Telling the Truth for Women

Jill Briscoe: You know that God is a personal being because He gave Himself a personal name. The proclamation of His name is the act whereby God Himself came forth from His secret place and offered Himself in fellowship. All the names of God have to do with God's relationship and concern for His people.

So He came forth from that secret place. He didn't need to. He didn't have to. In fact, we are totally dependent on God showing His hand. We can't twist His arm. We can't make Him do anything. We cannot shake our little dust fists in His face and say, "Show me who You are, tell me how You think, and tell me how it is." But He came forth in grace and He said, "Here I am. I'm going to tell you who I am. I am a personal God."

Jehovah is His personal name. Elohim, some of the other names we've been talking about, are describing His character, His power, throwing the worlds into existence—Elohim. But when He starts to say, "I am" or Yahweh or Jehovah, then what He is saying is, "I am personal and I am for you. I want this personal relationship with you." So much religion is devoid of the personal. It's ritual. It's going through a creed that hasn't arrived home in our hearts or worked its way out through our fingers. Jehovah, "I am for you," that's what it means.

Today, we're going to be looking at another compound name of Jehovah, a name that was given at a specific instance in the life and history of the people of Israel. Because it was as these crisis arose, the people of Israel got into a mess or a problem, and God leaned out of heaven and said, "I will show you what I can do. I will explain to you who I am, My power, My ability to cope and help you in this particular situation." The situation we're going to look at today is that which has to do with the name Jehovah Nissi, N-I-S-S-I.

It comes from Exodus chapter 17, and we'll read the story together. Exodus 17, starting to read at verse one: "The whole Israelite community set out from the Desert of Sin," incidentally, the Desert of Sin doesn't mean the desert of wrongdoing, it's short for Sinai, "traveling from place to place as Jehovah commanded." As who commanded? Look at the word: as Jehovah commanded. The personal God was leading His personal group of people to do personal acts with Him in power.

"They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. So they quarreled with Moses and they said, 'Give us water to drink.'" The word quarreled is a lot stronger word than the word grumbled. Now they were challenging him. Now they were putting him against the wall and saying, "Go on, you do it. You bring water for us." Moses replied, "Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you put the Lord to the test?"

Almost the identical situation that we had last time we met, in another place on another day. But the people were thirsty for water then. They grumbled. Now we're down to the lesser word again against Moses and they said, "Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to make us and our children and livestock die of thirst?"

Then Moses cried out to the Lord, "What am I to do with these people? They're almost ready to stone me." Jehovah answered Moses, "Walk on ahead of the people and take with you some of the elders of Israel. Take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile and go. I will stand on the rock. I will stand before you by the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock and water will come out of it for the people to drink."

So Moses did this in the sight of the elders of Israel and he called the place Massah and Meribah because the Israelites quarreled and because they tested the Lord saying, "Is the Lord among us or not?" Let's stop there for a moment.

Now, Moses has another chance, and so do the people of Israel. Another incident that gives God the opportunity to let the Israelites get to know Him a little bit better. Every opportunity in life, every day of our lives brings opportunities to get to know God better, particularly the crisis of our lives when the big things happen, when our world falls apart. Those are the times that give us the chance to reach out to God.

The tendency as a human being is to react to God at times like that and say, "Why did You let this happen to me?" Well, of course, there's nowhere else to go if we do that. These are the times that we need to turn to God and say not "why," but "how can I understand this in relation to what You're doing in my life? How can I get to know You better?" Not only do we get to know God better when things like this happen, we get to know ourselves better as well.

The Israelites were about to learn a lot about themselves, know themselves a little bit better. It all happened at a place called Rephidim. Rephidim actually is a beautiful valley, very fertile, or it was in those days. There are things called wadis, and they are really dents in the ground. They're not deep, deep valleys, but they call them wadi this and wadi that. Rephidim was a wadi full of beautiful vegetation.

