Overcoming Distractions on the Pathway to Rehoboth

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Telephone numbers 0703 03636 59 0703 76811 98 Email address lsmedia at livingseed.org Or visit our website at www.livingseed.org Let us sit back and listen as the servant of God brings forth the Word of Life. Our Father, this is our response to your grace, your mercy, your loving kindness, your goodness toward us. We already can note with much satisfaction that as you did promise, you will never leave us nor forsake us.

You will be with us all the way. This Rehoboth, you have not sent us into it on our own. You will take us into it.

You are accompanying us even through this Minister's Leadership Retreat that is the call unto Rehoboth. You have demonstrated your determination to bulldoze, to overrun, and to take down every obstacle that stands in our way. Again, we just want to say we are leaning on you completely.

Over the years, you've taught us to know we cannot lean on our own understanding, on our own might or means. We cannot depend on what we can find around or abroad we must look up. And our help, we want to tell you, God, will ever remain you and you alone.

This day, as critical, crucial as it is, in the progression of the dealings you must accumulate and accomplish upon each one of our lives in bringing us fruitfully, effectively into a Rehoboth. Lord, we ask that you will again lead the way for us and provide all that it will take. Please clear the path.

We need a right of way from heaven so that all will go smoothly, effectively, and all will achieve not just success but very good success. We just pray and ask that you will show us mercy as it is your manner so to do unto those who call upon your name. Be exalted, be magnified, for in Jesus' name we have prayed.

Amen. We'd like to mention that again this morning we just want to pray on the very, very crucial issues God began to raise yesterday evening that we are sensing must take their place very firmly and very deeply in our hearts as God must be building line upon line, precept upon precept, as God must be constructing this meeting progressively and very, very cumulatively. We'd like us to take a moment to pray on the issues of the way of Rehoboth, the pathway to Rehoboth, and how that it must be accomplished in the midst of famine.

How would God help each one of us individually to ensure that the distractions and the temptations and the discouragements, the frustrations, and the derailings that the famine, which each one of us must come across on our way to Rehoboth, seem to want to usher us into. How must you personally avoid all of such so as to progress steadily on your Rehoboth journey and the journey that will bring you into that space where the beginnings of your abounding, abiding, and abundant fruitfulness will come upon your life. I'd like us therefore to read again the same Genesis chapter 26, where from verse 1, reading this time from the New King James Version, the Bible says there was a famine in the land, besides the first famine that was in the days of Abraham, and Isaac went to Abimelech king of the Philistines in Gerab.

Then the Lord appeared to him and said, Do not go down to Egypt, live in the land which I shall tell you, dwell in this land, and I will be with you and bless you. For to you and your descendants I give these lands, and I will perform the oath which I swore to Abraham your father, and I will make your descendants multiply as the stars of heaven. I will give to your descendants all these lands, and in your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed.

Because Abraham obeyed my voice and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws, so Isaac dwelt in Gerab. Hallelujah. We'll take a pause at that point, just to first note that God's commitment to bring us to rebirth and to ensure that we possess our possessions, that we enter into our inheritance that he has arranged for our lives, is dependent on his commitment to Jesus.

When they are talking of Abraham here, they are simply using Abraham as the author and finisher of the fate of the Jews in their own situation. They are talking of the initiator of the covenant with God that they were entering into. For you and I, God is saying because of his commitment to Jesus, because of what he has already agreed to do by Christ Jesus, because of the faithfulness of his firstborn son, each and every one of us, you and I, he is committed to our dwelling in his inheritance, our enjoying what he has already promised unto us in Christ, to be the persons who will be the rod of his strength in the land by which he will establish his rule over the nations.

It is because of Jesus, and you know what God has sworn to Christ, he is not a man that he should lie nor the son of man that he should swallow his oath. What he has said, he will do it. What he has spoken, he will make it good.

