What a great privilege to honor Him (amen?) with the first fruits of all of our increase.  We just got back.  The week we were away so that this amazing project out here that’s on the wall could be done, and what a great surprise that was.  We had no idea what was going on and to be able to see that beautiful work that was done was a great, great surprise.  So thankful for all that the Lord has done here in our lives over these last fifty years.

We were just talking in the back as we were talking about the subject that we’re on right now, effectual prayer.  Doesn’t do any good to pray if it doesn’t affect anything; amen?  Prayer changes things, and thankfully the first thing, the most important thing, that prayer changes is our own hearts, our own perception on the environment that we find ourselves in.  Prayer helps us focus on God’s purposes.  Prayer opens our eyes to the vision that God has had for each and every one of us from before the foundations of the world.  You’re not where you are by accident.  God knows.  God knows.  In the greatest trials we’ve been in, God has placed us there.

I heard Jimmy Swaggart teaching this morning.  It was good to see him in the pulpit or on the chair preaching this morning, and he was talking about Israel’s coming out of Egypt.  He was saying that it will probably never be known why God took Israel out of Egypt in that great victory that they had and led them into a wilderness that had no provisions.  You know, we need to remember there wasn’t a lot of game running around.  There wasn’t food out there.  There wasn’t water out there.  We used to say about Death Valley, I remember as a kid going through Death Valley a few times.  Back in the 1950’s, if you weren’t rich, you didn’t have air conditioning, and we surely weren’t rich.  They used to have some cars, if you could afford it, and we didn’t have that, but they would have the water coolers on the windows.  How many of you remember that?  How many of you were raised on the east coast and not the west coast?  The reason you didn’t have water coolers is all that did was add to the humidity.  Out there it was dry air, and they would have the water coolers.  My dad used to say, “It’s so dry, the jackrabbits are carrying canteens.”

They’re brought out into this wilderness.  The Scripture does tell us why they were taken out there.  He was contrasting and making the point not of the purification of the people but of the delivering power of God.  I’m sure that’s why he didn’t reference these verses, but they were taken into the wilderness, the Bible tells us, to do what?  To prove what was in their hearts.  They were a people taken into a wilderness where only one provision would be sufficient and that was the manna that God rained from heaven; amen?  Who was that manna?  Jesus.  Aren’t you glad that Jesus is sufficient?  Amen?  Jesus is a great provider for everything that you and I have need of spiritually, emotionally, and physically.  He is that bread of life to us.  So, God took them into the wilderness to prove what was in their hearts.  Our wilderness experiences are for the purpose of proving whether we will be satisfied with God.  Isn’t it interesting we can sit here today knowing the typology that that manna was Jesus and go, “How could these guys ever get to the place of despising Jesus?”  How many times do we despise Him through our murmuring?  “God hasn’t given us enough.  He hasn’t given us in our sufficient timetables.”