Hundreds of miles away, there was a country of very fierce people called the Amalekites. They had sent their shepherds, probably the toughest of all their people, to survive out there with the sheep and make a living from that situation of traveling and fighting off everybody else that wanted to make a living in the same place. They had sent some of their tough bands of people out with their flocks and herds.

The Amalekites were in this wadi, and then through the desert comes this humongous crowd, two million people traveling together with their livestock and their goods and their chattels and their children and everything else thrown in. What would you do if you were an Amalekite? Well, if I was an Amalekite, I'd say, "Once their cattle get through with the wadi at Rephidim, there won't be much left for our cattle and our sheep. We had better do something about this."

Remember, there were two million of them, and we don't know how many Amalekites there were, but there certainly weren't very many. They were shepherds. They were herders. They had to resort to a type of warfare that would be effective, and it certainly wasn't meeting two million people head-on. So they got together and they began to discuss what they would do.

Well, the first thing they did was say, "This is easy. They have camped outside the wadi. They've camped on the edge of Rephidim. So all we need to do is look at the stream that never runs dry, which comes out of Rephidim, and cut it off and make sure that the springs that give water are stopped before they run down the hill and feed the horses." So the reason there was no water was that the Amalekites had cut the streams and the springs off so that they would force the people away from that area.

This was the first tactic that they tried. Now, remember last time there had been no water and Israel had had a bad time with that. There had been water, but it had been bitter, bitter water. That's what we talked about, Massah, Meribah last week. Now there is no water at all. So the people are a little bit more desperate. Remembering again we're talking about temperatures well over the hundred-degree mark. You can't keep cattle alive.

This was a problem for the children of Israel because if their cattle died, there was nothing to feed their people with. Seeing they were nomadic, seeing they were moving this immense amount of people through the desert, their crops were non-existent. But their animals were their food, and so they would buy from the people that were around, and they would sacrifice their lambs and they would eat part of that, etcetera.

So when they didn't have any water for their animals, animals don't last very long without water, and so the situation was very, very grim indeed. The whole of their life was threatened once more. But do you notice the cycle? Do you notice these people? Drought, doubt, then they get drenched with some of God's blessings and they're delighted. Then they go around the corner, just around the corner in the desert, and what happens? Drought, doubt, and it all starts all over again.

There's a sort of wandering round and round getting nowhere feeling about their spiritual experience. That's really what we're going to talk about today because that's where we see the children of Israel, and so often that's where we see ourselves. We have this cycle. We do great, and then a crisis comes, and then we start grumbling, and then we start complaining, then we start to quarrel with God and with our leaders and with the church and with anyone else in sight.

Then God relieves the pressure, okay? And then what do we do? We're delighted. We're drenched with blessings. We get up and testify to it. What happens? Just around the corner, something else happens to us, and we begin to doubt all over again. Our Christianity has no consistency about it whatsoever. Jehovah said, "Be ye holy for I am holy. Be like Me." And He is consistent. He doesn't change just around the corner.

Whatever happens to Him, lots of things happen to Him, He gets rejected every day. He has disappointments. He gets fed up and He gets frustrated with us. Jesus did when He was here on earth. "How long must I suffer you?" He said to some of His disciples that never seemed to learn the lesson, never seemed to understand. And yet He is consistent in His commitment, and He is always the same, always gracious, always the deliverer, always ready to do the right thing.

Thereby, this rock, He provided the water once more for the people. The rock was struck, and many have seen in this a wonderful picture of Jesus Christ being struck upon the cross with the rod of God's anger, that the spirit may be released to nurture ourselves in order that we do not wander round and round in the wilderness of our Christianity, getting nowhere, lurching from crisis to crisis, doubting and quarreling with God intermingled with blessing and upbeatness in our Christian life.

In 1 Corinthians 10, Paul obviously was thinking of this very incident. He's talking about the massive people passing through the sea. They all ate the same spiritual food. They all drank the same spiritual drink, for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ.

