Vision:   “ 2008 - The Year of God’s Favor!”

Psalm 102:13 “Thou shalt arise, and have mercy upon Zion:
for the time to favour her, yea, the set time is come.”

Greetings to all of this Fellowship and of the Household of Faith!  Dr. Marty and I welcome you warmly to the Vision Meeting 2008. We are so grateful for the fellowship and gathering together of God’s people and you are deeply appreciated for your fellowship in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

The Shield of Faith Fellowship of Churches has been called of God to play a vital role in the move of God in these End-Times. Across the United States and abroad, this fellowship continues to plant and nurture churches in faithful execution of the mandate God has placed upon this ministry. Many new churches are a part of us this year and the Apostles’ doctrine has been powerfully spread across the world in the past twelve months since our last vision meeting. This brief greeting comes to encourage each of you in the Lord and to assure you and reassure you that 2008 will be a remarkable year of God’s favor upon your ministry and upon the Fellowship as a corporate body.

Make no mistake about it: 2008 will not be a simple year! 2008 will be a difficult and troubling year around the world. The new President of the United States will have an extremely difficult and troubling assignment. We will almost surely find ourselves feeling pity for him or her and praying for our president a great deal. As sober and sensitive watchmen on the walls of the House of God, we in leadership are acutely aware regarding the times in which we are ministering. The coming of the Lord is very near and even the most mundane-seeming events in the world are filled with eschatological significance! We have entered a time of complexity in world affairs and though we are the protected people of God we do not minister in a vacuum. The difficult events of the world around us will affect us and will make impact and demands upon our local churches as we carry out the will of God for our respective congregations.

I announce to you that the year of 2008 will be the YEAR OF GOD’S FAVOR upon His people, upon your churches and upon this Fellowship of believers across the world. I write to reassure you that God will sustain and enlarge us in the challenging developments of 2008!  Despite threatening international affairs and challenging economic circumstances, the church of God will live in a place of remarkable favor. Because of complex developments in the world around us, we as church leaders will be required to depend on God’s favor for success and survival.

Increasingly we are in circumstances in which human ingenuity and clever strategies of man will prove inadequate. In past times creativity and human solutions may have been sufficient, but that will not be the new order of things. We have entered a new season in which all strategies that are not given by God will fail. Only the Lord can bring us fruitfulness and success in this season that we have entered now. And I promise those of you who are faithful, sincere, obedient and walking upright before God will see His favor manifested in a wide variety of ways. Scripture tells us that , “…the Lord knoweth them that are his.” (II Timothy 2:19) In the year ahead, the Lord will show those who are His. They will experience His favor and blessing in unusual ways.

The key to experiencing the favor of God is found in the simple admonition of the Psalm 37:3
Trust in the LORD, and do good; so shalt thou dwell
in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed.

It is critical to remember that God promises safety and provision for the church and the person that trusts in Him and does that which is good. The prescription is remarkably simple: First, trust in the Lord: Secondly, do the right thing!

In the dangerous days ahead safety and provision will be no small thing. They are not benefits to be counted on or taken for granted.  For a long time those things were presumed to be somehow our right as citizens of the United States. We felt that we were perhaps entitled to safety and provision because of our national wealth or because of our Christian legacy as a people. But given the increasingly dangerous world we are now facing, with the wide variety of nuclear and economic threats that are apparent, safety and provision  will come to be recognized as gracious gifts from God.

Experts have said that the Al-Qaeda worldwide terrorist network has a 30% probability of bombing a US city within the next ten years. The words “economic depression” are actually beginning to be spoken as a possibility in our nation. Hence safety and provision are not guaranteed in the natural course of events: But they will certainly be ours as we simplify our lives and put the Church and the Lord of the Church in the center of our lives like never before.

Pastors, 2008 will be a year to pull your members close to you and to your church like never before. Your church needs to consolidate and solidify itself! Each of us who know the Word will remember the example of Israel in Goshen – of a people protected in the very midst of God’s judgments on the Egyptian world around them. 2008 will be a Goshen-like experience for God’s people: The church will have to make a tight huddle and stay connected to the Lord and to one another. Anyone venturing outside Goshen may well experience the judgments and plagues of Egypt, just as if they were not a part of the covenant people, spiritual Israel. In 2008 every child of God is exhorted to stay within the confines of Goshen! Rejoice there! Be content there!  Receive God’s provision, favor and protection there! It’s time for the churches of our Fellowship to draw closer to one another, and for the members of our local churches to draw closer to their leaders and to one another on the local level. It is imperative that you take this message back to your churches!

By no means is it a time for fear; On the contrary, it is a time when God will show his favor to the saints like never before, but we have to stay inside the house and under the blood during the dark night of the death angel’s passing. Therefore, 2008 is a time for strong unity in the Body of Christ, not just with anyone who says, “Lord, Lord,” but with those that you know assuredly to be men and women of God who are sincerely seeking the face and will of God. It is time to gather the fragments and strengthen the things that remain. It’s a time for the Fellowship and the churches of the Fellowship to be closer together than ever before.

Our unity will permit us to put many spiritual opponents to flight. Our unity will permit us to experience the favor of God – the COMMANDED BLESSING of Psalm 133:3

“For there the Lord COMMANDED the blessing, even life forevermore.”
Psalm 133:3

In Christ,
Bishop Henry B. Alexander