Unblock Your Blessings The King's Church International Audio Podcast

Times of purification and prayer amongst the people of God are how every Christian movement of revival and restoration has begun. This is also an essential process if we seriously want to see great change in our lives, our families and in our nations, and indeed if we are focussed on seeing a Great Harvest of people turning to Christ. 
  
As we have already discovered in our current series on the lives of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, God wants to bless every generation. 
  
He greatly blessed Abraham, with a long-promised son, with great wealth and promises of limitless descendants. He also blessed Isaac in so many ways and He would later greatly bless Jacob and his descendants. But to keep the blessing flowing, there were obstacles to overcome, as Abraham, Isaac and Jacob all discovered. 
  
Genesis 26:18 talks of how Isaac unblocked his blessings, saying: ‘Isaac reopened the wells that had been dug in the time of his father Abraham, which the Philistines had stopped up after Abraham died, and he gave them the same names his father had given them.’ 
  
Isaac was in big trouble. In a time of famine, he had gone to the land of the Philistines and God has blessed him greatly - so much so that locals became envious, and he had to move on. He did so - to Gerar, approximately 11 miles southeast of Gaza. 
  
But he and his family had a very urgent need - not of land but of water. Wells that you could access water from were essential to their survival and prosperity. This is something our brothers and sisters in Burkina Faso also know which is why we have supported different projects over the years to sink wells in the world’s third poorest country. 
 
A well represents life, blocking up a well represents death. Now just as access to natural water is of the highest importance, so too the spiritual water of the Holy Spirit is vital to the health and growth of the Christian church. 
  
As Christians we constantly need the streams of living water (the Holy Spirit, the life giver) that Jesus promised (John 7:38). Without the anointing of the Holy Spirit, we will remain thirsty and fruitless. As individuals and churches, we need to always remove anything that would block us from finding water from God. 
  
This passage is very relevant to where we are today in the Christian church in the U.K and other nations as well as to many of us are personally. We see some key points: 
  
1. Generations that have gone before us have dug life giving wells (Hebrews 12:1-3) 
2. Enemies have blocked up the wells of a previous generation (Matthew 13:24-43)  
3. Each generation needs to unblock old wells (Jeremiah 29:13; Hebrews 11:6; Isaiah 12:3) 
 
Apply 
  
1. Generations that have gone before us have dug life giving wells. Father Abraham had dug wells. Isaac had no need to re-invent the wheel, to dig fresh wells. Excellent wells had already been dug. In one sense much of the hard work had been done. Others had been this way before him. His father had learnt how to sink wells. Today we need to realise much ground has already been won. Battles for biblical truth, for political freedom of worship, for recognition of the ministry of the Holy Spirit. A century ago Pentecostal Christians were ridiculed for their emphasis on the Holy Spirit. Now today Spirit filled Christians and churches are at the forefront of global Christianity. For sure many great men and women of God gone before us: 
- John and Charles Wesley, George Whitefield, William Wilberforce, William and Catherine Booth, Corrie Ten Boom, Billy Graham…The list is endless: 
- Gladys Alyward, the pioneer missionary to China, Smith Wiggleworth, the Bradford plumber, Teddy Hodgson, who was martyred in Congo and our own pioneer founder, W.T.H. ‘Billy’ Richards. 
  
They have shown the way forward by faith, vision and action. In one sense they knew how to sink wells, they knew what worked, they knew how to tap into the blessing of God. We are part of