This message was delivered at Living Hope Christian Center’s New Years Eve celebration on 12/31/13. What a powerful time we had in the presence of the Lord . . . creative presentations, fabulous desserts, awe-inspiring worship, and a powerful word from the Lord that laid out the vision for 2014.
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The title of this message is Living Hope’s theme for 2014: Back to the Blessing.
When God called Abraham in Genesis 12, blessing was at the heart of that call. He said, get out of your father’s house and go to the land I’ll show you, and I will bless you, and I’ll make you a blessing, and I’ll bless those who bless you, and in you all the nations of the world will be blessed.
God promised to bless Abram, but only as he resided in the land of blessing, because the blessing resides in the land of blessing.
But before the end of Genesis 12, Abraham departed from the land of blessing during a time of famine. He departed from the land during a time of contradiction.
He went down to Egypt . . . a land that always begins as a place of provision in Scripture, but ends as a place of bondage. Egypt is like welfare; it’s supposed to be a temporary solution, but it has become a permanent solution.
Abram messed up so badly in Egypt that he had to tuck tail and run back to the promised land almost as quickly as he arrived. God will not allow you to be sustained by foreign provision when he has prepared a great bounty for you in the promised land. So Abram came running back, and he immediately began to call upon the name of the Lord. He learned quickly that as long as he dwelt in the land, he dwelt in the blessing.
But by the fourth generation, Abraham’s descendants were driven from the land by famine . . . back to Egypt, and this time by God’s plan. And once again, they dwelt too long in the land of temporary provision. Once the seven years of famine ended, they should have packed up and moved back to the promised land, but instead they stayed for hundreds of years, and became slaves in the land of their provision.
The Exodus was about going back to the blessing. It was their grand pilgrimage . . . back to the land of promise that God swore on oath to give to their father, Abraham. They realized that they could not receive the blessing in the land of their slavery; they had to get free.
And the word of the Lord to you is This year, you’ve got to get free! Every place of slavery in your life is a hindrance to the blessing. You’ve got to break free from the chains that oppress you and make your pilgrimage back to the land of blessing!
The people of Israel were just like Abraham in that they were journeying to the Promised Land for the first time. That is, they were pilgrims, but they were also immigrants. They were pilgrims because they were journeying to the promised land. But they were immigrants cause they had never been there before. They knew it existed, they knew it belonged to them by promise, but they had no idea whether or not they would ever see it with their own eyes. It’s possible to live your entire life alienated from the things that rightly belong to you!
Like the Israelites, many of us are immigrants when it comes to God’s blessings because we’ve never been there before. Citizens of heaven, but foreigners of blessing. This year we are going to get out of Egypt and become a people of pilgrimage. We are going to introduce you to blessings that you didn’t even know were yours.
There are three manifestations of the blessing that we will focus on this year: Blessing upon your finances, Blessing upon your family, and Blessing upon your friendships.
Psalm 84:5, 7 – Blessed are those whose strength is in you, whose hearts are set on pilgrimage . . . they will go from strength to strength till each appears before God in Zion. (NIV)
1 Peter 1:1 – To the pilgrims of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia . . . (NKJV)
Like Abram, for many of us it is time to return to the land, build an altar, and begin to call upon the name of the Lord.
