The Healing Word

Pastor Jack Morris: Friend, listen, God is the God of the valleys. Things happen, bad things happen to even good people, but if we'll trust God and believe God, God can take a bad thing and make a good thing out of it.

Guest (Male): Welcome to The Healing Word, a ministry dedicated to offering strength and encouragement through God's word for anyone facing life's challenges. Today's message is here to meet you at your point of need, bringing hope and renewing your faith. Here's Pastor Jack Morris.

Pastor Jack Morris: God of the valleys. Now what I'm going to be talking about today, we're going to be first talking about literal mountains, like you see on the screen now, and literal valleys, like you see on the screen. But we're going to spiritualize that and talk about it in a spiritual sense that we have high experiences in the Lord. We'll call those the mountain experiences. We're up there praising the Lord high. But then we also have some low times in our life when we're down in the valley and we're not in the sunshine of the mountain's presence of God.

Everybody is somewhere today. We're either up on the mountain and if you're there, stay there as long as you can and keep rejoicing because soon you're going to come down. And if you're in the valley, look to the Lord because he's going to lift you and bless you and encourage you. But the scripture tells us that there were two kings: King Ahab, the king of Israel, and King Ben-Hadad, that was a king of a nation that is now called Syria, modern Syria. And it was at that time a very pagan nation. They did not believe in the God of Israel. They did not believe in the God that you and I know whose son's name is Jesus Christ.

These two kings eventually went to war with each other. And what caused the war was that King Ben-Hadad sent a message to Israel that he wanted Israel to give his nation all of their silver, all of their gold, all of their women, all of their children, and anything and everything of value, he wanted it. And he thought that King Ahab of Israel would just acquiesce and say, "Yes, it's yours," because Israel had a very small army, a very inferior army. They were absolutely no match for that great army that Syria had. So King Ben-Hadad thought, "They'll not go to war with us, they'll just send all that I'm requesting."

But a prophet of God went to King Ahab, the king of Israel, and told him that God will fight for you. Don't back down, don't become a coward at this time that you are being threatened like you are and the people of Israel. God will fight for you, God will stand with you, and you will win the battle. Now I know even today in this assembly, there are those who are in some very difficult, tight places. But I want you to know: don't back down, keep your focus on God because God will fight and win the battle for you if you'll look to him and trust him.

God is here for you and that's why I'm praying. Hear the word of God, for the word of God will empower you, liberate you, and cause you to be a champion. God's word will do that, it'll build faith in you. Well, King Ahab believed what the prophet said. And I'm praying that you'll believe what I'm saying this morning because it'll work for you, too. King Ahab believed and he got his armies together and those two kings and their armies attacked each other. Well, that little army so overpowered the big army that the big army fled and was defeated by the little army because God was with the little army.

Friend, you're not as little as you think you are. You're a spiritual giant when you're filled with the Holy Spirit and you have Jesus in your heart. You can win every battle. Did you hear me? You can win every battle, not some of them, but all of them because God is there where you are in that situation that you're in. Look to him and trust him. Now there came then an advisor to King Ben-Hadad and told King Ben-Hadad, "You know why they won? Because their God, Israel's God, is the God of the mountains."

Now in those days, they believed, and that was a pagan nation, they believed that there were local gods or regional gods. That if there were the gods of the mountains, those gods could only deal with people and situations in the mountains. And then there were gods of the valleys and those gods could only help and deal with people and situations in the valleys. The gods couldn't come out of the mountains and go into the valleys because they were the mountain gods. So they said those Israelites are followers of the gods of the mountain.

Now the reason they came by that theory was the Ten Commandments were given on a mountain, Mount Sinai. The temple was built on Mount Moriah. Jerusalem, seven mountains around it. The contest between the prophets of Baal and the prophet Elijah, when the fire came down, that great contest on Mount Carmel, that was on a mountain. And so everything that was happening with Israel always happened on the mountain and it was for their good. So they came to the conclusion, and since they believed in local gods, regional gods, Israel is following the gods of the mountain. It's the gods of the mountain that's helping them.

But this advisor said to King Ben-Hadad, "If we somehow sucker them into the valley, get them to follow us into the valley onto the plains, we'll win. We'll be able to maneuver our chariots. We can't maneuver our chariots up in the mountains very well, but we can and we'll win." But little did they know that the God of Israel, the Jehovah God, is the Almighty God and he's God over all. So don't limit God to a particular problem and say God can fix that one, but now I've been hit with this one.

