God's Care for His Servants, Thursday

Hello friends, welcome to the Seen Pod for Kids.

Thank you for joining me today as we spend time with our friend Jesus.

Spending time with Jesus is the best way to start your day.

Let's begin our time together praising Him.

Redeemed how I love to proclaim and redeemed by the blood of the Lamb,

Redeemed through His infinite mercy, His child and forever I am.

Redeemed, redeemed, Redeemed by the blood of the Lamb,

Redeemed, redeemed, His child and forever I am.

I know there's a crown that is waiting in yonder bright pension for me,

and soon with a sense made perfect, at home with the Lord I shall be.

Redeemed, redeemed, Redeemed by the blood of the Lamb,

Redeemed, redeemed, His child and forever I am.

Welcome to Hide His Word, a special program where we take a few minutes to hide God's Word in our hearts.

Let's go ahead and get started.

How are you doing memorizing our two chapters from Psalm?

Psalm 23 talks about the Lord being our shepherd, and then Psalm 91 has some incredible promises

when we're afraid or when we need help that we can trust God.

So let's go ahead and get started.

You can say it right after me or right along with me, I should say.

Here we go.

Let's start with Psalm 23.

The Lord is my shepherd.

I shall not want.

He makes me to lie down in green pastures.

He leads me beside the still waters.

He restores my soul.

He leads me in the paths of righteousness for His names sake.

Yay, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.

For you are with me.

Your rod and your staff they comfort me.

You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.

You anoint my head with oil.

My cup runs over.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,

and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

Now let's say Psalm 91, are you ready?

He who dwells in the secret place of the most high shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.

I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress.

My God in Him I will trust.

Surely He shall deliver you from the snare of the Fowler and from the perilous pestilence.

He shall cover you with His feathers, and under His wings you shall take refuge.

His truth shall be your shield and buckler.

He shall not be afraid of the terror by night, nor of the arrow that flies by day,

nor of the pestilence that walks in darkness, nor of the destruction that lays waste at noon day.

A thousand may fall at your side and ten thousand at your right hand,

but it shall not come near you.

Only with your eyes shall you look and see the reward of the wicked.

Because you have made the Lord who is my refuge, even the most high your dwelling place,

no evil shall befall you, nor shall any plague come near your dwelling.

For He shall give His angels charge over you to keep you in all your ways.

In their hands they shall bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone.

You shall tread upon the lion and the cobra.

The young lion and the serpent you shall trample underfoot.

Because He has set His love upon me, therefore I will deliver Him.

I will set Him on high because He has known my name.

He shall call upon me and I will answer Him.

I will be with Him in trouble.

I will deliver Him and honor Him.

With long life I will satisfy Him and show Him my salvation.

Great job.

Let's go to the Bible lesson.

We're talking about angels this week, aren't we?

Elisha had just prayed that God would open His servant's eyes and His servant saw

that although they were surrounded by the Syrian army, they also were surrounded by angels.

And I have a special story that I want to share with you from the book Guide's Greatest Angel Stories.

It's an excellent book.

I think my boys got it for Christmas one year and they really enjoy reading it.

And this particular story is called Camping with Angels.

It's about a family, a mom and a dad and the two little girls, Rhonda and Kelly.

They were on a road trip, a camping trip with their trailer.

They were driving around, parking at different camps.

And staying the night and exploring the area around the camps.

This particular day is they were driving through New Mexico, which is actually very close to where I live.

They were, it was getting late and the father said, you know, girls, how about we stop here

and we can camp here for the night.

Otherwise, we'll have to go on a lot further.

And the girls are like, yes, yes, let's do that.

And mom's like, oh, that would be wonderful to stay in a campground and hot showers.

Oh, that would be lovely.

And so I say drove into this campground.

It was the only one around.

There was only one other camper there, staying in a trailer.

And they pulled into their site and the girls ran to go check out the playground

and go throw rocks into the pond that was right nearby.

