As we continue to discuss the powerful and meaningful mission of following the Lord, we give a closer look at the miracles we experience in our lives. You are called to do whatever He tells you to do, and something magical will surely happen next. Miracles may not always be as we expect them to be, but Jesus knows what’s best for us, what we deserve, and what we are praying for. Our understanding may not fathom the Lord’s plans for us, but He is with us every step of the way should we choose to follow Him. With Jesus, everything is possible. After all, He is the way!
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Whatever He Tells You To Do, Do It! (Part 3)
We’re going to be continuing on, but I highly doubt that we’ll be finishing up our new series titled, Whatever He Tells You To Do, Do It. I want to take a moment and pray. I’m going to recap a bit for those who weren’t with us for that first episode where this series began. I want us to dive through all God has for us as we go line upon line in some areas in Genesis and other areas. I’ll be summarizing. I want to give you everything God has given me and utilize the time to do it. I’ll recap more briefly than I do.
Let’s pray like we always do. I thank you, Heavenly Father, for this opportunity to get at the feet of your son, Jesus, and hear His wonderful life-transforming words. I thank you, God, for you’ve poured out your spirit of wisdom upon us and given us revelation in the knowledge of Jesus. I thank you that the eyes of our understanding are being enlightened all the more and you are causing us God to fully know the hope of His calling, the fullness of the riches of His glory, His inheritance in us, the saints and the exceeding greatness of His power towards us, who believe according to the working of His, not ours, but His mighty power. I thank you, Lord Jesus, that you showed joy. You will in fact expound on the scriptures to us about the things concerning yourself. I thank you that we will see how beautiful you are, how wonderful you are, how lovely you are, how powerful you are.
I thank you that as we be hold you the Holy Spirit, God, that you will allow to dwell in us that same Holy Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead is doing a great lasting work inside of us and transforming us into the very same image of your son. I thank you, Daddy, that in your light, we see light. I thank you and I praise you that your word is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path. I thank you, God, that your word is your son, Jesus. You’re not releasing revelation and knowledge only about Him. You are releasing Him and I thank you, God, for all the power, all the divine protection, all the provision, all the goodness that ever was and ever could be that comes, God, when the Lord is with us and the Lord is His word. You’re releasing His word into our life, homes, work places. We receive God. Every good thing you have for us in Jesus name, we pray.
I’ll recap a little bit. Don’t hold me too much to it. I’m going to try to recap very briefly. We started talking about where this podcast came from, where did the idea for this particular podcast series come from. I believe God is reminding us of a very simple, yet very powerful truth, the power of allowing Jesus to lead us. God is reminding us that the Lord is our shepherd. He leads us and He guides us. The power of allowing him to do so, the power of taking wisdom and direction from the Lord and following it, operating in it, walking in it, using it, allowing Jesus to serve us in that manner.
I do say that respectfully, but Jesus said, “The son of man didn’t come to be served, but He came to serve.” Jesus is fulfilling the will of God when He serves us. We are doing the will of God when we allow Him too. I praise God for the humility and the love that’s in God and in His son. For Him working His love and His humility in us even as we do what we’re doing now and get at His feet and hear His word. We also briefly went over Isaiah 55. God was reminding us that His ways are not our way.
Not only is there power and there’s necessity in us following Christ and doing whatever He tells us to do. There is a need to remind us also that His ways are not our ways. They’re much higher. They’re better. They don’t differ. If they do differ, they differ in this. His is better. We may have a good idea like I like to say, but it may not necessarily be a God idea. We have some knowledge, but our knowledge and our wisdom is limited in this regard. We don’t know as much as God does.
God even prophesies. He speaks to us. He gives us dreams. He shows us things and discerns things to us, but it’s in part. God knows even the end and the beginning. As a matter of fact, He is end and the beginning. He declares the end and the beginning. We don’t have all of that knowledge completely. We know that God does. He has all wisdom. He’s all knowing at all times. He cannot fail. He’s all powerful. With him, all things are possible. He loves us to death. People use that phrase lightly unfortunately. For God, it would be utter truth coming from Him. He loves us to death. A love not His own life unto death for us. We know God loves us because when we were at our worst, He gave us Jesus, which is His best. That’s perfect love.
