Door of Hope

Sunday, July 14th, 2019

I am here to tell you that your valley of Achor can be your door of hope.
Steve Reiter

TRANSCRIPTION

Welcome to God Today.  I’m Steve Reiter with Right Turn Media and the Eternal Leadership Podcast. In total, I worked for Dr. James Dobson for 15 years.  I was Chief Audio Engineer at Focus on the Family and then left with him to help start Family Talk. At Family Talk, it was a start-up ministry. The money never really came in enough for me really build the kind of staff I had at Focus.  So, I was doing two daily radio broadcasts with half the staff I had at Focus to do one. I wasn’t managing myself well, I wasn’t managing my team well, and I wasn’t managing my health well in any stretch of the imagination.

 

It was during that time, right towards the very end, that my health really started to go downhill.  In my last two months, I lost 20 pounds. I wasn’t eating, I wasn’t sleeping, I was throwing up multiple times a day.  My doctor pulled me aside and said, “Steve, you don’t understand this, but you have to leave for your health’s sake.  My last day I weighed less than when I started my senior year of high school, that’s how thin I was. When I stepped out, when I left, when I turned in my resignation, I felt defeated.  Because I had this hand of protection that was over my career, and propelling me up through the ranks at Focus to this place where I was Dr. Dobson’s right-hand man when it came to the recording.  I felt defeated, I felt humiliated, I felt like I had no future, and I had no idea where I was going to go.

 

In the time since then, I have been reminded of the story of Joshua and the Israelites as they moved through the Promised Land.  Their first big defeat was the town of Ai. It was a town that they had only sent a fraction of their army, but they were routed. Because God told them. He said, “A fraction of your army.” And they got routed. It turns out that the sin of Achan was what really kind of kept them from that victory.  They cleansed that sin and moved through Ai and had no problems whatsoever. But, that was their worst defeat. The valley of Achor, where they were camped out is mentioned two other times in the Old Testament. It is mentioned at the end of Isaiah in chapter 65:10, “And the valley of Achor is called a resting place for herds for my people who seek me.” And then Hosea 2:5, “He will make the Valley of Achor a door of hope.”

 

For me, when I left media I felt like it was my worst defeat, but God, as I recovered from my burnout, took me back there and it became my door of hope, it became a resting place for my herds.  I am sensing there are some people watching right now where you suffered a major defeat in your past. You don’t know how you can be redeemed. You don’t see any way it can be redeemed. But, I am here to tell you that your valley of Achor can be your door of hope.  It can be a place, a valley of where your flocks, your herds are resting. 

 

So I want to pray for you right now if this really touches you. Father, I want to lift up those people that have gone through the wringer and they’ve had this massive defeat in their life where they saw so much favor and then it was cut off.  It felt like it was just cut off. I ask right now, Jesus, that you help to reawaken that spark. Reignite that flame that was in their spirit, so that way they can – in a month’s time, in two month’s time, in a year’s time, down the road – look at that season and say, “Yeah, that was a big defeat. But, now I am truly in my valley of Achor.”  In Jesus’ name, amen. Thanks for watching God TV. I am Steve Reiter with Right Turn Media and The Eternal Leadership Podcast. Be awesome.