And they were just having a fun time as mom was cleaning up the camper and getting supper ready.

Dad went over and talked to the other camper because there was only one other camper in that entire campground

and he told them what had happened.

The night before, there was a gang of biker dudes who came roaring through

and they were blasting their music and yelling all kinds of terrible things.

And they started terrorizing the different campers.

In fact, one trailer, they started shaking it so hard that it fell over.

And they had to have a record come out and take it.

So all the campers left that morning.

And this guy, he was packing up and he was out of there too.

Well, father went back and told mother.

And he didn't seem too concerned.

But the girls just had these big wide eyes and they're like, oh, what happens if they come back?

He said, oh, it's all right.

There's been police that have been patrolling the campground.

Look, they've already been here through here twice since we got here.

And so it'll be okay.

And you know what, we have God and we have our angels and we'll pray about it besides.

If we don't stay here, we'd be staying on the side of the road or something.

We'd get in really late.

It will be fine.

So they ate supper and they went and they did some playing.

And they came back to have family worship.

Right as the sun was getting ready to go down.

And as they sat there, family worship, they sat outside and dad had his Bible.

He opened up to Psalm 34 verse 7.

And you know what that says?

The angel of the Lord in camps around those who fear him and he delivers him.

So then they started imagining what would it be like to have angels in camp?

Are they like stationed sentinels like every few feet?

Is it kind of like a wagon train where they would circle the wagons?

Is that what the angels do?

They circle them around their camp.

They talked about it and oh, what a promise.

So encouraging.

The girls got ready to go to bed and they crawled into bed and dad and mom said,

everything's quiet out here.

We're just going to walk over to the pond right over there.

You'll be fine.

Get some sleep.

After mom and dad had walked off the girls laid there and all of a sudden they heard some rumbling.

Have you ever heard big motorbikes?

Like motorcycles?

Some of them can have this big, deep rumble.

And then all of a sudden they heard some loud laughter and loud voices of these men.

And they came and they parked right next to their trailer and the girls were so scared.

Where's mom and where's dad?

They jumped out of bed.

They locked the door.

They closed all the blinds and they just huddled their scared to death.

The biker dudes, they started saying, hey, let's tip this trailer over.

Well, before we do that, we should see if there's any valuables inside.

And there were ten of them.

And they started pushing against the trailer and the trailer started rocking back and forth.

Where was mom and dad?

But dad was no match for those big burly bikers.

Pretty soon though, as they're sitting there huddled, they're praying for all their worth.

Jesus, Jesus, protect us, protect us.

All of a sudden mom and dad walk up to the bikers and said, excuse me, can I help you?

And the bikers got big wide eyes.

And they took a couple steps back.

As dad started walking towards them, they took a few steps back and then they ran to their bikes,

jumped off and roared off.

The girls and father and mother fell into each other's arms, hugging and crying.

Oh, they were so happy that they were safe.

They knew that those bikers wouldn't come back again that night.

Although they didn't know for sure, they could only imagine that God has sent his angels

to camp around them, to protect them, and that those bikers saw the protection that they had from God.

Boys and girls, that's how Elisha was feeling.

We're going to learn some more about that story in just a second.

So let's pause and let's pray and then we'll get started with our Bible story.

Lord, thank you for your protection, for your angels.

That for those who love you, fear you, who believe in you,

we have that assurance that you're there with us.

Please be with us today as we study this story in Jesus' name. Amen.

The Syrian army didn't know that there were other soldiers protecting Elisha.

They were what?

Angels, yes, who had surrounded the city and when Elisha prayed, God opened his servants eyes so he could see them.

Now, Elisha prayed that just the opposite would happen to the Syrian soldiers so that they couldn't see.

He prayed that his servants' eyes would be opened and now he was going to pray that the soldiers' eyes would be closed, that they would become blind.

Let's look at 2 Kings 6 verse 18.

Here we go.

The 2 Kings is in the Old Testament.

