other people.

We talked about the tough truth that he laid on Pharaoh. He said, "You've got to let us go, not just the wives, the whole family, and not just the family, all our animals, and not just the animals, all our goods and yours as well." And they spoiled the Egyptians, remember? And they took out of Egypt gold and silver and clothes and provisions they were going to need to live in the desert for a little while.

So we see them, and God in His miraculous way taking them on the way to Canaan. And then remember the other side of redemption, the other side of the Red Sea, we began to come into trouble. Trouble with these people that have been willing and obedient up to this point, have seen God deal with their enemies, have been delivered from Egypt, remember the picture: in sin, in bondage in Egypt, delivered through redemption through the blood of the lamb, through the Red Sea into freedom on the way to Canaan, where they were going to enjoy all the benefits of their salvation.

That's the picture the New Testament uses as it looks back to the Old Testament and uses what happened to the children of Israel as an example for us. My husband was down taking some meetings in Florida, and a little lady, as he describes them in Florida, with white hair with tennis shoes on, came running up to him and said, "That was a wonderful sermon, Mr. Briscoe."

Stuart had talked about saggy beds at one point and he'd used this as an illustration. He said many of us live a Christian life and we're like a saggy bed. We're rock firm at one end and we're rock firm at the other. We know we've accepted Christ, we know we're going to heaven when we die. We're rock firm like the two posts of the bed. But oh boy, do we sag in the middle.

Many of us are like that. We know that we're believers, we know that we're going to heaven when we die, that our sins have been forgiven. But oh boy, do we sag in the middle. We're saying, "What about this present?" We're stuck in the sand. We're camped in carnality. We know that we're spiritual people because we knew we were natural and we became spiritual, but we're living as if we're not. We can't get it together.

This little old lady came up to Stuart and said, "Oh, Mr. Briscoe, I did like that illustration. Could you get the sag out of my middle?" And he said that he looked at her and said, "No, Madam, I don't think I can." But never mind, I'm sure he wouldn't say that. Maybe you feel you've got a sag in the middle, and you need something doing.

Don't be afraid of that, because half the Christian Church, maybe more, feels like that. And there are many people that in all honesty and sincerity have gone to church and have never had a chance to hear the word of God explained in the passages like Romans 7 and 8 and many places, especially in the New Testament, that talk about carnality.

Paul says, "I want to walk after the spirit, I want to walk like a spiritual man, but I behave so often like a carnal man, as if I wasn't even a spiritual man. And there's a war within and God has got to deal with me." He talks about it in those wonderful chapters of Romans, if you've never read them, read them: 7 and 8.

So we mustn't be stuck on the other side of redemption forever like this. We mustn't be camping in the sand. It's a miserable spiritual situation to be in. And the thing that's frightening to me is once we know this, it becomes a choice. This demands a choice from us that we will take this journey of faith and obedience, which it's going to take to get us out of the sand and into Canaan.

Now, the children of Israel were invited to do this together. They were not to be mavericks. And we are not to be mavericks. We can't be mavericks. We need each other. They were to go in this great company of called-out people. And that company comprised different, difficult people. Church would be wonderful if you could just get rid of all the people, wouldn't it?

Wouldn't have any problems. It'd be great to come on a Sunday if there was no one else here, and then you wouldn't have any problems. But church is the called-out people. Church of the New Testament is like the church of the Old Testament: the called-out people. The rabble went up with them, it says. All sorts of people in the church: spiritual, carnal, not even believers going along with them, attaching themselves to the outside of the body and all of this. But that was God's way and that's God's way today.

Now God had given them a leader. I want to just take a few minutes before I get into the manna part of the Bible, which is where I'm heading. I want to just talk about how God gave them a leader, because leaders have been such important people in my life. God invests the body with leaders to take you on your way into freedom and joy and to discover how to study the Bible and how to live in Canaan in victory and joy and freedom.