You can’t add to something perfect. You can’t perfect what’s perfect. You can’t make better what’s perfect because it’s already perfect. God loves us perfectly. We don’t have to put on this show and dance for him because we can’t add to a perfect love. It’s perfect already. He won’t love us. We can’t do anything to make him love us more in a sense. We can’t do anything to make him love us less. God’s perfect love gives us rest and cast out fear. It allows us to trust His ways even when we don’t understand them. We can trust the fact that He is wisdom.
It’s not that God is wise. It’s not that He makes wise decisions most of the time or even all of the time. He is wisdom. With that being said, we can trust him. We can be wise enough to know He knows better than I do. We can be humble enough to know to say He knows better than I do. Although I feel it should be like this, I wish it were like that, I would have answered this problem this way, I’m going to rock with God anyhow because He knows better than I do. After all, I have some wisdom, but He is all wisdom. With that being said, whatever box He tells me to check on the test, I’m going to check that box. It’s simple as that.
Powerful as we saw it looking at Jesus’ first miracle in His ministry here on the earth looking at John 2. Although it was an orthodox instruction that Jesus seemed to have given when He turned the water into the best wine. Mary trusted him enough to tell the servants who took part with that miracle, whatever Jesus tells you to do, do it. God was expounding to us on the word, whatever. God was highlighting the word for us to remind us again. No matter how unorthodox the instructions may be, no matter how much they may seem to even be going in the opposite direction of what needs to be done, or have nothing to do with the process of what needs to be done.
We can trust God who loves us perfectly and who is all knowing and has all wisdom. With him, anything is possible. We can do what Mary said. Whatever He tells us to do, whatever that is, do it. No matter how crazy it may seem, no matter how much we don’t understand it, even at times, no matter how much we don’t like it. We can do it and trust the one who’s instructing us. I love this series. We saw the miracle that took place for that married couple at that time. Not only did Jesus give them wine when they ran out to continue their celebration of their Holy Matrimony, their union and coming together, but He also gave them the best wine. He did not use the process, the natural process or what we would deem the normal process of creating wine, let alone the best wine.
It seemed like all of His instructions had nothing to do with what Mary desired or wanted. Indeed, it was the way, because remember the word of God promises that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. He can’t lie. He is the truth and He is the way. When He tells you the way, you know He’s speaking the truth because the one who is the way is also the truth. We can surely trust him. We’re going to look, like I promised before, into the life of Joseph, which I believe is one of the clearest depictions of our Lord Jesus in the Old Testament.
I know I usually read from the New King James version, but for this particular scripture, I want to read it out of the message version. I’ll tell you that when I get to it fully. I’ll remember to do that. I’m going to be paraphrasing and skimming through. I know sometimes we do line upon line and precept upon precept. I might do some of that in here, but for the most part, I’m going to be skimming through. A lot of you may already likely know the story of Joseph. It begins before Genesis 39, but I love how it opens up.
It begins in Genesis 37. If you haven’t had the opportunity to read that line upon line, precept upon precept, I pray you do. If you have, do it again. You will not be disappointed. I love how it opens up talking about as if the Holy spirit is saying, “I’m going to introduce you to Jacob, who’s Joseph’s father, but then immediately the Holy Spirit begins to talk about the son.” That’s what Jesus did. He’s like, “If you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father.” God is talking to us. He’s talking to us about Himself, but what He expounds on Himself through His son, same thing.
It was so beautiful to me how the Holy Spirit is so detailed in that and how the Bible is accurate. If you have read this story before, Joseph had what started off as a very great life and then it took a turn that looked like for the worse. God was indeed ordering His steps as you likely know if you went through the entire life story of Joseph. It opens up with Joseph and his other brothers. Joseph’s brothers are jealous of him. The Bible said they hated him.
They did so because their father loved Joseph more than he did his other sons. That’s a whole another podcast. It’s a podcast series. One episode won’t cover the madness of that. He loved him more than he did his other sons. They could discern it. They were angry and feel with hate and bitterness towards their brother who loved them. They plotted to kill him. That’s how serious that was. They ended up deciding not to kill him and instead sold him into slavery.