It's after 1 Kings, 1st and 2nd Samuel, 1st and 2nd Kings,

we're in the book of 2 Kings 6 verse 18.

What does that say?

So when the Syrians came down to him, Elisha prayed to the Lord and said,

strike this people I pray with blindness and he struck them with blindness according to the word of Elisha.

Then Elisha went out to those soldiers and he said,

come follow me and he led the blind Syrian soldiers to Samaria.

What was Samaria?

It was the capital of Israel.

It's where Israel's king lived.

And when they got there and their eyes were open, they were all shocked.

They weren't expecting to be in the king of Syria's in his city captured in his within the walls.

The very man who they were supposed to capture had led them inside the city of Samaria.

With its high walls, they were trapped.

Look at verse 20.

So it was when they had come to Samaria that Elisha said,

Lord, open the eyes of these men that they may see.

And the Lord opened the eyes and they saw.

And there they were in Samaria.

The Syrian army must have been terribly frightened.

They knew it would be easy for the Israelite soldiers to destroy them all.

In fact, that was the plan of the king of Israel.

He said, you know what?

Should we just kill them?

But God was in charge of everything that was happening.

So what did the king ask Elisha?

Look at verse 21.

Now when the king of Israel saw them, he said to Elisha,

my father, shall I kill them, shall I kill them?

Elisha knew it wouldn't be fair for the king to kill them.

They were prisoners.

They had just been obeying the orders of their king.

And also, Elisha knew that God wanted them to take home a good report about what had happened that day.

But you know what?

It would be pretty different from the kind of report that they had expected to take back to their king.

Those Syrian soldiers would learn that the Israelites were fair.

And that God was far more powerful than the heathen idols that they worshipped.

But for now, there was nothing they could do but wait and see what was going to happen to them.

We're going to find out what happened to them next time, what the plan was, what Elisha told the king to do.

How do you think that Elisha's servant felt before his eyes were opened?

He was afraid, right? He was scared.

After his eyes were opened and he could see the protection around, how do you think he felt?

I think he was like, oh, okay. Well, now what?

Now I want you to contrast that with the Syrian soldiers.

How did they feel before they were blinded?

All cocky and arrogant.

All right, we got him surrounded. We're going to get him.

Yeah, guys, let's do this.

But then, once they were blinded, how did they feel?

Have you ever been blind and you've kind of had to feel around?

My boys like to play a game called Blind Tag and it's where somebody is blindfolded

and we have this cement kind of patio that is not very wide, but it's pretty long.

And so, almost like Marco Polo, where you have one person who's blinded in the middle

and the other people have to try to get past them and stay on this cement patio.

It's hard. When your eyes are blinded, when you can't see, it's hard.

And I'm sure that the Syrian soldiers were feeling completely at their mercy.

Like, okay, okay. Oh, try not to trip and fall.

Oh, oh, oh, you know, as they're going along, they're not the big strong cocky, proud soldiers anymore.

How did he like to feel the whole time?

I think he had complete faith in confidence and trust in God.

He knew that God was in control and that everything would be all right.

You know, boys and girls, people who trust God, they can have perfect peace.

They don't have to be afraid because they know that God is the one in control.

That's how I want to be today. How about you?

Dear Lord, help us to put our faith in you, to put our confidence and our trust in you,

so that when we're going through hard times or when there's things that are going on,

we will turn to you and trust that you will help us and see us through in Jesus' name. Amen.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

Did you know there's another podcast by starting with Jesus for the little ones in your life?

It's called The Seed Pod for Beginners. Join Miss Ashley three days a week learning songs,

nature lessons, Bible stories, and you'll even play some guessing games.

Go to our website startingwithjesus.com slash seed pod to learn more.

If you have enjoyed this program and would like to find others like it,

go to startingwithjesus.com.

The materials for this devotional podcast are used by permission from my Bible first.

Visit their website at mybiblefirst.org to get your own copy.

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