That same God that fixed the old one will fix the new one. He's a God that heals, blesses, and makes everything right as we look to him and trust him. We sang that chorus, "Our God Reigns," and he's the God of the mountain as well as the God of the valley. Can you say amen? This is what God can do. So they went into the valley and they had a war, these two kings came against each other. Now I don't know why they did it, but it says that in the spring the kings went to war.

I guess in the winter it was too cold to fight, in the summer it was too hot to fight, so they wanted to fight in the cool weather. So they waited. King Ben-Hadad got his armies regrouped, he got as many people, as many chariots, as many horses as he lost, got them together, and he attacked again. But the same God that won the battle last year won the battle this year and Israel was victorious all over again. Now this is what God can do. And I want you to think today where you are and the battle you're fighting or the valley you're in or the mountaintop you're rejoicing on.

Wherever you are, God is there. God is where I am, God is where you are, and he is God over all. I want you to put on the screen, if you would please, Isaiah 43:2. And let's read it and look at it as you do and let faith come into your heart as you read the word of God. Here's truth. Read it with me in unison: "When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze."

God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in time of trouble, in time of need. Now notice what it said: God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in time of trouble or in time of need. A present help, a right now help. Not someday, but today is the day of salvation. This is the day the Lord has made. And God is doing great things right now for God's people if we'll look to him and trust him, he will do it. Now here are some of the places that we experience those down times, those times we get in the valley. I'll only name a few of them.

Financial troubles. That can put us down in the valley, I suppose, just as quick or quicker than maybe many and many other things. When a person has financial trouble, it seems to stay in their mind and they begin to question: where's the money coming from to pay these bills? The income does not match the outgo. And so you begin to ask yourself: how can I get more money? What can I do? Now notice what I'm saying: I, what can I? Friends, you'll never be able to match the problem and bring the victory.

But as you look to the Lord, see, these financial problems, they're with us all the time. They're with us at home, they're with us going to work, they're with us when we're at church. That's some of the clutter and it'll put you down and it'll put a pall, a grayness over your spirit because you know you're behind and you just don't know how to catch up. If you're here today, you're in the right place because you've got a God that answers prayer. He's the Almighty and he reigns. But you need to start looking to him and bring it to him.

Another is sometimes a child or your children. A person called me just the other day, a single mother. And she raised this child all these years by herself. Now the child was arrested because some kind of drug was found on this child. And the mother called me and we talked on the phone and she started telling me, opening her heart, she was down, she was having a valley experience. She said, "I raised him right, I raised him in the church, I did all that I knew to do, I did the best I could." What she's doing, she's putting herself in the valley, she's taking the blame for all of this.

I said, "No, you did the right thing. You did raise him right. You were a good mother, but he is a man. He has a choice, he made the wrong choice. But it might be good that he got in problems now than later on to get in deeper problems because he thought it could never happen to me." So sometimes God in mercy will allow things to happen to us to get our attention and to help us to wake up to reality. And so this mother now is down in the valley, but God's going to help her out.

There are people who are down in the valley sometimes because of aging parents. They love their parents, they're doing everything they can to help their parents. But their parents are requiring so much of their time. Their parents are requiring so much of their finances and their money. And they have their own family, their nuclear family now to take care of, but these parents. And so they're depressed or down. They love their parents, they want to help, but the drain. These are problems that are real that come to lots of people. And finally, you're here, you're one of them that is experiencing.

Maybe a loss of health. What happens if you lose your health or you don't have health and you're praying that you'll get well and your prayer hasn't been answered and you're still ill, you're still sick? It can put you down. If you had an opportunity for a promotion and somebody else got the promotion. You prayed for that promotion, you wanted to get it, you believed God was going to give it to you. You've been tithing your income and then somebody else got it. And you said, "God, why? What happened here? Why did they get it?" I mean, that can put you down and maybe even disturb your faith in God and maybe become a little bit angry at God.

Now I know no one here ever gets angry at God, right? No, that's not us. Or you didn't pass that exam that you thought you were and you prayed and it didn't happen and you're wanting to know why. I mean, there are any number of things that can bring you down and put you in the valley. I've only named some that I thought of, but there are others and maybe I haven't named yours. But you know you're in a valley experience. But God, listen, God is the God of the valleys, not only the mountaintop. We want to be on the mountaintop, we want to be up there shouting and having a wonderful good time.