He was taken off to Egypt, kidnapped, sold as a slave as if he was less than even a human being, sold as if he was an object. Stripped of all dignity, the good life he was living, connection with his father, his younger brother who did love him. They have the same mother. His other brothers and him did not share the same mom. The brothers had told the dad, “Joseph’s dead. He’s been torn to pieces. An animal got ahold of him in the wild. He’s no more.” They even let their father die in a sense when he thought that his favorite son was dead. Even that didn’t touch their hearts.
The Bible says that the Lord was with Joseph. He had nothing going for himself naturally speaking. This ought to encourage everyone. It encourages me. He had nothing going for himself, but the Lord was with him. Therefore, he was a successful man. The Bible talks about that. That’s what’s in Chapter 39 of Genesis. Joseph was taken to Egypt. He was purchased by Potiphar, a captain of the guard. Pharaoh was in charge in Egypt at that time. Potiphar was like a high-ranking official in Egypt.
That was Joseph’s boss. The Bible says that Potiphar and even like Joseph and Egyptians, at that time, they had several gods. They were not inclined to worship the true and living God. They probably had so many gods they needed index cards to keep track of that. Even Potiphar being with a world would deem like an unbeliever or an atheist, or the anti-Christ type of thing. Even he could see that the Lord was with Joseph and because he could see that the Lord was with Joseph and the Lord made everything Joseph did to prosper. God was with him. He’s like, “You can’t keep this man down.”
When Potiphar saw that, he was wise enough and even though he was a high ranking official, he was humble enough to even receive the help of a foreign slave. I’m talking about help to the furthest extent. He turned over everything in his field and in his house to the hands of Joseph because he knew that the Lord was with Joseph and the Lord was making everything that Joseph’s hands touched to prosper. God blessed the house of that Egyptian for Joseph’s sake.
Everything Potiphar had was prospering. Potiphar’s wife cast longing eyes on Joseph, falsely accused him of raping her because he refused to sleep with her. This is what we call from bad to worse where I’m from. It went from bad to worse. Since I’ve given my life to Christ, I won’t tell you what we would have said where I come from, just hit the fan. You guys are laughing because you know what hit the fan even if you’re not from Chicago. Interestingly enough, it hit the fan. Something hit the fan. She accused him of raping her.
Potiphar puts him in jail. She blew it for him. That’s what it seemed like at least. Remember the Lord was with Joseph. Even in jail, God exalted Joseph. I realized that I didn’t tell you guys and I’m going to do it. I know people have likely heard it and read it before, but some people haven’t. One of the reasons also that the brothers of Joseph hated him was because Joseph was given dreams by God. Those dreams, the brothers discerned that Joseph would be in a position of power and leadership.
The brothers would not. They would be in a position where they were under him and in his authority and had to submit to him. They didn’t like that either. He was a younger brother. In that culture, usually the older brother would be the next in line to have some authority and rule over the rest. Not Joseph who was next to the youngest. Whoever God chooses was the one and God is not bound by age or order or what man thinks who it should be. God elects when He chooses. I thank God for that. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been chosen. I’m almost certain of that. I thank God for that. He knows the heart. He knows what He puts inside of people. He’ll be doing the electing. Praise the name of Jesus.
When goes to prison, Joseph, you can’t keep him down. The person who was in charge of the prison, a warden nowadays noticed also that the Lord was with Joseph. This is like a tangible, outward manifested blessing of the presence of God in His life. This is not something that’s spiritual. This is not something where you got to walk by faith. It’s obvious even to the people who don’t know the God of Israel. Even to the people didn’t know the Lord knew the Lord is with Joseph. He calls people to know God at that point who’d never known him before. God was blessing everything Joseph set his hand to do. God was prospering him. He prospered him in prison. The prison ward at that time, the keeper of the prison turned over the prisoners to Joseph and charged him to take authority and be a leader.