We can be very well assured and rested on the fact that this journey and our dwelling in this land, this land of promise that was made unto Jesus, it is a settled matter for us. Not because we are so wonderful, but because Jesus has won favor with the Father. A favor that is irreversible, a favor that is unstoppable, a favor that can never, never be overthrown.

For this reason he has made us more than conquerors. Through him who loved us. Now, but note this, that there is a particular path that leads to Rehoboth.

You don't face a different direction and arrive in Rehoboth. You must be following the path that the Almighty God will be guiding your feet into. You must be careful not to miss the direction he will have you to go.

And I notice that on this path there is always a famine. You observed that yesterday. It touched my heart when God pointed to it and kept bringing consistent instances to show us that this was not an accident and it was not a coincidence.

Neither was it a mishap, a bad luck on the part of Isaac. And it's not a bad luck on your own part or as regarding your life that you will meet a famine. A famine perhaps of lack of necessity.

A famine that could be associated with lack of force to do what God wanted you to do. A famine which means a lack. And in our various lands we have famine.

Famine that is the lack of justice. Famine that is the lack of peace. The famine that has brought violence.

The famine that has made people intolerant with one another. That will make the Philistines to keep finding reason to quarrel for no just cause. A famine that has brought corruption to our land.

A famine that is a lack of genuine faithfulness and accountability. A famine that has made life very very difficult for everybody. Even those that are part of a raging famine themselves are suffering the famine.

Now but the point here is that it is in the midst of famine that God decides to glorify the life he has decided to favor. It looks as if when God gives you opportunity to step into his purpose, the first thing that will greet you as you arrive will be a famine. And the reason is he wants to use the famine to prove and to showcase and to demonstrate your commitment to him as the basis of the favor he will grant you in the midst of men.

For God must remain just, must remain a God that is not a respecter of persons. So he must allow you to pass through the famine others also will experience. Right in the midst of his will.

Right in the center of his purpose. Right where it is he that said this is the land that I have spoken unto you dwell here. Where he said you should dwell.

Brethren it is not strange that a famine is on your path. Now yesterday God clearly told us that the response is not to start looking around for greener pastures. How many of our brethren became useless in the hand of God because they left where God will have them to be planted to serve him and they have gone in search of greener pastures.

Everywhere you have gone to outside where God asked you to be the last time you head in. Where so ever you have been moved to by whatever situation or circumstance that is what is called Egypt. The Egypt God is talking to us about is not the physical Egypt towards the horn of Africa.

It is not the country of Egypt nor the land of Egypt as we know it. For your information God is very favorable to Egypt. In fact Egypt as a country as a land is a place God gave command even to Israel to be careful not to attack Egypt anyhow.

And it is Egypt that has first signed even an agreement, a diplomatic agreement has entered into an agreement to live together peacefully even with Israel in the midst of all of the Arabs before the others are beginning to join in now. Please note therefore brethren, our brethren in Egypt this is not about having an ill idea about Egypt just like our brother mentioned yesterday. We are talking about a principle, an illustration.

And why were they going to Egypt? It's because God blessed Egypt. Let's note that it is not because Egypt was a bad place. Now why are people rushing to the US? Why are people rushing? We are having immigrant problems or people rushing into Europe.

They are searching for greener pastures if you ask them. And so there is also a brain drain. And unfortunately there is also a brain drain of believers.

Our engineers, our doctors, our pharmacists, our lawyers, various of our professions and particularly our university professors. They are rushing in various directions where they felt they would have better pay and more comfortable living and practicing conditions. This could look naturally advisable.

But as a believer, go not down to Egypt is the instruction God was bringing yesterday. Do not go down to Egypt. Now whereas an Egyptian in Egypt is living well and is actually in the purpose of God if he knew God and is serving God there.

But you who lives where God has asked you to be and you are heading to Egypt, you are going down. Your own going is down because you are living the most high in order to seek help where you will never find any. Now any life that is heading to Egypt, brethren, any life that is abandoning where God will have you be, sometimes it's just a village that God said be here but things are getting tougher and tougher.

