BLENDED FAMILY

Saturday, February 19, 2022

Building a HEDGE of Protection

 

Building a HEDGE of Protection 

TEXT JOB 1:6-12

 

Here in this passage of scripture, Job was a righteous man and was doing quite well in life. Indeed, when God can call your name to the devil for an example of a man God approves you know he had to be quite a fellow. Of course, that ticked the devil off and he accused the Lord of buying him.

 

He said God hedged him in from all the trials and tribulations of life, so no wonder Job loved God. Tear down that hedge and see what happens, said the devil.

It would be nice to think God builds a hedge of protection around everyone, but the truth is He is looking for people who have surrendered their lives to Him to become His servant.

Do you want to have a divine hedge in your life? Then your goal should be to become a servant of God.

When you hear the word “hedge,” what you think of? Most people think of a hedge made of plants. You may have a set of hedge clippers somewhere in your garage that you use to trim plants.

But the word “hedge” in the Bible describes something more substantial than a bush. The Hebrew word really means “wall.” A hedge was a defensive wall often built around a city.

The bottom part might be comprised of stones or hard packed dirt, and there might be thorny plants on the top of it.

 

BUILDING THE HEDGE AROUND THE HOUSES, Church Houses, Personal House your home, And your body the House.

 

Church= Spiritual/  Houses = Emotional / Body= Sickness

 

The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons.”

1 Timothy 4:1 NIV  

Who are this false teachers ? Man & Women that as been seduced By  the minister of offense, minister of bitterness, minister of rejection

Causing the  faithful to abandon their Faith . 

 

“Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.”

1 John 4:1 NIV

 

 

I. THE POWER OF PRAYER

 

A.   I cannot imagine my life without prayer. I know when I pray there is something powerful that begins to happen in the heavens. Jesus said to pray, thy kingdom come and thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. Whatever is in Heaven, God desires for us to have it here on this earth with us now. There is no sickness in Heaven, pray thy will be done to heal us on earth.

B.    God is not broke in heaven, we should have what they have in heaven, supply every need according to his riches in Christ Jesus. If you want the Hedge around you, you will have to pray it around your life and believe God it is SO.

 

“Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.”

Psalms 91:1 NIV

 

“He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.”

Psalms 91:4 NIV

 

C.   If God said that we are able to move mountains through praying, don't you believe that you can pray a hedge or wall of protection around you and your children. Come on church, prayer is what is going to make a difference in the times we are living.

D.   There is a call of prayer being given, STOP FEARING THE UNSEEN and Start Believing for the Unseen that God is able to bring to those who will BELIEVE.

 

if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”

2 Chronicles 7:14 NIV

You can pray for a hedge of protection around those you love. Parents and grandparents you should pray for a hedge of protection around your children and grandchildren. Husbands and wives, you can pray for God to put a hedge around your mate so they will stay faithful to you.

Hosea’s wife, Gomer, was an adulteress. When she wandered away from her husband God put up a hedge to keep her from being unfaithful.

 

Hos 2:6 Therefore, behold, I will hedge up thy way with thorns, and make a wall, that she shall not find her paths.

 

Hos 2:7 And she shall follow after her lovers, but she shall not overtake them; and she shall seek them but shall not find them: then shall she say, I will go and return to my first husband; for then was it better with me than now.

 

II. SPEAKING THE WORD OF GOD

 

A.   Everyone one of us needs God’s hedge of protection. God’s hedge of protection around His servants is part of God’s promise. This hedge can only be removed by God’s permission.

B.   The Word of God is the promises of God in which we are to speak and believe. So as we are reading, speaking the Word of God, the power of God's Word is building our faith in believing for the hedge of God's protection.

 

Mat 17:20 And Jesus said to them, "Because of your unbelief. For truly I say to you, if you have faith as a tiny mustard seed, you shall say to this mountain, 'Remove from here,' and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible to you.

 

Rom 4:17 (Exactly as it is written: "I have made you a father of many nations.") before God in Whom he believed, Who gives life to the dead, and calls the things that are not as though they are;

 

Rom 4:18 And who against hope believed in hope, in order that he might become a father of many nations, according to that which was spoken, "So shall your seed be."

 

C.   Let's just look at what Jesus did whenever Satan came after Him in the wilderness to tempt Him while He was fasting and praying for forty days in the wilderness.