So here in the New Testament, you have a direct allusion to this very incident. Paul is using the idea of the manna as the spiritual food and the water from the rock as the spiritual drink and applying it to the people he was talking to. Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today, and forever. Jesus did not begin at Bethlehem. We know this. He was Elohim, the Trinity, deciding to mend that which was broken, knowing that we would rebel and deciding within the Godhead that He would be part as the whole Godhead would of our redemption.

So the rock that followed them, spiritualizing this, was Christ, Paul says. Christ was there. Christ provided for the people. Christ was saying, "I will be all that you need as the occasion arises." The rock from which the water came is used as a picture to represent the spiritual sustenance that God continually supplies.

In my yesterdays, He stood beside me in the shadows and ran with me through the fields of sunlight. I lean against the winds of change in my todays, but fear not turning around the corner of tomorrow knowing He'll be there waiting with my future in His hand. He'll take good care of it for me just like He did my yesterdays. For Jesus is the same.

Hebrews tells me Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. There in the desert, though those people knew nothing of a baby of Bethlehem, the Trinity, Elohim, was actively engaged in saying, "I am here." Jehovah was busy saying, "I will be all you need as the occasion arise because I am your personal sustenance. I'll help you." He'd already fed them with manna. Now He's providing once more water from the rock.

The poets and of course the Psalmists celebrated this particular incident of water coming from the rock. In Psalm 78, you can read all about that. Many, many of the Psalms talk about it. They talk about the disturbing way that the people vacillated from trust in God to dependence on God. I don't know if this is your problem. You say, "I wish I could be more consistent. I wish every time a crisis came into my life, I could just be stable and I could react the way God wants me to. Every time He allows a test to come into my life, every time He uses a situation that He doesn't stop happening to me and wants to turn it to His account and to my account, if only I could respond to that instead of doing what they did."

Even Moses, even Moses didn't do very well. Moses had a terrible temper, I mean a terrible temper. I don't know if you've ever suffered from a terrible temper. I used to have a terrible temper when I was in my early mothering days, which is not a good time to have a terrible temper, especially with little children all around me. I could keep my temper with the kids in the classroom, and I had hundreds of them to look after, very easily. If they were other people's little children, it was fine. But my own children, I really had a problem with this.

Like Moses, I would just blow it over and over again. Moses blew it over and over again. His temper got the better of him one day, and he murdered a man. Just lost it. Spent 40 years in the wilderness thinking about that. Then God forgave him and told him he wanted to use him to bring those people out of Egypt, which Moses eventually got around to doing after saying, "Here am I, send Aaron," if you remember.

Moses and the people came out, but he was still struggling with this temper. Forty years after this event, forty whole years after this event, the children of Israel were still wandering around the desert. The journey from the Red Sea to Canaan, to the Promised Land, should have taken three weeks or a little longer. Forty years later, they were still, the whole lot of them, with everyone else that had been born and raised in the desert, wandering around in circles, getting nowhere.

Once more, the water ran out. Once more, God said, "Come and stand at this particular place and speak to the rock and I'll bring water out for the people." Moses lost it again. He took that precious rod of God in his hand and he struck the rock twice. He disobeyed. He did not have the faith to believe that speaking to the rock would do it. He'd lost it too.

He depended on his own power and some magical interpretation that he put on that rod to do the trick. God was angry with Moses for many reasons. First of all, he'd spoiled the picture, for the rock was only struck once, that rock being Christ. Secondly, all that's necessary because of Jesus being struck once and His death and resurrection is for us to speak to the rock, and the water will gush out for us. It was another picture that Moses had taken his big old paintbrush and tried to improve on like we so often do.

God said, "Moses, because you've done this, you won't even see the Promised Land. Well, you'll see it, but you won't go into it. You'll die this side of it." Apparently, God felt that his offense, although not clearly stated in the scriptures, showed a lack of trust on Moses' behalf. But it was his temper again. All his life, that temper haunted him and got him into trouble. Remember when he went up the mountain, got the Ten Commandments? Remember what happened? He came down and saw the children of Israel dancing around naked and doing all this stuff. Lost it. And he broke the Ten Commandments, literally. Remember? Threw them out of his hand. You always break the Ten Commandments when you lose your temper incidentally. But that's what he did. His temper.