You are not even finding proper school to send your children to. You are not even finding proper provision for your livelihood. And yet here are opportunities in the next city not too far from here.

And God is saying go not down to Egypt. That doesn't mean everybody else in that city is in a wrong place. But for you it is a wrong place to leave that village where God will have you to stay.

He says stay in this land. What the people in the town, in the city are not able to access, the joy, the fulfillment of life, the measure of the righteousness of God, of his kingdom, that gives us that wholesome rest in life that they can't find there, the keeping of the most high that they do not know many of them. When you stay in this village that is the land that God asked you to stay, you will experience it.

You will step into it. You will know your way over there and your walk with God will keep progressing in that direction. Go not down to Egypt.

Yesterday one of the steps God was clearly bringing out is that if you made any project to displace yourself or your hope from where it is God that brought you there and you are heading somewhere according to counsel of men or the imagination of your heart or perhaps what you have found on the internet as you were browsing in the language of today. Go not down to Egypt. Don't let anything move you if it is not the word of the Lord that came to you saying go to such and such a place.

Otherwise, actually the kind of brain drain is a drain of God's grace. It's a drain of the purpose and plan of God for his own people that is draining away. Now, but the point is every family was deliberate.

Yes, whatever is uncomfortable, inconvenient we can associate with the devil because he's the one who is the God and the life of bad things. But God himself opened court for a family. In the days of Elijah it was from God that Elijah received a family.

Now, I'm really wondering that if God will introduce a man, he arranges a family. It's like he's in the midst of an environment that looks impossible that he introduces a life that is living on heaven and not on the produce of earth. Not depending on the circumstances around not relying on the economy of the nations that are here.

Somebody that will continue to be robust will keep growing and becoming great and going forward and becoming even very great in the midst of family is the life that God wants to use in his generation. And for this reason it is in the darkness that God will have our life that is light to shine. And so, when gross darkness has covered the people when great darkness has covered our land that's when God is ready to move.

That's when he's ready to manifest his sons so that all creation will see and will recognize the manifestation of the sons of God. Now, to observe, therefore that you don't become discouraged or disenchanted or become disappointed with God and in his will, why are things so hard and dry? Why is life becoming difficult? Let's note this. When the famine comes that's when we know who is standing in faith depending on God and who was depending on his natural means.

That's when God is able to separate those that are in his hand from those that are in the hand of the world system. Those that are operating by natural resources. It is in the midst of the famine that he will want to draw you close to know him to be able to understand his ways and to know his thoughts to develop an even more robust devotional intimacy with him to have communion with God that is getting more and more personal and more and more intimate in the midst of the famine.

God wants to showcase the quality that he has put in you in the midst of the famine. He wants your light to become even all the more evident in the midst of darkness. And the greater the darkness the more for him the opportunity for your light to shine even brighter.

For him it is the opportunity to cause you to be a city set on a hill that cannot be healed. I want to note therefore as issues for us to pray again this morning that each time as things seem to get tougher and tougher Isaac will draw closer and closer to God. I want to observe that at the end when Elimelech and his people they came down to form an alliance with Isaac just to save their skin because they are afraid of him.

Do note what he said in verse 28. They said unto Isaac we have certainly seen that the Lord is with you. So we said let there now be an oath between you and us and let us make a covenant with you.

The issue is he said we have certainly seen that the Lord is with you. The famine is only an opportunity in the midst of the land for the people to see the difference. For the people to acknowledge that you live on the mercy of God and that that mercy is better than their own human arrangements.

For the people to acknowledge that you are actually drawing from above. Now he uses that as a means of evangelism. It's the first point God begins to advertise his man by his being able to survive in famine and being able to survive on the provisions of the invisible God.

And I can observe that these people their comment was we have certainly seen it's like they watched for a while. They tried everything. And you know in their trying they are throwing more wedges into his wheel.

They are trying to frustrate him more and more. They are blocking the words. Hallelujah.