Moses was their leader. He was a godly leader. And you say, "Wow, doesn't sound very godly. He was always losing his temper, so much so he'd even killed somebody, and he'd been looking after sheep when he should have been sitting on a throne. What do you mean he was a godly leader?" We need to find someone we can look up to. I believe this, and I believe the scripture tells us this.

We need to find leaders that we can trust. Now, how are we going to do this? And what is a trustworthy leader? I think back in my own life to the leaders that God has given me, the models God has given me. I think of a dear lady called Elaine Stedman. And when I met Elaine many years ago, I just wanted to be around her. I wanted to hang around her because I felt maybe some of what she had would rub off on me.

I've always felt like that since I became a Christian. I've looked around to see the people God was really using and I've just broken my neck to get there, just to hang around, just to be there, to be at a meeting that I knew so-and-so was speaking at because I could learn from this godly woman or this godly man.

I think of Elaine Stedman like that. As I talked to her one day when I was privileged to get to know her, I talked about this model and I thanked her for being a model for me. I looked around to see a good model of a pastor's wife and she was my model. She said very quietly and very humbly, "Well Jill, we're all models of something. But remember, we're never models of perfection, just of growth and learning."

We're not models of perfection, just of growth and learning. And we are called to be models, to be Moses for somebody else, because we want people to model after us. And remember, if that frightens you, you're not supposed to be a model of perfection but a model of growth. And look for someone that's growing, not somebody that's perfect.

Godly means God-like, actually, but it doesn't mean perfect. It means mature at the level that you've reached. And look for someone that's going and growing, and you can have a model or a leader who is younger in years than you are spiritually because she is gifted with the teaching gift or the leading gift or the helping gift.

When Paul said to Timothy, who was struggling with this, who was a young man, "Let no man despise your youth." Timothy was struggling with the fact that he, a young man, was supposed to teach all these people that were older than himself, apparently. Paul encouraged him and he said, "You're to be a model."

At your youth, even in your youthful Christianity, be growing, be knowing, be going somewhere. Be a model of growth and be a model of learning, and then people will be able to learn from you. So look for godly leaders and learn from them. These are people I've wanted to hang around. Specifically the girl that led me to Christ. She was my model.

"I don't know how to pray," I said. She said, "Sit there and listen to me and you'll know." And so I sat in a chair and she closed her eyes and she prayed for about 10 minutes and then I knew how to pray. Wasn't a perfect prayer. It was where she was at that time, but she was a model of growth and learning and I learned from her.

So we need our Moses. And we need to be a Moses for someone else. I just come back from Holland. Stayed with a dear friend of mine who's a Dutch girl; her name is Nora. What a Moses that girl is. She was our interpreter, Stuart's and mine. She speaks five or six languages. She's brilliant. Marvelous girl. She runs the radio for the whole of Holland on a government program: Biblical radio.

She's a great gal. She came to the meetings to interpret, but every time she picked us up, she was also our chauffeur all over Holland, every city. She had somebody in that front seat with her: outstanding women, broken women, marvelous women. A widow with six children. And this woman has become one of the teachers and blessers of the whole nation in Holland. Why? Because Nora was a Moses for her. She wanted me to meet her. She wanted us to meet, Stuart and I, these people that she had been bringing on.

Wonderful thing. So you follow your leader, you know your leader, you copy your leader, but you don't treat them as angels and you don't treat them as something that's next to God. Remember when Peter arrived in Cornelius's house in the Acts? Cornelius had seen a vision of an angel who told him to go and get Peter, and Peter would tell him all about God. So he'd done that. And when Peter walked in, quite naturally Cornelius falls on his face in front of Peter. Peter taps him on the shoulder and says, "Listen," and these are his words, "Stand up, I'm only a man myself. I'm only a man myself."

We have to know that, and we mustn't put people on the wrong level or pedestal, but we have to respect and honor and listen and learn from our leaders. I remember the day that my Jenny, the girl that led me to Christ, who I thought was perfect and I did put on a pedestal, fell off into a sand dune.