He’s already fulfilling those dreams and preparing for the big role so to speak that he’s going to step into soon and did in fact step into, but God was preparing him. In Joseph’s life, you can see a lot of our Lord Jesus Christ hidden in the shadows of his story. One of the things that was interesting that God showed me is how those people who gave him, Joseph, the legal right, the authority, the power to lead them and everything in their lives were prospering abundantly. Everything Joseph was instructing and telling them to do as he was leading and guiding others and other servants and taking charge over the prison, Potiphar’s house and over Potiphar’s field. It was prospering. They were heeding Joseph’s instruction. They were heeding his word.
They were doing whatever he told him to do so much so that it was like whatever Joseph says, do it. We see that they prospered. The keeper of the prison, the prison was prospering. Everything was going good. We saw in Potiphar’s house before his wife went nuts, before she went too far. Thank God she did. God worked it together for good. We see that part of her was prospering and everything in his house and in his field was prospering. Everything in his business and everything in his house, his home, it’s good. I loved that. God told me that’s there too. It may not be as directly said, as what Mary said, whatever He tells you to do it, but it was there.
God showed me the message version and told me in the message version, it does speak directly to what He was discerning and bringing out of His word to me as He began dissect it through. That’s in Genesis 41:55. I’ll get to that. I’ll finish my brief overlay of life of Joseph. I want to highlight this for you because God showed me. There is in that particular version that direct message that God has given us for this whole series. It says when the famine spirit throughout Egypt, the people called out in distress to Pharaoh calling for bread. He told the Egyptians, “Go to Joseph, do what He tells you.” Now we know like most of you do that Joseph did get out of prison. Pharaoh had a dream. He had no one to interpret it. Joseph had the gift of God to interpret dreams. Pharaoh got word of it from a guy that was in jail with Joseph who worked for Pharaoh.
Pharaoh suddenly brings Joseph out of jail. God is delivering Joseph at this point. He’s able to interpret the dream because whatever He did, the Lord made it prosper. The Lord was with Joseph. The Lord told Joseph the interpretation. It was lifesaving dream, lifesaving interpretation. It was very necessary that Joseph be in Egypt because the dream that God gave Pharaoh warned of seven good years where there’d be plenty, bumper crops, everybody’s prospering. The ground is yielding a seed and people are able to sew. Breads coming up and everybody’s eating and it’s good.
There’d be seven years of a very severe famine. If they’re not prepared, everyone’s going to die, nothing less. It was very serious. It’s a matter of life and death like affecting the world, the entire nation of Egypt, the entire nation of Israel. It stretched that famine. God gave Joseph the interpretation. Not only that, the Lord was with Joseph and He also gave him the wisdom to know what to do. This is where I want to read what it says. This is also in Genesis 41:37. It says Joseph gave Pharaoh the advice and he’s telling him we need to, in the years of plenty, take a portion of that, 1/5, and store it up so it’ll be there for the years of famine and no one will perish. We need to put people in charge to keep count over this grain and store up these storehouses and all this stuff.
The Bible says, “So the advice was good in the eyes of Pharaoh and in the eyes of all his servants. Pharaoh said to his servants, ‘Can we find such a one is this, a man in whom the spirit of God?’ Pharaoh said to Joseph, ‘In as much as God has shown you all this, there is no one as discerning and wise as you. You shall be over my house and all my people shall be ruled according to your word.’” Joseph opens His mouth and that’s what’s going to happen because Pharaoh said he recognized.
Egypt represented the world and it’s like Pharaoh is someone who’s in the world, somebody who’s not so spiritual, somebody who’s not born again is able to see. God Himself is with and for and in and moving through this Joseph representing Jesus so much so that He’s like, “I’m yielding to the word of Joseph and everyone under my authority will also yield and obey and adhere to the word of Joseph.” You saw in Genesis 41 and 55 in the message version that He says to the Egyptians, “Go to Joseph and do what He tells you to do,” because that famine did in fact come as God showed Joseph, that it would.