Even in Moses' life, there was this inconsistency. There was this lurching from crisis to crisis. In that particular incident 40 years later, when he struck the rock twice, he said to the people, "Come here, you rebels." That was his language. I mean, he'd had it up to here with the people that God had given him. Over and over again, you see Moses going through this cycle.

What was wrong with these people? God had given them all this ability not to live inconsistent Christian lives. Well, a little picture that's given to us today is that of Amalek. Let's read on in verse eight of Exodus 17: "Then came Amalek and attacked the Israelites at Rephidim. Moses said to Joshua, 'Choose some of our men and go out to fight the Amalekites. Tomorrow, I will stand on top of the hill with the staff of God in my hands.' So Joshua fought the Amalekites as Moses had ordered, and Moses, Aaron, and Hur went to the top of the hill."

Hur traditionally was supposed to be married to Miriam, so they say, different people say, which was interesting. So Hur and Aaron, Moses' close relatives, went with him to the top of the hill. "As long as Moses held up his hands, the Israelites were winning, but whenever he lowered his hands, the Amalekites were winning. When Moses' hands grew tired, they took a stone and put it under him and he sat on it. Aaron and Hur held his hands up, one on one side, one on the other, so that his hands remained steady till sunset. So Joshua overcame the Amalekite army with the sword. Then the Lord said to Moses, 'Write this on a scroll as something to be remembered and make sure that Joshua hears it, because I will completely blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven.' Moses built an altar and called it Jehovah Nissi," or the Lord is my banner. He said, "For hands were lifted up to the throne of the Lord. Jehovah will be at war against the Amalekites from generation to generation."

It really wasn't their week, the Israelites I'm talking about. They had just failed another test. They'd got an F, and suddenly from the outskirts, from the back of the pack, came cries as the guerrilla Amalekites began to pick off those that were lagging behind. In fact, we are given in Deuteronomy 25 a little picture of what was happening here in retrospect. Deuteronomy 25:17 and 18, God is speaking: "Remember what the Amalekites did to you along the way when you came out of Egypt. When you were weary and worn out, they met you on your journey, they cut off all who were lagging behind. They had no fear of God. When the Lord your God gives you rest from all the enemies around you in the land He is giving you to possess as an inheritance, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget."

Jehovah had already instructed Moses to write this on a scroll, which gives us the hint that Moses was keeping an account under God of all the journeys of the children of Israel, which is why you've got them in your hand this day in your Bible. If you wonder how such a primitive man as Moses could read and write, then remember where he got his training, in the Pharaoh's palace. People were certainly reading and writing in his day and age, as we know.

So here was Amalek. Genesis 36:12 tells us that Amalek was the grandson of Esau, a direct descendant of Isaac. Enemies to Israel, always a hostile problem. Now Esau, do you remember Esau? Jacob and Esau, the two brothers. Esau was the fellow that really wasn't interested in spiritual things. And that's why Amalek is a picture to us of that, of the part of us that really isn't interested in spiritual things, or as the Bible calls that part of us, the flesh or the worldly nature or the old man. Okay? Or the old nature. The Bible has lots of names for this, particularly in the New Testament.

Whenever you think of Esau, you should think of the incident he was probably best known for, which was when he was hungry, he came in from the field after shooting and getting game, and he was absolutely starving. He was fainting because he hadn't eaten for many days. Jacob was busy making a nice big soup for his herdsmen. Remember Esau was the hunter and Jacob was the herdsman.

Esau came up and said, "Oh, give me some of that soup. I'm going to die. I haven't eaten for days. I just need to fill my belly. I'm hungry, man. I've got this good old fleshly appetite, and if you don't give me something, then I'm going to die." Jacob saw his chance. Remember Jacob's name was Twister at that point before God put His hand on him and changed his nature. He was a bad lot. But there were some good things about him.

