Is Your Neighborhood Your Judea?

Your neighborhood, is it your Judea? First Jerusalem, then Judea. Share your faith with your neighborhood. Maybe we can reframe sharing our faith to include operating in faith on behalf of our neighborhood. Give your faith to your neighborhood.

Why are we in the neighborhood we are in? Is it because we chose it or because God chose it for us? Selah.

If we see the neighborhood as only our choosing, we may not see the gravity of where we live as an assignment from our Father. He directs our paths, He orders our steps, So, don’t you think that where you live; the country, the city, even the neighborhood may be directed by God also?

We are told in scripture that we are the house of God (Hebrews 3:6) and that we are the light of the world (Matthew 5:14). That seems to indicate that we are also the light of our neighborhood as well as the house of God in our neighborhood.

We tend to see our neighborhood as something we drive through to get to our house, which is our place of escape; our castle, our fortress. The place where we unplug. But if that is all we do maybe we are playing right into the enemy’s hand.

We are told in the book of Joshua (1:3), “Every place on which the sole of your foot treads, I have given it to you, just as I spoke to Moses.” The point of God saying, “just as I spoke to Moses,” is that this is not a one-off; this was not for Moses only. It appears that the Lord is saying, ‘This is My plan for every generation. What the previous generation does not complete, I give to the next generation.’ You are the next generation just as Joshua was the next generation from Moses. It was his time then, to possess the land, just as it is your time now.

Every place you put the sole of your foot is yours, so take possession. How do we take possession? Well, maybe we can start with this, “The weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds.” (2 Corinthians 10:4) What are some of the non-carnal weapons that were employed in the Old Testament?

For example, worshippers leading the way, as in the story of Jehoshaphat where the enemy’s armies destroyed each other. Hidden light being revealed through broken clay as in the story of Gideon is another example in which God also had whittled down the army from thirty-two thousand to three hundred and the only weapons that each had were a ram’s horn and a torch in a jar. Another non-carnal weapon may be angel-armies marching in the tops of trees, as in the story where David had already asked the Lord once about defeating the Philistine army, and he was successful. But the enemy had come back, so David inquired of the Lord a second time. He did not assume that what worked once would work again. And this time, the Lord gave a specific strategy. “You shall not go directly up, circle around behind them and come at them in front of the balsam trees.” (2 Samuel 5) That was the ‘how’, but then there was the ‘when’. “And it shall be, when you hear the sound of marching in the tops of the balsam trees, then you shall act promptly.”

Maybe we could start with those weapons as we walk through our neighborhoods. Or maybe we could start with some of the last words Jesus spoke to His disciples in the Gospel of John; speaking these over our neighborhood. (John 20:19-23) “Peace be with you. Peace be with you. As the Father hath sent Me, I also send you. Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, their sins have been forgiven them. If you retain the sins of any, they have been retained.” Or maybe we do both.

In the power of His love,

Rick Drapeau