ask a second time—know what I’m talking about?  Darkness that—and there’s always this whispering thought, “What have I done wrong,” as we flounder around.  Well, let me tell you what not to do, okay?

Eleventh verse.  I’m gonna dispense with this in a hurry because the message is what you’re supposed to do.  “Behold, all ye that kindle a fire, that compass yourselves about with sparks: walk in the light of your fire, and the sparks that ye have kindled.  This shall ye have of mine hand; ye shall lie down in sorrow.”  I could, I wanna dispense with this quickly if I can because it’s hard to, because it’s so typical of the way we react to the obstacles along the path and to the darkness that comes.  I know how Gene Scott’s done it for years.  Those that know me well and are around me a lot will probably laugh at this, because I smoke a pipe and smoke a cigar and began getting certain kinds of lighters, little pencil pipe lighters, years ago from the friends who supply me the tobacco and the cigars.  Those are the damnedest irritating things you’ve ever seen.  They will always go out when you need them most.  They’re little pencil…I wish I had one—see I never have them either when I need them.  I’ll carry four or five of them with me and just when I need to make a great impression by pulling this fancy lighter out, I get so frustrated I want to go back to flicking my BIC!  Those things never fail you. 

So those who know me well will laugh at this because I’m gonna describe my tendency in figurative language when the darkness comes.  I can light a match faster than anybody, which figuratively is saying....  You know, I have a guy who works for me—he typifies what I’ve been with God for years.  That’s why I recognize it so quickly.  Takes one to know one.  He’s a guy who works for me—I tell a classic story. 

We flew up to my home on Lake Almanor.  We have a car at the airport.  We’re there for the first time in the spring to open up the house so I know there’s no groceries in the house.  We stop in the little—the car, it’s a wonderful car, it starts no matter what the weather.  You can leave it in 10 feet of snow and dig it out and it starts.  They don’t make cars like that any more.  It’s an old rickety station wagon but it starts.  So we get in the station wagon with my guys who come up to help open the house up and we drive to Chester, the little town maybe a mile from the airport, before we go to my house.  And we’re in the gas station refilling the car and I know we don’t have any groceries in the house so I say to—what shall I call him?  I don’t want to identify him.  Is there a name that I can use?  I don’t have anybody named Jacob, so let’s call him Jacob, though everybody that works with me knows who he is.  “Jacob….”  Now there’s a grocery store across the street.  It’s a big four-lane road going through town, cars coming and going, and we’re at the service station on the other side.  I say “Jacob, go over to that grocery store…” and I was gonna say, “and get the following things.”  But when I said ‘go’ he started moving, and when I said ‘over to the grocery store’ he was turning that direction and by the time I got to the end of the sentence he was across the road.  No idea what I wanted to buy at the grocery store, but he was going to the grocery store.

That’s me with God.  That’s Jacob in the Old Testament.  There was nothing wrong with what Jacob set out to do.  God made it clear before Jacob and Esau were born “Jacob I loved; Esau I hated.”  But Jacob set out to encompass God’s will in his own strength.  He couldn’t wait on God to work it out.  He…and when he coupled with his mother in conspiracy, the two of them could always figure out how to get God’s work done before God got there.  His name means “heel-