Good Morning Everyone,
Our theme for this month: “A Fresh Encounter”
Our Bible verse for today: “For the days will come on you when your enemies will build an embankment against you, surround you, and hem you in on every side. They will crush you and your children within you to the ground, and they will not leave one stone on another in you, because you did not recognize the time of your visitation.” Luke 19:43-44 (HCSB)
Our thought for today: “God will withdraw His protection and blessings if He needs to.”
In Luke 19:43-44 Jesus was telling the nation of Israel what was going to happen to them in the near future. As individuals and as a nation they had drifted far from God. Although God had been calling out to them through the prophets, and He even sent them His Son to them, they were hard hearted and would not listen. So God was about to withdraw His protection and blessings and as a result, they would be overrun by their enemies.
This was not an isolated instance in the life of Israel. In Isaiah 5:5-6 God compared Israel to a vineyard that was supposed to have produced good fruit for Him but did not. Therefore God would remove His hand of protection from them: “Now I will tell you what I am about to do to My vineyard: I will remove its hedge, and it will be consumed; I will tear down its wall, and it will be trampled.”
In the Bible study “Fresh Encounter” Henry and Richard Blackaby teach that one of the reasons we need a fresh encounter with God is to open our eyes to how far we have drifted from Him. They make the sobering observation that this is for our own good because if we continue to drift further and further away from Him, eventually we will place ourselves outside of the conditions within which He will protect and bless us. Like the nation of Israel, at some point God will withdraw His protection and blessings and then we are at the mercy of the world.
Many Christians experience this and don’t even realize it. In the Bible God has given us the boundaries within which He expects us to live our lives. But sometimes individual Christians, churches, and even nations make decisions to conduct themselves outside of Biblical standards. That then places them in a condition that God cannot and will not bless. When you are living in that condition you have essentially forced God to remove His hedge of protection, and to withhold His blessings. You are then exposed and at the mercy of the world.
A fresh encounter with God opens our eyes to how far we have drifted and it calls us back to obedience, fellowship, protection, and blessing. If you are living outside of Biblical boundaries I encourage you to correct that situation immediately. You are vulnerable and at great risk because you are in a situation God cannot and will not bless.
God Bless,
Pastor Jim
Oak Hill Baptist Church 