I remember it very clearly. I was very upset. I had an English cup of tea, which is what you do in times of crisis. And I wondered what I would do. Here was my Moses buried in a sand dune, and there was her pedestal standing quite empty. I was able to tell her what a disappointment she'd been to me. And I remember her laughing, this beautiful, gorgeous laugh, musical laugh.

She said, "Oh, I'm so glad. I was waiting to fall off my pedestal for you. Now you know. Stand up, I'm only a woman like you," in effect she said to me. Didn't stop me following her, didn't stop me learning from her, because what she did when she fell off her pedestal, she modeled something else: what you do when you fall off your pedestal, what you do when you sin, how you repent and how you get up and how you go on.

And that's what I mean by looking for someone that's a model of growth. Yes, they will do wrong things. Yes, they will sin, but what do they do when they sin? They handle it. That's a model. Blessed are you if you can find a Moses. Maybe it'll be a Bible study leader, maybe it'll be a teacher, maybe it'll be a group leader, maybe it'll be a friend. Find a Moses.

I listened to a very prominent pastor, if I told you his name, you'd know it in the States. And he gave his testimony, and to my amazement, he told this story. He said, "When I first became a young Christian, decided to go into the ministry, I made a list of my top favorite 20 people in Christendom and I prayed that God would give me one hour with each of these people, these men and women."

And then he said, "I spent most of my savings and even took out a loan to travel and make that become a reality. And I wrote to them all and I said, 'I'm just a little peon of a seminary student. Could you, if I come at your convenience, give me one hour of your time? I want to be with you. I want to ask you questions. I want to know the secret of the power of your ministry because I want my life to count.'"

He said, "I had chosen right, for every 20 said, 'Yes, young man. Come on.' And he got his hour with 20 Moses. And he simply shared the impact in his life and ministry, which is now coming to a close, of those people in his life." So you head out towards Canaan. Secondly, you hang around Moses.

And then you hunger for the manna from heaven. You eat what God provides. You are nourished in your soul, and that will speed you on your way and you won't stay camped in your carnality. Now then, in Exodus 16, you can read it when you go home. There's no time to read all the scriptures that we're going to get into.

Exodus 16:14-36, we read this wonderful story about the people grumbling and grousing the other side of redemption because they were hungry. When we're hungry, we grumble. And we don't feel very good about life if our tummies are empty. And these people, a million and a quarter of them, were all hungry. So you can imagine how badly they felt.

And they said, "Why'd you bring us out here to kill us with hunger? Why didn't we stay back in Egypt?" And oh, those leeks and oh, those garlics. Well, you can imagine distance lends enchantment to the view if they were wanting to eat leeks and garlics. But they started, it says in the scriptures, to want the leeks and the garlics. "Oh, if only I had a leek and a garlic, I'd be happy. I love a leek and a garlic supper."

And they just grumbled and groused. And then, of course, there was no water. Well, this was quite serious. It was serious there was no food; it was certainly serious there was no water. We're learning a little bit, aren't we, as we watch the news, how important water is in a land where there isn't any or it's been fouled up by oil or by pollution. You can't live very long indeed without water. You can't exist without it. It's frightening.

And when the water dried up, you can understand how they panicked and how they grumbled. And God looked at this grumbling bunch of His children and He said, "Look, tonight there will be quail for dinner. That's on the menu. Instead of leeks and garlics, you'll have quail. And in the morning, you'll have manna." Well, He didn't say it was manna. He said, "In the morning, I'll feed you bread from heaven."

And when they came out, they looked at this frost-like stuff. After the frost had gone, it looked as though the frost had stayed, but it wasn't frost. It was a sort of food. And they said, "What is it?" That's what manna means: "What is it?" So they called it manna because they didn't know what it was.

And Moses said, "Well, this is what you do with it. You collect it and you gather it." And the whole of chapter 16 explains what they were to do with this manna. And I'm going to take those little pictures in the practical side of this talk and apply it to the bread of life and how we can feed on the bread of life.