Well, everybody likes a wonderful good time, don't they? That can become very selfish. I just want to be blessed, I want to be blessed, I want to be blessed. And God is saying: I want to make you like my son. If you suffer with him, you'll also reign with him. So there's got to be a little bit of suffering in there so that we can become a little bit more like Jesus. He did a lot of suffering, didn't he? He really did. But this is the God that we serve.

I want to tell you about a woman from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She and her husband were having marital difficulties. Things weren't going right in and it had been bad between them for some time. They had a boy named Paul, 13 years old. They had an older son who grew up and got out of the house, moved out of the house, and he's going on with his own life. But the mother thought, "Well, maybe if we'll take a vacation together, my husband and I, we need some time and maybe we can do something to correct this difference that we have between the two of us and we have young Paul and just a couple of more years, Paul's not going to want to take vacations with his parents and maybe we ought to take and value this time with Paul."

So they left Pittsburgh and went down to Nags Head, North Carolina, and they rented a condominium. Well, they got there and it was late in the evening. They went to a grocery store and they got some groceries in to help them during the week that they were there. And the husband paid for the and the cashier rang it up. And just then the mother, the wife, saw this ring. And it was made out of coral. And she picked it up and put it on her finger, it just fit. Only cost two dollars. And she said, "Oh, I'd like to have this ring." And the husband, they weren't getting along at all, well, he just about, I don't know what, "I'm not buying that ring, we're not buying that ring."

And so she said she just backed off because she didn't want to start an argument. They were on vacation, she was trying her best to work things out, and no need having a fight or an argument, a conflict over two dollars. So they went back to the condominium and went to bed. And she said, "We both, my husband and I, were in the same bed," she said, "but there was an ocean between us," she said, "continents apart." She said in the morning when I woke up, he was on his back with his eyes wide open looking up at the ceiling. And she said, "I turned, bleary-eyed, looked at him," and he said, "When we get home, I'm leaving you. I'm not going to, you're not going to be my wife anymore. I'm leaving."

She said it just, she felt it was like a nightmare. She said she got up, put her clothes on, walked out on the beach. She said it was still dusk, the birds weren't even up yet. No footprints, nobody on the beach. And said she just walked down the beach, stunned. Hoping against hope that maybe a vacation would help. But instead of that, he's and she suspicioned that he was in love with his secretary and he was leaving her. And he did leave her.

And she said she walked down the beach and she saw this bottle floating in the water right at the shore and she picked it up and there was something in it and she shook it out. And there were two-dollar bills tied up real tight in a triangle. Real tight. And covered with mildew and dirty. And she said and took a few more steps and there was that store had that ring in it. The man was just opening it up. She walked in with those two dirty dollar bills and she bought that ring and she put it on her finger and she said, "Man, that felt so good."

And she went back to the condominium and she said when I got back to the condominium, she said 13-year-old Paul was there who heard what had happened, knew what was going on. And he said he just walked up to me, said he put his arms around me and he said, "Mom, are you all right?" She said that they went home. Husband left, went off with his secretary. And she says, "Paul and I were on our own." She said, "I had never worked," she said, "I never had a job." She's a college graduate, she said, "But I never worked." Said the only thing I ever did was sell cosmetics from door to door.

She said, "I didn't know what we were going to do." She said, "But I got a job teaching school and Paul did some work." And she said, "We made it. I raised him." And she says when he was old enough, she said he joined the Air Force. And she said, "My, was he handsome in that uniform." She said, "I just couldn't stop taking pictures." She said, "I just took pictures and pictures and pictures." And he went off to Saudi Arabia during that Desert Storm and Qatar. And she said she took about 12 trips to overseas to various places where they were stationed so that she could see that young man.

Now the young man had got married and he had had two sons, and she just loved those two grandsons of hers. And she said when Paul was about 45 years old, he was stricken with cancer. And the doctor only gave him two months to live. And Paul called his mother and he said, "Mom," he said, "pray for me." Isn't that wonderful when your kids ask you to pray for them? Isn't that wonderful? God bless you parents who raise your children to believe in prayer and to know God. And if they don't believe in prayer and they don't know God, you raise them the best you can. They have a will of their own, they've made up their own minds, but God knows how to turn them around and bring them back.

