2 Kings 17:5 “Then the king of Assyria came up throughout all the land, and went up to Samaria, and besieged it three years.”

Have you ever felt “under siege”?

It’s not uncommon to feel under siege emotionally, psychologically and spiritually at various points in our life.

Here in the book of 2 Kings, the Assyrians laid siege to the city of Samaria, which was the capital city of the northern kingdom of Israel.

Samaria was where Israel retreated to, defended and made their last stand from.

Laying siege to a city (besieging) is a favourite military tactic of just about every army throughout history… because it so darn effective.

When you lay siege to the place where the people you are trying to destroy are defending from, you can potentially win the war without even really having to fight it!

How the siege tactic works is very simple… you surround the city and cut off the supplies to it… nothing gets in or out. And you persistently chip away at it trying to find a weakness to make an entrance, eventually the army pouring in and overwhelming it.

Meanwhile, because the people inside the city are cut off from fresh supplies of food and water, with the walls being eroded and the people inside being steadily demoralized by being surrounded on all sides…

… they become so compromised and weakened that they can’t fight properly, they may come out and fight (which is very disadvantageous) or they’ll surrender, die or even eat themselves alive… as happened in the Old Testament.

… How does this apply to us?

Well, in the spiritual sense, we as Christians can get under siege very easily, and we all experience that at different times in our lives.

And it can go for a while, getting chipped away at and whittled down over time… after all, here Samaria was under siege for three whole years!

Modern Christianity is under siege right now in many ways, as it has been cut off from what supplies it and what makes Christianity actually Christianity is steadily being whittled away, eroded, breached and thoroughly defeated.

To besiege your life as a Christian… all Satan and this world has to do is cut you off from the word of God.

Seeing as the word of God is the food and water of the Christian, if he can cut you off from that, he will easily make mincemeat of your life without even a fight really happening.

Satan also wants to make little entrances in your life where the whole army can come through, compromises on truth, disintegration of Biblical doctrine, he will try to cut off your prayer life, and so demoralize your faith and hope in God to the point of where you cannot fight, are overcome or surrender.

But it’s not meant to sound bleak! Yes, this can be the case with many professing Christians, but it doesn’t need to be you! Unlike the city of Samaria here, you don’t need to fall!

And it’s because God is greater. God’s grace is in constant supply to the Christian, and you need not ever be cut off from the supply of his Spirit and the word of God and communion with him in worship and prayer.

… Keep the supply lines open! There were many sieges where when the kings prayed to God, God took care of the enemy that surrounded them in miraculous ways (Hezekiah for example)… because in the end we are only as cut off as we allow ourselves to be!

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