But in all of it they are only seeking to find out how far. They are only seeking to discover how deep he is rooted in that source that is eternal and is invisible. And when all failed and they saw that rather he entered his railroads.

And they found that he even moved from the railroads wasn't anything big for him and went and settled in Beersheba. And even in Beersheba it was called Beersheba because there was a bear that they found again. The well of Sheba.

To observe all of this they had to come to say it looks as if you have a secret that we have not found. God wants to project your life in that community in that village in that settlement on that farm settlement in that profession in that travel in that calling or career he wants you to be projected as a life that nobody can overthrow. A life that nobody can overrun a life that nobody can ignore.

So that he will manifest his faithfulness by your life. So that he will prove that a person who enters into covenant with you is the one that has made the best choice of life. It is from there God begins to now give you a word of testimony.

I found that when God would use Jesus apart from the physical hunger he had to pass through and face the devil and prove himself faithful to the father God now sent him to go and dwell in Naftali. Naftali and Zebulun to dwell in the midst of those terrible people where darkness was thickest in Israel the Bible said. So that the people who sat in darkness who sat in the region of the shadow of death will see a great light.

It is when they saw the light that his gospel became penetrating became piercing became very effective and was able to draw lives unto the Lord very very easily. I want you to know that the famine you are experiencing is only opportunity for you to know God better. It is only opportunity for you to prove him more.

It is only opportunity for you to shine even brighter in your commitment to him to bring your consecration to him It is only opportunity for God to find occasion to bring you into your Rehoboth. It is only opportunity for God to use you to advertise himself in the midst of our generation. The way into Rehoboth is a way in famine and it is very deliberate.

It is God's way. Now, but one thing I needed to note as we go on now to pray is the fact that do you notice that the wells that Abraham dug he also had problems digging his wells but the wells he dug and was drinking from when he died, the Philistines closed that well all of those wells. Isaac had to come and do a fresh digging.

Look, you cannot just drink on the wells of another life that you are operating under. In our discovering the source of the fountains of living waters that God provides for us in our communion with him each one of us must go to business and dig his own wells. Yes, of course everyone after Abraham faced his own famine.

Each person that came had to face his own personal famine. But also, each person that came, even if he was inheriting an Abraham that had so much and was so powerful and had many wells already dug they had to be closed off for Isaac to dig his own. And I was reading of wells that Jacob also dug.

It was near Jacob's well outside the city of Sycam that Jesus met the Samaritan woman if you remember. And that particular well he bequeathed it to Joseph. He handed it over to Joseph as an inheritance.

I want you to observe that each one of us must bend down and personally seek God. You must personally bend down and dig the wells to discover God in your life. You know, digging wells in the dry season when there's famine is not the same as digging wells when rain is falling patcha patcha patcha all over the place.

These are wells it needs to dig in the famine. You need to be deliberate, you need to be concentrated, you need to be focused, you need to give your all as God was saying yesterday to pursue what God has called you to do in the land. To establish yourself in the purpose of God.

You need to give your all, you need to sow yourself in it. We were noting that the sowing was not the sowing of some seed of guinea corn or of maize or of rice or of wheat or of hay. It wasn't the sowing of granotes.

It was the sowing of Isaac. Isaac sowed himself. He sowed all that he eats, all that he does in the pursuit of what God will have him to become in his hand in the land.

And God caused him to multiply by that. Brother, bend down to dig your own wells. Don't be hoping to survive on the well of your father that is a big preacher and is communing with God daily and it's evident he hears God and so he always is able to deliver you from time to time when you will have made a terrible mistake.

No! You won't survive like that because Abraham will die. And you will need to be able to know this God personally as to be able to walk with him also personally. Finally, would you like to note that the Bible said that when ever God spoke to Isaac all he needed do was whatever that means that God said he obeys him.

Apart from his devotional life he continually obeyed God. When God says don't go down to Egypt, he didn't go. And so complications were less in Isaac's life.