In John 6:35, we'll look at that just before I begin, Jesus uses this picture I'm going to use, so it's an absolute valid analogy as He's talking to the people about being the bread of life that comes down from heaven. He says in verse 48, "I am the bread of life. Your forefathers ate the manna in the desert, yet they died. But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which a man may eat and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world."

And so Jesus uses this analogy. God has rained on us Christ. And if we feed and nourish our souls on Him, then we will not grumble in our deserts the other side of redemption. We will not be camped out in carnality, stuck in the sand. So the picture of manna is a picture of Christ satisfying our souls, giving us a full, healthy, productive life. God has rained Jesus from heaven upon us, and we're expected to feed ourselves and get our sustenance from Him.

So firstly, where can we find this manna? Well, when the people came out in the morning, it says in this chapter, in the morning, all around them, the frost was on the ground or the manna was there when the frost was gone. It was within reach. And that's my point. Where can you find it? It's within reach. In America, it is definitely within reach. It's on your bookshelf somewhere, maybe covered with dust, but it's there.

I doubt if there is an American home where there isn't a Bible somewhere. Still, maybe not, but I would doubt it in a group like this. Certainly, it is within reach. It's within reach down the road to the bookshop, in a friend's house, in a parent's house, on a shelf. You don't even have to go outside like they did, probably. It's right there where you can reach out and read it.

I remember when I was 14 years of age, without God, without Christ, and without hope. I had a little pink bedroom, and there was a little bookshelf in the side of it. And I remember one night looking at the Bible that was on that bookshelf. I've no idea whose it was or where it came from. It was certainly not used or honored in our home, but it was there.

And I remember being very miserable because I'd just lost a big tennis tournament that I should have won in the finals. And I was miserable. That would finish me off in those days as a teenager. And I lay in bed, having a good sorry pity party, and my eyes fell on this Bible. And it was within reach. In fact, twice I almost put out my hand to take it.

And I was suddenly aware of this war going on inside me, and a little voice saying, "Don't touch it!" You know who that was. And another voice, a quiet, still small voice saying, "Go on, read it, read it. Go on, it's within reach." And I never did. I mean, this battle, almost a physical battle, I was exhausted after it went on for myself. I've often wondered if I had, what I would have read.

But I didn't. It was years later that that same battle came to me, and this time I did put out my hand and take it. But it's within reach. It's right between your own two feet. And what I would suggest is that you, if you don't possess a personal Bible that you can write on—it's your textbook, it's your workbook—you buy one. If you have a beautiful bound copy that you're frightened of touching, put it on the shelf or bring it to church to read out of. But go buy yourself a good hard-backed NIV Bible, New International Version.

It's a good version with notes and references that help you. Little references. I remember saying to Jenny when I first got saved and she gave me a good working Bible, "What are all these little references down the middle of the Bible?" And she said, "Well, the Bible's its own best interpreter. It interprets itself."

Like I told you about the manna in the Old Testament in Exodus 16, over in John's Gospel, it explains what that picture means and applies it to your life. So the Bible is its own safest, own best interpreter. So you need a good Bible. How do I collect it? How did they collect it? I don't know. I saw a picture once of little baskets. And they went out with little baskets and little pottery things and they had sort of spoons. I don't know how they collected it, but they had tools to collect it. And you're going to need tools to collect the manna.

What sort of tools can we use today? Well now, this is show-and-tell time. Can use a commentary. What's a commentary? It comments on each verse of scripture. So even though the Bible is its own best interpreter, God has gifted the Christian church with godly taught men. And when we come to a verse that's difficult to understand, and there are many because there's all sorts of things involved in interpreting the Bible correctly, then an evangelical, Bible-believing, Bible-based commentary is good.

And this one is just one of many. This is Matthew Henry's. And I have another commentary that I prefer better, but this is a good one for women. Do you know why? Because it's devotional in character. And women like application and women like a little devotional comment. And so even though there are more technical commentaries, if you haven't got one, this might be a way to start.