 

D.   He spoke the word of God and Satan did not bother or get to Him. The reason is He went in the wilderness with the power of the Spirit and He came out of the wilderness with the power of the Spirit of God, because He spoke the Word of truth in which Satan could not press beyond.

 

Mat 4:4 But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.

 

Mat 4:10 Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.

 

III. PLEADING THE BLOOD OF JESUS

 

A. I believe that America’s hedges are being torn down due to our sin and turning from God and at this late stage in timeline of man there may not be any return or redemption for the country. 

Individually, all we can do is come before Him and to be sure that we are in a place in our relationship that He does not have to take down our hedge and allow Satan to destroy to get us to return to Him.

 Worse yet, we want to be sure that He does not have to turn our body over to Satan allowing him to take our life though our soul will be saved. Sometimes God looks and expects to find some of us to be used as a protective hedge and He can’t find any.

 

 

C. We must as the Church today began to Plead the Blood of Jesus, because His blood is still that shield of protection around us. It was in the Old Testament with the Children of Israel in Egypt that God was trying to deliver them, and Pharaoh would not let them go. 

So the Lord brought His plagues upon them and it came to destroying or bringing death to every house of the first born son and animal would die if they did not have the blood over the door post of the house.

 

Exo 12:12 For I will pass through the land of Egypt this night and will smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment: I am the LORD.

 

Exo 12:13 And the blood shall be to you for a token upon the houses where ye are and when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and the plague shall not be upon you to destroy you, when I smite the land of Egypt.

Wednesday, February 9, 2022

Give, and it will be given to you

 

 

Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously. Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work.”

2 Corinthians 9:6-8 NIV

 

Many people think the time, energy, or money that is given. To volunteer in doing ministry, Children ministry, ushering ministry, r even to the church is money thrown away. But God tells us that if we give to such places with the proper heart, it is like a seed that is planted.

 

That seed will eventually grow into a large plant. And the money we have given will cause something to bloom in God’s kingdom.

 

There is the story of a man who was dying and he decided he was going to take all his money with him. He instructed his wife to take out all the money from the bank and put it in a sack and hang that sack on one of the rafters in the attic.

 

He told her that when he died, he would grab the sack as his spirit passed there on the way to heaven. The wife did as he requested.

 

The day came and he died. The wife raced to the attic and found all the money still there. She thought to herself, “I knew I should have hung it in the basement.”

 

“Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the Lord Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it. I will prevent pests from devouring your crops, and the vines in your fields will not drop their fruit before it is ripe,” says the Lord Almighty. “Then all the nations will call you blessed, for yours will be a delightful land,” says the Lord Almighty.”

Malachi 3:10-12 NIV

 

God commands us to give from what we have. We don’t want to, so He then tells us that not only do we have to give, we must do it cheerfully. We still balk at giving our money, so He goes a step further. He says if we don’t give, we are robbing Him, but if we do give, He will give us so much back we won’t know where to put it all.

  

God said for us to test Him in this and He will show us. Now, to let us know just how important that is, let me remind you that this is the only place in the Bible that says we are allowed to test God.

 

What is God doing here ? God is trying His best to get us to part with something we hold very dear to us, so that that we can learn how to fully trust Him with more important things – like our very souls. The question is; will we listen?

 

Another question we must ask is …

 

1. WHAT SHOULD WE GIVE?

 

One day, a little boy and his sister were playing ‘Noah’s Ark’ in the small wading pool in their backyard. They were using an old shoebox for the ark, and the water in the wading pool was the flood.

 

After the flood was over, they were going to make an offering, but they couldn’t decide on what to offer. The boy wanted to offer the sister’s doll, and the girl would have no part of it. She suggested the boy’s G.I. Joe, and the boy said ‘NO!’ to that, too.

 

So, the little girl ran to the house and in a few minutes came back with an old stuffed sheep. One ear had long been ripped off, the wool was filthy dirty, and one of the eyes was missing. But she said, “Here let’s sacrifice this. We don’t want it anymore anyway.”

 

The little boy agreed. The broken and forgotten toy was given to God.

 

That is exactly how most of us give to God. We are told to give Him our first fruits, yet we take the first portion for ourselves and give Him what left. We give Him the stuff we don’t want anymore.