The one good thing about Jacob was that he was interested in spiritual things. So he saw his chance and he said, "Well, I'm the second brother, but I'd sure like to be the one who receives God's blessing. I want your birthright, Esau," he said. Well, Esau said, "You can't have my birthright. I'm the first son." He said, "Well, I won't give you any soup." And Esau sold his spiritual heritage for a mug of soup.

When you think of Esau, and he's spoken of many times in the Bible, he was a picture for us of the part of us that's more interested in soup than spiritual things. That is more interested in the fleshly hungers that are all God-given and yet should be God-controlled and God-superseded rather than the Jacob side of us.

Esau here is the ancestor of Amalek, and the Amalekites came from that lineage. Traditionally, they always hated Jacob stemming right from this particular situation. Always gave them a hard time. How did they attack? They met them by the way. They smote them from behind. They snatched away the faint, those that were lagging behind. They trusted in themselves. They feared not God.

Basically speaking, the part of us that fears not God, that trusts in ourselves, is spoken of in the Bible as the fleshly side of us, the unspiritual side of us. The Amalekites attacked Israel because of their nature. In Exodus 17:14 to 16, God says, "I have declared war on Amalek from generation to generation. I do not want Amalek around."

Neither does God want the unspiritual side of us to dominate. He has declared war on the old man, if you like, on the part of us that would rather have a part of our fleshly nature satisfied than do the right thing spiritually, that would rather go to bed with somebody that isn't our husband than say no and stay hungry and be a Jacob. You see what I'm saying?

God has declared war on that part of the believer from generation to generation, that would, if left unfought, unresisted, destroy the part of us that loves God. No wonder God wanted to give us a picture in the scriptures. It's very interesting. If only Israel had been consistently obedient, Amalek would not have troubled them.

But you get into Samuel and you find Saul being told again by God, reminded through the spiritual leaders around him, that when he met an Amalekite, he was to wipe them out. Now, this might sound terribly cruel, but remember that God knew, because He knew all things, what was going to happen if the Amalekites were not destroyed.

Saul allowed the king of the Amalekites and a few of the best of the men and the women to go free. It was at this point that the Holy Spirit was withdrawn from Saul, and God said, "I'll choose me a king that'll do what I tell him to do. I can see a man after my own heart, David will be my king."

Saul continued in his own efforts, in his flesh, in his own strength, to the end of his life, which wasn't very far away. It's absolutely ironic that the sinful thing that Saul spared when he spared those few Amalekites returned to slay him. As Saul went up all in his own effort into a battle that God told him not to go and fight and was mortally wounded, as he lay dying, he did not want to fall in that wounded state into the hands of his enemies, and a lone Amalekite appeared. Saul said, "I pray you, kill me." And the young man did.

If Saul had been obedient, he probably would have died anyway, but not at the hands of an Amalekite. Then of course, you go on to the book of Esther and remember Haman was descended from the Amalekites and very nearly wiped the entire Jewish nature out. So when God tells us to do something, He has His own secret good reasons. He might tell us the secret, He might not. Israel was not aware of the importance of God's commands as yet, and they only obeyed in measure.

But who were the people of Israel as opposed to who were the Amalekites? They were Jehovah's people, remember. God had promised to be all that they needed as the occasion arose. In this particular incident in Exodus 17 that we're looking at today, they were obedient. They did come through. They actually did the right thing for once.

It could have been that they obeyed their leaders and went and fought the Amalekites because Moses had just been able to do his thing again and the water had gushed out of the rock, and they began to suddenly see he was vindicated in their eyes. It was an up point. It could have been Joshua's influence, this wonderful godly man. Actually, his name had been Hoshea, which means to give help, and Moses had changed it to Joshua, which means Jehovah is salvation.

This man, who in character reflected Jehovah Himself, Joshua, who was to become the leader of Israel, was the man that Moses chose to go and fight the Amalekites. The people fell very easily in behind his leadership. It might just have been that Joshua was all right in their eyes. Maybe they were encouraged by the water from the rock. They had been refreshed once more. They were willing to obey God.