Or if you're trying to be a Moses for someone else and helping them to collect some tools to collect the manna, maybe this would be one to start with. Then you need another tool to collect the manna. You need a dictionary. What's this? This gives you background, gives you context, because you mustn't take the Bible out of context.

You have to say, what did the writer mean and what did the people understand him to say in that era, because you can't really understand or apply it and bring it up to date unless you first understand that. You need to read around and find the context, and so a dictionary helps you to do that. And it's also fascinating reading.

It's like a sort of encyclopedia, and you can look up subjects. For example, if at the moment you're interested in Babylon, I just looked that up for an example. There's about 10 pages in this very good Pictorial Bible Dictionary by Zondervan, excellent. A whole thing on Babylon that is absolutely fascinating because, of course, we know that ancient Babylon is modern-day Iraq and that the capital was about 50 miles away from Baghdad. I learned that where? By just reading it before I came into this meeting in the Pictorial Bible Dictionary.

So you need a commentary and you need a dictionary. Then you need another tool, you need a concordance. It's a listing of every word in the Bible and every place that particular word is. And I'll give you a neat little exercise that Jenny taught me to do. She got me a concordance, she got me a good reference Bible, and she said, "Now read 10 verses of scripture a day." She started me off in the New Testament. And so I started in a book of the Bible and I read 10 verses.

Then she said, "Find a warning to heed, a promise to claim, a command to obey." A warning to heed, a promise to claim, a command to obey. Find something about Jesus, something about yourself. Then when you've done all of that, choose a verse you like best and in the margin say why. Might not be a verse you like, but a verse that sort of pokes you like the shepherd's crook and you go, "Ooh, I needed that." Didn't like it. Or maybe it is a promise, maybe it is a warning. What is that one thing, not 10 things, one thing? What is that little piece of manna you need today?

It says in this passage of scripture that you're only to take as much manna as you need for one day, otherwise you'll get sick, you'll overeat and go off it. So don't binge on the Bible. Eat according to your appetite. That's what it said the people had to do. And some of you are babies in the faith, then don't eat a Christmas dinner every day.

Start with the milk of the word. Start with a little exercise like I've told you. Find that favorite verse. When you found the favorite verse, Jenny said to me, "Pick a word out of the verse. Any word you like. Could be 'now.' It could be 'grow.' It could be 'Abraham.'" So you just pick it random, put it at the top of a page, take your concordance, look it up in the concordance, and it will list 20, 30, 40 of those verses in every place they are.

Then spend half an hour, an hour, looking every one of them up and learning what you can about that particular word. That's just little exercise. That's topical study when you've done all the rest. As a new Christian, she started me off like that. So how do I collect it? You get your tools. When do I collect it? Well, they collected it each morning, verse 21. This isn't a big point. It was the best time for them in the situation that they were.

What is the best time for you in the situation you are? Collect the manna then. Collect it. If you can collect it in the morning, however, do. In the morning, first of all, Savior, let me hear Thy call. Make me ready to obey Thy commands throughout the day. Jenny wrote that in my first Bible. And for me, I had a schedule that enabled me to collect my manna in the morning, which sustained me through the day and I liked that. But as I grew to have children, I threw that idea out the window.

I couldn't beat them up in the morning. I don't mean beat them up in the morning, I mean beat them up in the morning. You know what I mean. But you try and get up before a baby in the morning to have your quiet time. Forget it. So you have to wait until they get a little bit older and then that's fine. Where can I find it? Within reach. How do I collect it? With tools. When do I collect it? Each morning.

Who is to collect it? Verses 15 and 18, everyone in the family. Each one is to go out there and collect it. Every little child is to collect what they can, and the parents are to help the ones that are too little to collect theirs. But as soon as a little child can get his little spoon and his little basket, he's to get out there and collect his manna.