I noted that this was improving with the generations. Even for Jacob it took a problem for his sons to convince him that it's Joseph that is saying we should come to Egypt. He didn't want to go.

There is famine in the land, that's true. Egypt has plenty food is usually the case. But he will not move.

I kept noting that there was improvement with the generations. Now, is there a consecration you knew with some that have gone ahead of us? Is there a consecration you knew with some that are still living, that are still ahead of you? God expects your consecration, your revolt against disobedience against God, your deficience to ever remain where God will have you be, and to keep doing what he will have you do, no matter the famine and the opposition you face. He, Isaac kept obeying, and it is the obedience that brought him steadily into his level board, and into the greatness, and the inheritance of the covenant, much more importantly, that we know of him today.

But, in the same vein, in that verse 25, after that God, having seen his obedience, came to speak with him, in verse 24, and the Lord appeared to him in the same night, and said, I am the God of your father Abraham, do not fear, do not fear, brother, is it fear that is making you disobedient? Is it this sense of self- security, they call it social security, say, arrange for your tomorrow, and when you start approaching 60, they say, start planning for your retirement, because very soon you won't be strong enough to arrange anything, arrange it now. Is it the fear of tomorrow? Is it the fear sometimes of your own children? Is it the fear of perhaps your family generally? Or even the fear of adversity? God said, do not fear, for I am with you. I was observing consistently that God is saying, what we should cherish above all, is not houses, is not lands, is not vehicles, is not even marriage, is not children, what we should cherish, never to lose that we possess, should be the Lord that is with us.

A clear confirmation, a clear evidence that the Lord is with you. My brother, my sister, if you secure that, you have secured everything, because you have Him who has all. You possess Him who is the possessor of all, and who is able to bring you into all that He has planned, however things may turn out.

I am noting here that when Isaac received this confirmation, in verse 25, he built an altar there. He built an altar there, as if to mark his conviction and his faith on the promise of God. When we talk of building altar, it's not a fetish practice.

It's not a physical arranging of things in a place where you have built altar. The building of altar for us means marking an experience by a definite consecration to God which you also note down where you will never forget. This noting down can be in your notebook, it can even be in your Bible with date and time and place, so that when you come back to check, it reminds you of that experience you had with God.

Brother, are you building altars? Ever since you claimed that you've been saved, you've met the Lord, you've been converted, you have received the life of Jesus, it's now been probably up to five years. How many experiences that you had with God that transformed your life, that brought fresh knowledge of Him, that equips you to even work with Him more effectively? Have you marked as an altar? Have you marked as a reference point of your work with God that you will never again ignore or forget? I want you to pray on these few issues immediately, and I want you to ask God, again, as we began to pray yesterday, could it be I'm already on my way? When Isaac moves to Gera, Gera is still in the land of the Philistines, so it's still in Palestine, it hasn't left to where God would have it to dwell. And God saw the direction He's going.

He was probably in His heart planning later on, at least, to go further. And God said, no, the way I see you, your eye is looking at Egypt. Go not down to Egypt.

Maybe you haven't left yet, Oprah, but the way God is in your heart is beginning to regret the land where He sent you. You are beginning to ask questions, did I get it right? When Abraham would not go to Egypt to receive more assurance from God, he concluded that even if this is the will of God for me, maybe it's not now. And he moved, unfortunately, to Egypt.

But you, brother, if there was a progression in commitment to stay where God will have us to stay, I want you to determine today. Even the thought of going to Egypt that God saw in Isaac should not be in you at all. Even the concentration to abandon where He has posted you, thinking that there is greener pasture anywhere else, should never cross your mind.

Would you like to pray today, to say, Lord, deliver me from every such temptation to be swept, of course, of course, from the path that is taking me to my Rehoboth. Of course, I still didn't know Rehoboth will soon come. When he started off and things were so tough, well, graciously, though we didn't know when Rehoboth will come, he has come to announce it now.