However, they did what they were told. They took the soldiers that Moses designated, and they went down into the valley, and they began to fight Amalek as God had told them to do. How did they overcome him? Three things that you can see in here, just beautiful pictures.

Through prayer. Prayer has no power of itself. Prayer simply links us to the power that we're going to need to overcome Amalek, that fleshly part of us, the part of us that wants the world rather than wants the spiritual things. Prayer links us in dependence with the power of God, represented here by the rod of God held in Moses' hand.

It was with this rod that had no magic symbolism in itself, but no magic powers in itself, but was a symbol of God's power, that Moses had held it over Egypt's rivers and they had turned to blood, had held it over the rivers again and creatures had crawled out of the river and infested the homes of the Egyptians, leaving every home of the Israelites untouched. For He's Jehovah. He's the timeless Christ. These things actually happened. I believe it. I have no option to believe it. Jesus believed it. Paul believed it.

Prayer links us in dependence to a power that we need that is beyond ourselves to fight Amalek. The rod is the symbol and pledge of His presence and power and working. Israel's strength lay only in a continuing appeal to the Lord's power, and so does ours. It doesn't matter how long you've been a Christian. All of us together, our strength to live a spiritually consistent life lies only in a continuing appeal to the Lord's power.

The rod of God was that symbol of that. As Moses stood on the top of the hill with the rod of God held up, every time a soldier was getting faint in the valley, he'd look up and see that figure. Some people say that he stood like this, and this is the first symbol of the cross. I don't know. But he certainly held the rod of God up high.

This was the signal to rally to God's cause because it was His battle. He had said, "I'll have war with Amalek." Now you go fight it. I am going to destroy it. I'm going to blot their name and the memory of them out because I will have war with Amalek. God is intended to mend that which was broken. There is a part of us that was broken through the fall. God wants to make us perfect and take us to heaven and make us like Jesus, and He's in the middle of doing that.

But while we are here on earth, we will always have war with Amalek. There'll always be that fight with the flesh until we see Him face to face and we're perfect. But this is His battle. When it says Jehovah Nissi, it means that God gives us a remember of that, just like a great big banner He puts up and says, "Listen, this is My battle. This is My cause. You just go on and mop up the victory." Victory is assured, but you still have to fight the battle.

Remember when I first came over here, I was really disturbed about leaving all the young people I'd been working with. Some of them were not very strong in the Christian life. What would happen when their leader disappeared on them? Some of them were just coming off drugs. I'd had one or two young people in my home for months. Were they strong enough to go back to their own environment and not go back to the gutter from whence they'd come?

Stuart said to me, "You didn't save them. You don't have to keep them. The battle is the Lord's. His is the cause. The Lord is their banner. He will rally all His forces to help them win the battle. The victory is assured." Moses' reliance on the staff of God did not exclude Joshua's action in the valley. We still have to fight.

When the people came through the Red Sea, they were helpless. Just before they stepped off onto that path through the Red Sea with the waters as a wall each side of them, they looked behind and saw the Egyptians, full-fledged with their chariots, coming after them. They were absolutely terrified. Moses said, "Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord."

There is nothing we can do about our salvation as God brings us from death to life because of the cross of Christ. We stand still and see the salvation of the Lord. We cannot fight for it. We cannot work for it. But once we are through the other side, the other side of redemption, there are fights to be fought against giants and Amalekites and all sorts of other things. There is no victory in the Christian life without a battle. Ours the fight in the valley, His the victory assured. No victory without a fight.

The lesson is quite simple. Is this a picture of your spiritual state? In the Christian life, we cannot love the world and God at the same time. We cannot love God and mammon. We're torn between our loves, aren't we? Between the love of the world and the love of God. And it's that Amalek inside us that we have to fight.