And for that, I would encourage you to use something like Scripture Union, which is a method for every age, starting with two- to five-year-olds, helping them to collect the manna for themselves. And I'll never, ever forget the joy it was for me as a mother to start my David, who is our eldest, off on Scripture Union when he was four years of age. And to see him today use with his family "Family Notes." He has never, ever stopped. And I don't think he's missed a day.

And for David, Scripture Union was the answer. Now, for Judy, it was something else; for Peter, it was something else. Who is to collect it? The whole family. Some, it says, collect much, some collect little, according to your appetite, according to where you are in age and need.

And who else was to collect it? Moses. It's really struck me. Moses was to collect his own manna as well as teaching other people how to collect theirs. His job was to teach other people how to collect theirs and make sure they did it. But he wasn't to collect it for everybody. And he was to collect his own for himself.

And you know, as a teacher, the hardest thing for me at the moment, I'm preparing about six different talks for the next two, three weeks, new talks. And when I come to the Bible, it is the hardest thing for me to divorce what I am reading from what I am preparing for someone, somewhere. It's almost impossible because I get in and I'm reading and I think, "Oh, that would be just terrific for Breakaway," or "Boy, that's what I need for Monday night."

Or yes, that right there, that fits in with this. In fact, in the middle of just going over my notes this afternoon, I got totally sidetracked on a talk for three weeks away. And when I got to bed last night, very tired, I just picked up my Bible and I said, "Lord, forgive me. I haven't collected my own manna for myself for a long time. I've been too busy collecting it for everybody else."

And so I collected some for myself. It was very special time. And Matthew 24 just burst open for me last night. That was my manna. I'm not even going to share what it was because it was mine. And Moses must collect his own. It will show if he doesn't, if she doesn't.

"O Thou that teachest another, teachest thou not thyself?" said Paul to the Pharisees. And remember, there's a Pharisee in me. "O Thou that teachest another, teachest thou not thyself?" Collect your own manna. It'll show. And some will be put aside for the generation to come. Some will be put aside for the generation to come.

Incidentally, you are to collect enough for Sunday. And I love that little picture. There will be some occasions when you have time to collect for two days. Take it. Make it. Just put time aside on your calendar. That will be the day I go down to a retreat center or go off, if it's summer, into the fields or be alone in the gazebo by the lake. And I will collect extra here and extra there.

So in summary, do I know how to collect my daily manna? Do I know shepherds like Moses that can teach me how to collect my manna? Am I part of a group where there is a leader that I can respect, not because they're perfect but because God has given us leaders to lead us? People of growth and learning, certainly not people of perfection.

And am I gathering my own manna as I am learning how to do that for myself? And am I sharing with others the benefits of this nourishment of my soul? If we will collect the manna, then we'll be able to see what happened to the group of people in the desert that had been camped in carnality: they went on. They were strong enough to go on towards Canaan.

And you'll be able to go on towards victory and towards joy in the Christian life and towards all the things that God wants you to do. If you will collect that daily provision of the living, written word that God has provided for you and you feed on Christ, then you will be able to head off into victory into Canaan.

What is the one piece of manna from this particular meal that God would have you absorb, chew over, make, and turn into energy for Him? What is the one thing you're going to take away? Can you isolate that in your mind, in your heart? Why don't we do that right now in prayer? Let's pray together.

Heavenly Father, thank You for this wonderful book of Exodus. Thank You for the pictures in it. Thank You for the lessons we can learn. And thank You for the very practical things we've been thinking about. How that You have provided the bread from heaven, Jesus Himself, the living word.

You have provided us leaders that can help us know how to collect the written word that will bring life and nourishment to our soul as we move out into real Christianity, into a Christianity that works, Lord, and that doesn't leave us distressed and frustrated in a disappointing place in our lives.

Teach us how to feed ourselves and teach us how to feed others by feeding ourselves first. Teach us how to teach others to feed themselves. All these things need doing. Make us adept at being the Church, Your called-out people, edifying and helping each other in the body as we go on together to be the Church You want us to be and the people You've called us to be. Oh, thank You for these lessons. For Christ's sake, Amen.