You know Rehoboth is on your path. Again, God repeated it yesterday evening. On your pathway there is a Rehoboth, and you should focus on it, never, never to be robbed of it.

I want you to say, Lord, help my heart. Would you like to all stand where you are and let's begin to pray in the next five minutes and we'll be through. Lord, help my heart.

Lord, show me mercy. O God, the grace of consistency, the grace of an abiding faithfulness in you. Even when the family is still here, Lord help me.

Others have gone and they are rising back from Egypt to say they have already gathered so many sheep and so many oxen plus a hatter. And it's looking like oh, they are doing well. There are many maidservants and many, many maidservants.

But Lord, you are saying I should abide here. Help me, O God, to fear not. Brother, sister, can you ask God to deliver you from fear? Fear of whatever danger may come on you, even when you are under God's hands.

Who is the great provider? Who is the good shepherd? Who protects like no one else can do? Would you ask that God would cause your heart never to allow the fear that the enemy ministers to gain access to your heart? And would you like to pray? Would you like to pray to say, Lord, from today cause my heart to be set to obey you no matter what I see around me, no matter what anybody says, no matter what I can even myself feel, no matter what I pass through, I realize that this is the normal way, the normal composure that will take me all the way to rehabilitation. This is what I must follow. I want you to say, Lord, a life of obedience at any cost, knowing I'm heading to Rehoboth.

I am not walking endlessly. I'm in the hand of a very well-organized God, and He knows the road. No matter the kind of experiences I may pass through, a sect may be on the road, a citizen may be on the road, but I'm coming to Rehoboth.

So I must remain obedient to follow the Lord, to continue to do according to your will, and how is your own altar? How is your devotional life? Do you wake up like I do? First thing in the morning, sometimes it's 1 a.m., sometimes it's 2 a.m. I'm just praying God to wake me up at the right moment, and sometimes maybe 4 a.m. But before people have woken up and those announcing useless meetings are doing crying about to disturb the town, before they can wake up, I have met the Lord. Before the cry for prayer that is going on in some other religious houses, I have woken up in order to meet my God. Would you like to do like Isaac, who also would wake up early to build an altar unto God, to commune with the Lord thereon, that you will be able to speak with God based on the dealings that you are discovering in His Word.

What is speaking to you? Do you wake up to read your Bible and hear God talk to you and to speak back to God and to worship Him? Today, it is not bulls and calves and rams that we offer unto God in thanksgiving. It is our praise and our obedience and our consecration to say, Lord, I'm all yours. I renew it again.

I will only live for you. Lord, show me mercy as I continue to walk day by day that I will keep on the track that leads me to the Rehoboth and the final inheritance of the covenant that you have given to me in Christ Jesus. Now, as you stand, are you asking God to do anything particularly of such with your life? Just raise your hand where you are.

I want to pray with you where you are standing as you raise that hand. I just want God to respond to the decisions you are making. You must not miss Rehoboth.

God even said that again yesterday that no, it's not correct. In fact, it's already settled that you must enter your Rehoboth. Don't be the one who is spoiling by branching off to Egypt.

Lord, I will not branch to Egypt. No seer will delay me. Can you raise the hand as we pray together now to conclude? Father, I pray with each one of these, my sisters and my brothers.

Lord, cause, O God, that all the wives, every trick of the devil to arrange discouragement in the midst of any family will never, never work on his or her life as we ask you in mercy. Please, God, cause him to become rooted and grounded in Christ, built up in him, unshakeable that no wind, no rain, no storm coming can cause him to come down, can cause him to begin to compromise, to begin to reconsider his consecration, his commitment, his devotion to obey God in Christ Jesus. Cause their hearts to remain focused.

Cause their hearts to continue to receive all that you are building into them to guarantee the fulfillment of your counsel in their lives and in each and every one of our lives. Be exalted and be magnified, O Lord, to you be glory forever and ever. For in Jesus' name we have prayed.

Amen.