 

·       We give to Him out of our convenience, rather than from our love.

·       We give Him the scraps of our lives, or what is left over after we have enjoyed the feast.

 

God is not a God of forgotten scraps or miserable leftovers. God is a holy God and He deserves the first of all we have.

 

To answer the question of “What Should We Give?” the answer would be to give the first portion of what we have - and the best of what we have.

 

Always remember that …

 

2. OUR SECOND BEST DOES NOT HONOR GOD

 

How would you feel if the president of the company you work for called you into his office and said he had chosen you to be his personal assistant – at a very high salary? Wouldn’t that make you feel great?

 

But how would that change your daily work effort? To most people, if something like that happened, it would make us work that much harder so we would please him. If he had chosen us to be his personal assistant, we would do everything in our power to do the best we could. We would strive to honor Him with our high level of productivity, wouldn’t we?

 

Let me remind you that you have been called, but by someone higher and more important than any executive. You have been selected by God to be His personal ambassador to this earth.

 

We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.”

2 Corinthians 5:20 NIV

 

You have been given the duty of being God’s personal assistant in this journey of Faith , but most of us have ignored the need to honor Him by doing our best.

 

As a Christian, it is your explicit duty to be as obedient to God as you can possibly be. But too many Christians turn a blind eye to obedience.

 

 There is a big difference what God wants from us and what the world wants from us. And we seem to always find ourselves standing in the middle, with our backs on God, looking in the direction of the world.

 

In 1 JOHN it says to not love the world or anything in it.

 

That includes their opinions and desires. This might help us to focus properly. Always remember that the world is focused primarily on comfort. “If it feels good, do it.” “Just roll with the flow.” Everything in the world is “self-focused.” And that does nothing to show honor to God, as it has nothing to do with any kind of sacrifice.

 

Those who offer God their second best do not have an appropriate concept of God.

 

If Jesus Christ died for me, then there is no sacrifice that is too much for me to give for Him.

 

3. WHY DO WE HESITATE GIVING TO GOD?

 

We hesitate in giving because we are selfish by nature. “What’s mine is mine and by the way, I want yours, too!”

 

 

Another reason we don’t give, is that we don’t see any immediate benefit out of it for ourselves. Ah! There comes that old selfish nature rising up again.

 

We do not need to see any benefit at all in order to give to God as He commands. We are creatures of ‘immediate gratification.’ If we don’t see an instant return on what we give, we quit giving.

 

The problem is that is all self-focused and has nothing at all to do with being God-focused.

 

God has commanded us to give. If we follow God’s command, we will not lose anything. But we will not profit at all if we don’t do what He commands.

 

 

 

 

Another question we must ask is …

 

4. WHY GIVE TO THE CHURCH?

 

A church has expenses just like your home does. You receive your money from an employer. A church receives its money from the congregation.

 

Let me ask you a question. If you go into your job and do the best you can to do what your boss wants, how would you feel if your boss short-changed you on your paycheck?

 

Let me turn that around. If a church strives to help you in every way God wants it to, how do you think God will feel if you short-change the church?

 

We are talking about tithing to the church but let me remind you that God does not want his church to be a house of money, but He does want you to give to the Temple treasury. Again, the question comes back on us. Will we give what we are supposed to, or not?

 

We have all heard preachers asking for money. The church needs money to operate, but there is a right way and a wrong way to seek it. I believe it is a violation of God’s word to tell people that God will give them back $1,000 for every $100 dollars they give. That would be kind of like a heavenly slot machine.

 

You should never give, focused on what you are going to get back. That is a selfish act and God does not reward that kind of giving.

 

We should give because we want to be obedient to God.

 

Someone said told am so broke he couldn’t rub two nickels together.

I will remind you of the woman who put two pennies into the collection box at the Temple, and Jesus said she would be rewarded more than others who put large sums of money in that box. I explained that she did the best she could out of a heart that desired to be obedient.

 

 

To answer the question of why we give to the church; we give for two reasons.

 

1. Because the church needs funds 2. Because we are told to

 

God wants us to get past our fear of giving. We view it as ‘giving up’ something, while God views it as the “outpouring of a generous and loving heart.’

 

Close

Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.””

Luke 6:38 NIV