But remember, God has declared war on that part of us, the old man, the old nature, and He has provided us through Christ and the Spirit the sustenance that we're going to need to make the difference. We're talking about spiritual warfare here. You need to read Galatians 5:17 and Romans 7 and 8 to get the picture in the New Testament. Jehovah lifts up a banner against Amalek and rallies us to His cause.

Let me just give you one little illustration in closing so I can try and bring it right down to earth. Perhaps you have a problem. Let's take a normal, easy everyday problem like keeping your weight under control. God has given you a perfectly healthy appetite, God-given. Okay? There is something in us that has a perfectly healthy desire for cookies. Lots of cookies. Big chocolate chip cookies.

Do you know, three days after I arrived in America, a dear lady from this church arrived at my door with a great big mixing bowl and a lot of big bags from the supermarket. I said, "Hello," I was very shy, and she said, "Hello, I've come to teach you to make chocolate chip cookies." Isn't that nice? Well, I wasn't quite sure whether it was nice or not. I'd never heard of putting chocolate chips in cookies, and I didn't even call them cookies anyway, they were biscuits, and we didn't do that in England. So I wasn't quite sure what was going to happen.

I've been eating them ever since in increasing amounts. There is a part of Amalek in me that loves chocolate chip cookies. Amalek loves them. He eats them in hoards. Now then, I heard about a lady that stopped on the way to work every day, and there was a chocolate chip cookie shop on the corner by the traffic lights. Every time the traffic lights were red, which they usually were, she'd look to the right, and there were these gorgeous newly baked chocolate chip cookies.

So she thought, "Oh, I am so tempted, and I know that I have to deny the flesh and be disciplined. But maybe if God wants me to eat a cookie today, there'll be a parking space just there." So she was driving along and there wasn't. And she thought, "Oh, there isn't a parking space." So in her own words, "The third time around the block..."

I love it. Now, that's not the way you're going to fight Amalek, ladies. Waiting for a parking space to open up. No. But what was happening? She was alone. How does Amalek hit you? When you're isolated, when you're lagging behind. They isolated a few weak people and got in between the source of their help and their support, right?

So we mustn't let that happen. If you're at home, you're a young mom, for example, you bake cookies. You have to bake cookies for kids. Kids cannot survive without chocolate chip cookies. It's part of our culture. At home, you have to make them for your children, but what do you do? I mean, if you're a young mom, no wonder you get fat. You just eat everything they never eat. You make all these nice little meals for them.

What do I need? I need to link into the power of God to help me to say no. I need to remember the rod of God that Jehovah is against Amalek and has declared war on that part of me that is out of control and cannot discipline myself to stop eating chocolate chip cookies. Big problem for some people. You need help. You need Aaron and Hur supporting you, as that little support group praying with you, helping you to fight it. You don't depend on yourself. You don't trust on yourself, but you have to say no. You have to fight the battle. But God will be with you and He'll raise a banner over you. He'll say, "This is My fight. This is My cause. I'll give you all the power you need to fight it. Now, get down there in the valley and fight."

When you do that, you'll win. And that's what Jehovah Nissi means: the Lord is my banner. His the victory, His the war, His the fight. Now, I just become part of it until one day I see Him face to face and I can say no to even heavenly chocolate chip cookies because I'll be perfect.

Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, we thank You for Your grace and Your goodness, and we thank You for the stories in the Bible that, as Paul told us, are examples for us, give us pictures and illustrations of what's happening within our own world and within our own lives. And Lord, this is a very graphic picture, this picture of Amalek, this fleshly hungry nature within us that wants always the worldly fleshly things and would despise the spiritual.

You have declared war on Amalek from generation to generation. You have sent us out to fight a war that is won, and yet we must do our part. And Lord, we pray for those who are struggling with greater problems than chocolate chip cookies. We pray for those who are in the middle of struggling with a part of them that seems to overpower everything spiritual in their lives. We pray that they will go back to these scriptures and remember that You are Jehovah Nissi. You have spread a banner over us, a loving banner that says, "I am for you. I will be all that you need as the occasion arises. I am and I will be." We thank You, Lord. For Christ's sake, Amen.