But Paul prayed and asked his mother to pray and she prayed. Two months went by, he was still living. Four months, he was still alive. Six months. She said, "I was so happy, I was on such a high, God was answering our prayers." She said, "My, I was just way up there on the mountaintop." She said, "Eight months, Paul died." Back down in the valley. This woman has had experience over experience in the valley with a few mountaintops.

She said she went to the graveside. At the graveside, she said, "My, they were playing taps." And she said, "I pinched my eyes shut as hard as I could pinch them shut," she said, "because I knew if I started crying, I'd never be able to stop." And she says and after the taps, she said they had a drum and it kept beating it sort of a rhythm to it. She said, "Then I heard some footsteps and I opened my eyes," and said it was the two honor guards with the American flag. And she says they were folding it end over end over end over end. And then they tucked it in the middle and then they came over and presented it to me. The form of a triangle. The form of that two-dollar triangle.

Little Paul saying, "Mom, are you all right?" And he grew up with his mother, she kept him in the church and in the Lord. And she said when she got that, all those memories came back and she said I touched that flag, the form of a triangle. And she said my burden lifted. She said somehow God came to me. I remembered that young boy, I remembered his faith, how we lived together, how we served God together. Friend listen, God is the God of the valleys. Things happen, bad things happen to even good people. But if we'll trust God and believe God, God can take a bad thing and make a good thing out of it. He's God Almighty, he's our God, he's the God that reigns forever and forever.

Wouldn't you like to be happy all the time? Filled with joy all the time? Shouting and praising God all the time? But it can't be that way. God doesn't design our lives to be like that. Jesus knew they couldn't stay on that mountain. Why? Because there was a demon-possessed boy in the valley. He needed down there. There are valleys, there are valleys, and we find ourselves sometimes in the valley. But you know where Jesus is? He's in the valley with the demon-possessed. And he comes down to that demon-possessed boy, to that father that was almost out of his mind because of his love for his son.

There were nine disciples, saintly disciples in the valley with that father and with that demon-possessed boy, and they prayed and prayed, but they couldn't cast the demons out. There are times that it's just you and Jesus. Just you and Jesus. Let me say it again: just you and Jesus. And when that happens and you realize it, and you realize that he's there with you, and he's there all the time and he is with you, but the problem is we don't realize it. Our mind is just so full of clutter. We have aged parents to take care of, we have a wayward son, we have a wayward daughter, we have bills to pay that we don't know how.

Our mind is just so filled with clutter that God can't get through to heal and to make whole and to deliver us. Friend, it's you and Jesus. And when Jesus got down there, that boy was healed, wonderfully, miraculously made whole. When you and I can get to the place where we can look to Jesus, love Jesus, obey Jesus. Listen, God's not going to look over your sin and still bless you. No, you've got to come clean with God because God already knows what's going on.

You have some sons and daughters, you don't know how they're going to turn out. They might turn out like you and cause you to be very disappointed with them because they may not obey the Lord. If there's sin in your life today, confess it. If there's something wrong, tell it to the Lord. Take it to him. Whatever it is, Jesus is here. Jesus is here. And when you recognize his presence, when you acknowledge his presence, when you look to him, then the victory comes, the healing comes, the blessing of God comes.

Guest (Male): We hope that today's message has been a blessing and has strengthened your faith in God. But before we go, here is Pastor Jack Morris with a special invitation.

Pastor Jack Morris: I want to thank you for your past support to The Healing Word Ministries. Your prayers and financial gifts have kept this ministry on the air. You have been a great blessing because you have a passion for souls. Friend, your prayers and generosity will take the Healing Word into the future where eternal souls wait. Souls who need Christ, souls who need healing, need forgiveness, need his love. I'll be frank: I can't do it without you. I need you. I love you and I thank God for giving you to me to pray and support this ministry. Together we're soul winners for the Lord. Please send an offering and help me with this ministry. Thank you and God bless you. I'm Pastor Morris.

Guest (Male): Go to thehealingword.com and click the donate button to pledge your support. And remember, the faith-building message you heard today is our gift to you. Your donation is your gift to God. Join us tomorrow for another Healing Word message. Until then, blessings on you.