JOTS FROM OLD JAKE
QUITYOURBELLYACHING!
Monday, Jun. 04, 2007 - 2:17 p.m.
Back in my early years, my family used to go spend a day or two in the mountains doing some fishing, hiking, and playing in the play ground of the camp that the folks rented a cabin. The camp was Spencer Heights which was the last cabins available before you get to Chambers Lake. Spencer Heights had a store, and an old time gas pump, the kind you had hand pump the gas into the glass measured container, by pushing an upright lever back and forth. Anyway, inside the store behind the counter was this big sign carved into a slab of pine that said, �QUITYOURBELLYACHING!� I stared at that sign for what seemed like hours before I could figure out what it was saying.
I find that the message on that sign is part of the formula to the fountain of youth. In the 14th chapter of Joshua, Caleb gives you the general formula. To get it in more detail you must dig a little deeper following the life of Caleb. He was 40 years old when Moses sent him to spy out the Promised Land. Of the spies who went in only Caleb and Joshua gave a good report. The rest were fearful of the conquest and rallied the rest of the Children of Israel into murmuring and disbelief in the power of God.
(Joshua 14:9 KJV) And Moses sware on that day, saying, Surely the land whereon thy feet have trodden shall be thine inheritance, and thy children's for ever, because thou hast wholly followed the LORD my God.
Caleb 45 years later said: (Joshua 14:11 KJV) �As yet I am as strong this day as I was in the day that Moses sent me: as my strength was then, even so is my strength now, for war, both to go out, and to come in.�
Everyone else who did not follow wholly died in the wilderness, leaving only Caleb, Joshua, and the children who were not involved in the murmuring. Maybe if the spies who were giving the bad report had harkened to the sign� �QUITYOURBELLYACHING� the children might have been more inclined to �WHOLLY FOLLOW THE LORD!� Maybe they would have entered the Promised Land 40 years earlier and maybe they would have possessed more than the ten percent of land that they had coming to them.
(Joshua 13:1 KJV) Now Joshua was old and stricken in years; and the LORD said unto him, Thou art old and stricken in years, and there remaineth yet very much land to be possessed.
I believe this applies to us today as well� we only scratch the surface of what the Lord would like for us to have.
(Philippians 3:12 NIV) Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.
Caleb did press on to take hold�
From J.V. McGee�s notes: �According to Joshua 14:11 Caleb had found the fountain of youth. He had: (1) Faith to forget the past; (2) Faith to face facts; and (3) Faith to face the future.�
Memory verse for today:
(Psalms 12:6 KJV) The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times.
Ulterior thought:
Generally the things you don�t like about someone else are the same things you hate to see in yourself. So you focus on disliking their traits to keep your mind off of the same thing in yourself!
May You Be Blessed by the Holy Spirit to Overflowing!
Bye for Now!
