Beloved: grace and peace be yours from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour. I am pleased to welcome you to the last week of the month of June 2023. My prayer is that God will always keep you from falling in love with the ways of the people of this world, so that you will not expose yourself to shame or destruction, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
As we are shown in the bible, there was a time that Jacob’s daughter, Dinah, was raped by a young prince called Shechem. And this eventually led her brothers, Levi and Simeon, to going on a vengeful mission of sacking the whole city of the prince. It is not a new thing, then, for people to rape people. And it is not a new thing for people to go to any extent, including wiping out an entire family, town or ethnic group in a quest to punishing one person’s offence. So, before you hurt anybody, always remember that it is not everyone that we will leave vengeance for God. Some may go to the extent of punishing your entire family for your sin against them. (Cf. Gen 34)
But then, how did Dinah end up being raped by that man? The bible answers that for us by saying, “Now Dinah, the daughter Leah had borne to Jacob, went out to visit the women of the land. When Shechem son of Hamor the Hivite, the ruler of that area, saw her, he took her and violated her.” (Gen 34:1-2NIV) So, what gave Shechem access to Dinah was the fact that she left her father’s house to go and visit the women of the land. If she had not left her father’s house to go and be with the girls of the land, she would not have become a victim of rape.
What is that telling you? It is that you need to be mindful of where you allow your legs to take you. It is not everywhere that is safe for you to go. It is not every friend or colleague at work that is safe for you to visit. So, before you start visiting or going out for recreation with people, be sure you know how safe whatever place they are taking you will be for you. And if you are not sure a certain place you are going will be safe for you under normal circumstances, you should know that going there may not worth the risk, if it is not the gospel of Jesus that is taking you there.
Do you know that there are even places you must not take the gospel of Jesus to, if you do not have an express instruction from the Lord to do so? We read in Scriptures that the Spirit of Christ forbade Paul the apostle and his companions from going to certain places to preach. Why? We are not told. Could it be that God did not want the people in those places to be saved? No, it could not be that. That is because the bible tells us that He wants all men to be saved. (Cf. Acts 16:6-8; 1Tim 2:3-4)
Why, then, did He forbid those men from entering those places to preach the gospel in them? It may just be that they may not be safe in them at that time. So, before you, as a man, start taking the gospel to prostitutes in their taverns, be sure you hear correctly from God. And before you, as a woman, start taking the gospel to street thugs at their joints, be sure the Spirit of God is leading you. Otherwise, you may end up suffering the same fate as Dinah Jacob.
Well, as we even see in Dinah’s case, she did not go to the women of the land because she wanted to turn them away from the worship of Idols to God. Rather, she went to visit them. That means she thought of them as friends and wanted to be in their company. Perhaps she felt bored that day and just wanted to get away from their boring house, where there was no partying, no crazy music to dance to and no comedians to make one forget his sorrows. But by the end of that day, it had dawned on her that their boring house was the only safe place for her to be in that town.
Today, we have many Christians, especially ladies, who, like Dinah Jacob, think the ways of the kingdom of God are boring. So, they want to try a little of the ways of those of the world. No, they don’t want to dress almost naked like them, go to night parties like them or keep many boyfriends or girlfriends like them. But they want to have a little feel or taste of what they are doing. And you can see this being expressed in the way they dress and conduct themselves when they are not in church meetings and also in the way they use the social media.
Now such people, if they are not shown mercy, will most likely end up ruined in one way or the other like Dinah Jacob. Then all that they have been labouring to preserve in their lives will be lost in almost an instant. And the shame that will follow may the very thing that will make their ruin permanent. So, before you step out of the boundaries of God’s instructions for you, don’t think only of what you will gain by doing so but also of what you will lose by doing so. My prayer is that God will keep you from foolishly or arrogantly running to any place where you will be destroyed. Amen.
Have a lovely week.
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