Ask God to Remove the Hedges
1986
I made an unusual request last week. I’ll word it in another way that might be a little more clear because several of you with very good hearts pursued that quickly just to find out more about what I was talking about because you were intrigued by it or scared by it or something like that. But what I asked was that you’d join me for at least another week in prayer and hopefully in fasting in order that we might ask God to take down those hedges that He’s built around people on this earth. We all have those. We all have the benefits of God’s blessing. And that was one of the arguments that Asaph and some of the psalmists said, “Why do you bless these people? They’re standing in rebellion to You. Why do you bless them?”
What I’m asking you to join me in prayer in is that God will lower those hedges and just like Job then felt the influence of satan in his life in Job 1: 6-16. Satan then began to influence him and it stole his health and destroyed his family, took his prosperity, all of those things as God lowered those hedges. The prayer that I’d like you to join me in is that those people that are rebellious to God or arrogant and think that they can stand apart from God or undermine the purposes of Godthat they’ll get a taste of the kind of plagues that God sent to Egypt in order to teach Pharaoh a lesson and that they’ll be convicted. In John 16 Jesus said, “ I’m sending the Holy Spirit to convict the world of guilt in regard to sin.” And so our prayer is that those people that are walking apart from God in areas of their life, including ourselves, will be convicted of guilt in regard to sin in order that God might get our attention.
Paul said that he turned Hymenaeus and Alexander over to satan in order to be taught not to blaspheme. Certainly the implications of that are rather mysterious, but it at least means that they’re going to feel the effects of satan working in their life. The purpose wasn’t that their souls might be lost. The purpose was that their souls might be saved, that they’d be taught not to blaspheme. So our purpose isn’t vindictive. It’s a very loving one that somehow they might come to a repentance and a knowledge of the truth and to yield their lives to God or to yield our lives to God.
I’d like you to join me in that prayer over at least the next week. That people will know that it’s a spiritual reality that we’re living in and not just some pretty words. We want to pray that whatever it takes that God will help us all to realize the brevity of life and the importance of the decisions that we make. That we really can’t survive without God. It’s important for all of us to realize that together. So I’m asking that you would use supernatural weapons that God would reveal that to all of us.
