Deut. 20:4 For the LORD your God is the one who goes with you to fight for you against your enemies to give you victory.
An organization in Montana offered a bounty of five thou10sand dollars for every wolf captured alive. Two hunters decided to head for the hills and make some money capturing wolves. Day and night, they scoured the mountains and forests, searching for their valuable prey. Exhausted after three days of hunting without success, they both fell asleep.
During the night, one of the hunters suddenly woke up to find that the two were surrounded by a pack of fifty wolves, their eyes flaming and teeth bared. At once, he called to his friend, "Hey, wake up! We're gonna be rich!"
Sometimes we feel in over our heads in difficulties. They surround us like that pack of wolves preparing to pounce. But perhaps these difficulties are actually opportunities?? Recently, we've had some interesting trials. But through these tribulations, we see that God is taking each situation, one by one, and turning it for His Glory -- just more opportunities for us to testify of His goodness.
Today, we have the opportunity to learn and grow and experience the grace and power of God through these trials which surround us. The devil is not as smart or powerful as he appears -- and we have a great and All-Mighty God who has a way of using our enemy's silly tactics for the building up of His Great Kingdom!
Copyright 1999-2026 Worthy Devotions. This devotional was originally published on Worthy Devotions and was reproduced with permission.
How to display the above article within the Worthy Suite WordPress Plugin.
[worthy_plugins_devotion_single_body]Revivals, that is, genuine Divinely ordained seasons of the activity of God among men, have a universally unusual character. Normal activities and behaviors give way to the tangible influence of God’s Holy Spirit, whose inspiration brings a freedom of expression, emotion, conviction, worship, and other variations from normal experience.
During the Catholic inquisitions, as millions of Christians were being killed by the Jesuit Priests for apostasy, throughout Europe, Christians were fleeing. In Bohemia alone, there were an estimated 4,000,000 Christians before the Jesuit inquisition, and ten years later, only 800,000 people remained in Bohemia – all of whom were Catholic. These terrible events prepared the ground for one of the greatest moves of God that have ever been recorded, the Moravian Revival, which lasted for over 100 years. Gustav Warneck, the German Historian of Protestant Missions, testified, “This small church in twenty years called into being more missions than the whole Evangelical Church has done in two centuries.”
I love to study past revivals and in studying them, there are two recurring themes that stand out:
First, that He has often used obscure and unknown individuals to lead revivals, and that even these men whom He used so powerfully never considered themselves to be “special”, but often wanted to stay out of the limelight.
During the Great Depression, poverty swept across America like a whirling tornado, ripping up dreams and scattering hopes to the wind. One such poverty twister hit a small part of Texas where a man named Yates ran a sheep ranch. Struggling even to keep food on the table, Yates and his wife did all they could to survive. Finally, they had to accept a government subsidy or lose their home and land to the creditors.
When Joseph was thrown into prison, his life was thought to be over. How could anyone escape an Egyptian prison? But then, in one day, according to God’s perfect timing, he was instantly promoted to reign over all Egypt with only the Pharoah, (“god on earth”) as his Lord…
As we continue our study of Mashiach ben Yosef, we observe that both Joseph and Yeshua (Jesus) were chosen or ‘anointed’ for a special task. When Jacob gifted his son Joseph with a coat of many colors, lifting him up above his brothers, he reflected Joseph’s calling by the Lord for a life work as a leader.
Joseph interpreted dreams and revealed their meaning to those around him, and so Pharaoh gave him the name, Tsofnat Paneach (Zaphnathpaaneah) which means the “Decipherer or Revealer of Secrets”. Yeshua, (Jesus) at his first advent as “Mashiach ben Yosef” also came revealing secrets; not as an interpreter of dreams, but as one who disclosed the secrets of men…