His Encouragement #172

Welcome to His Encouragement Thursday! I don’t know about you, but Thursdays are my struggle day of the week. By Thursday, I have already been working hard at school and at home, and I just wish it would hurry up and be Friday already. LOL! I definitely need a little extra Jesus time on Thursdays.

Where there is no prophetic vision the people cast off restraint, but blessed is he who keeps the law.
Proverbs 29:18 ESV

What an amazing verse!

If you’re like me, you’ve probably said to yourself recently, “Wow! This world has lost its mind.” We are truly living in the days where many call evil good and good evil (Isaiah 5:20), and it’s often really scary and shocking. Today, people cheer for murder and hate and violence, then act like you’re crazy when you say, “Hey! What you’re cheering for is murder, hate, and violence. Knock it off!” It’s enough to make you feel like you’re going a little crazy.

When I first read Proverbs 29:18, I thought to myself, “This is why the world is crazy. There is no prophetic vision. They don’t fear God. They refuse to acknowledge His Torah. They want to do things their way, not His. Of course!” And this makes sense on a very surface-level. But the verse wouldn’t leave my mind. So, I dug a little deeper.

According to Rashi, the Medieval French Rabbi famous for his Biblical commentary, this verse is interpreted as follows: “When Israel causes prophecy to withdraw from them by mocking the prophets, they will become unrestrained and will degenerate.” Interesting!

You see, what was nagging at me about this verse is the phrase “no prophetic vision.” This phrase dug under my skin because my brain first went to no prophetic vision means when God isn’t talking to us humans anymore. But this is wrong. God, I believe, is always trying to talk to us. It’s we humans who choose to listen or not. When we choose to stop listening, when we choose to mock those who continue to listen, we stop God’s Voice and allow a place where we justify an anything-goes attitude. When we get to this level, becoming depraved is easy.

BUT to those who keep TORAH (God’s Word), to those who refuse to mock God, these people never lose sight of prophetic vision. And that actually makes a lot of sense. If you are the person who reads God’s Word every day, you pray every day, you live for Jesus every day, of course you still hear from God. Of course, you still have prophetic vision — it’s called the book of Revelation (and a whole bunch of other books in the Bible, too). When you have a real relationship with God, you will “hear” God and know what’s coming. You’re His kid, and He is a good Father who won’t let His kid enter a storm without being there with you. Talk about being blessed!

This world is crazy, and it is going to get way worse. Prepare yourself today by entering into a right and real relationship with Yahweh. Read your Bible, pray without ceasing, and live for Jesus. God will take care of everything else!