It was very severe the Bible says so much so that people would’ve died had it not been for God utilizing Joseph like that and sending him to Egypt even though it was through the instrument of something evil that his brothers had done. Let me read to you briefly on Genesis 47 and 23. It says, “Then Joseph said to the people, ‘Indeed, I have bought you and your land this day for Pharaoh. Look here a seed for you and you shall sow the land. It shall come to pass and harvest that you shall give 1/5 to Pharaoh, 4/5 shall be your own, a seed for the field and for your food, for those of your households and food for your little ones.’ They said, ‘You have saved our lives.’”
Let us find favor in the sight of my Lord and we will be Pharaoh’s servants. Joseph made it a law over the land of Egypt to this day that Pharaoh should have 1/5 except for the land of the priest only, which did not become pharaohs. We see those people live instead of dying. Why? Because they headed the voice, the word of Joseph, which is a shadow of our Lord Jesus Christ. His word was able to save their life. We saw that what Jesus did when He gave His instructions and He gave His word and told the servants what to do when they were making the wine from the water.
Filling up the water pots Jesus made the water into wine, but they were assisting him. I’m glad because God allowed them to bear witness to what He did as well as His disciples to the miraculous power of God. Um, it was the first of His signs and miracles. I love the fact that He had them fill up those water pots so that they can know themselves. This is not the way you make wine. Nevertheless, with Him, all things are possible. That’s evident to us. Not because we read it in the Bible that wasn’t yet written yet.
That part, that New Testament, but because they knew for themselves, with God, all things are possible. Mary certainly knew that because she’d become impregnated even without a man. She knew that the God who gives His word, even if it doesn’t make sense, even if it’s unorthodox, even if you can’t figure it out means what He says. Before you try to even figure it out, He’s already worked it out. You need to walk it out. She knew that. Thank God for her faith. Thank God for her asking for that because now we’re able to see that, but it was a miracle of a desire and pleasure.
We know that they necessarily didn’t need wine. It wasn’t like someone was going to die without it or become ill without it. It wasn’t a healing or it wasn’t a resurrection or something like that. It wasn’t something that saved someone from the jaws of death. Nevertheless, Jesus did it and I’m very glad. This is like the first of His signs. He opens up like that. That should kill religion being like, “Don’t ask Jesus for that because you don’t need that. You got enough of that.” Speak for yourself. I stay at the throne. I’m like, “Give me more, God.” I know He’s got it. I know it’s His love language and His joy to give.
I know I need Him. I know there’s things I desire. It’s God’s will that we have His kingdom established here in the Earth as it is heaven. Heaven is full of not only are all you need met, but it’s also full of desires, pleasures, joy, happiness, celebrations, holidays and feasting in gladness, singing and dancing. We’re supposed to have heaven in the earth. That is more than our needs being met. I’m okay with that. I love that, but in this particular story that God has given us to show us the power of heeding the word of God is not a miracle of pleasure or desire. This is a matter of life and death. People were surely going to die. This was an unprecedented famine sweeping across the nations.
For the words that came from the mouth of Joseph, which is a picture, a shadow of our Lord Jesus Christ. If you want to know what I mean by that, you can look up the New Testament scripture where it talks about that. Christ is the substance of those things that were shadowed in the Old Testament. I can’t remember the scripture right now. Hopefully, I’ll remember for the next time we get together, but go ahead and google that. It’s amazing to me that the first two examples that God gave us was one of pleasure where you know if this is something you want, how do you get it? Whatever the Lord tells you to do, do it. It didn’t seem to make sense. This also doesn’t seem to make sense in this regard. Joseph was natural a foreigner. He was a slave. He was a man accused of raping one of Pharaoh’s high-ranking official’s wife or attempted rape. That’s not what happened.
Let me narrow it down to what it was. Nobody freaks out and they’re like, “Where’d you get that from?” It was not like that made any sense either because how would it be that Pharaoh, top notch in the nation, like God then him, what would make him listen to a Hebrew slave accused of attempting to rape one of his official’s wives? Think about that. That’s like finding someone who’s in prison or attempting to rape someone in a third world country somewhere and asking them give me some help. Something extremely serious is going on, help me with it. When they do tell you what they think, and they do tell you how they think it should be resolved, you go ahead and appoint them to be next in command after you. You say that at his word, everybody’s going bow and follow. There’s no interview process. There’s no background check. If there was, we know this Pharaoh knew that when someone told him, “We got somebody who can interpret dreams.” “Bring them here.” “He’ll be here in a minute.” “Where’s he coming from?” “Jail.”
This is a miracle. The advice he gave makes some sense, saving up a portion during plentiful times, do have some reserve for lacking time. That’s wisdom we can use in our daily lives. It is, spiritually and naturally. A lot of times people may not feel the need to listen to the word of God, hear things like a podcast where God is speaking through the particular speaker or the teacher, or hear anointed sermon or pick up a book that the Holy Spirit wrote in most of all their Bible until the going gets tough. The wisdom of God is that you don’t wait until times get tough.
During the very best of times, you feed on the word of God and you keep on hearing because you are storing up. You’re letting God store up and pile up in you that when the devil tries to hit your life with the famine like situation, when he tries to hit your life with something that seems very severe as the Bible said, you have enough grain bread, enough of the bread of life, Jesus, the living word in you to survive and thrive during it. Because Joseph didn’t survive off of what He’d stored up, it was more than enough for him and it saved everybody in his family. Even his brothers, he was reconciled to them. The whole family was restored. It’s great. The story you got to read it. It’s a beautiful story. I can expound on this because he didn’t only have enough bread where everybody lived.
That is a miracle enough, but him and his house, they were doing very good. Imagine that the land is completely depleted for years consecutively. God forbid that unless that’d be His perfect will in Jesus’ name. His family was thriving in Goshen. Imagine that if that’s happening, they’re like building a Four Seasons. They’re like, “Where are you going?” “We’re going to buy a new car.” “What else are you doing?” “Our uncle is getting his house built from the ground up.” “Where is it going to be?” “Right on the water.” It’s like the famine had no effect on you. Not only are you not going to die, but it’s like you didn’t even start doing that good until the famine hit. What is going on? I got to know the secret to that.
Joseph who represents Jesus heard from God. He even said, “Not interpretations belong to God.” That’s when he told Pharaoh when He asked him to interpret the dream, “Tell me the dream. Do not interpretations belong to God.” There’s nothing to God because Jesus gets His wisdom and His instruction laid by God. Jesus even said in some of the four gospels, “When you see Him, you see the Father.” He doesn’t say anything even unless He first heard the Father say it. I can’t remember which gospel but it’s more than one, but it’s there. Trust God and it’s there. I’m paraphrasing. It’s so amazing that Jesus does that. He tells us, like He said, and I believe that’s in the gospel of John, that He’s giving us everything and telling us everything that the Father told him. That’s why I said, “I no longer call you servants, but I call you friends because everything the Father made known to me, I made known to you.”
This is beautiful how He leads us and He guides us. He’ll never fail us because the lead, the guide and His life is God. God loves us. He wants to be with us. He wants to prosper us. He wants us to fill us where a famine won’t have any effect on us. It won’t kill us. It won’t knock us down. It won’t scare us. It will exalt us. That far above the madness, principalities, powers, troubles, traps that the enemy has set, that far above it, not surviving. Thriving is the perfect will of God for your life, children of God and mine.
Let’s keep on going with this series and let’s keep letting God feed our faith and starve out that fear. Knowing that it’s God’s perfect will to supply all of our needs far more above and beyond than what we can ask. It’s God’s perfect will to give us the desires of our heart. How wonderful? How marvelous? Whatever it is God is telling us to do, we should do it. Our Father in heaven loves us very much. He will never fail us. He’s always going to lead us to victory, to triumph. As we follow Him, He calls us to not only survive, but to thrive even against the most severe of circumstances like that famine was during that time.
I love you very much. Thank you again for being with me on this journey. I love doing this. I love being able to share with you. I love your comments that you bring in. I love the way you all encourage me. Please don’t stop. God bless you all. Keep you all and continue to reveal who He is to you all. You guys continue to abide in Him and let Him abide in you because as you do, you’re going to bear much fruit. Ask what you desire and it’s going to be done for you. That’s written. That’s a promise. You can take that check to the bank and cash it. God bless you. I’ll talk to you soon.
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