As I soak my beautiful brown kinky hair in conditioner while in the shower with beautiful music in the background; I think to myself, “I can not believe the dark hole God pulled me from just about this time last week!”
I felt just about the same way the Israelites may have felt back in the day when they got to the red sea – they probably felt stranded and abandoned by God. They cried out to God asking Him why He would take them out of bondage only to kill them in the wilderness- Exodus 14:10-12. I mean one cannot not but empathize with how they may have felt in the moment. In front of them was the deep and wide red sea and behind them was the fierce racing army of pharaoh’s men eager to ambush them and take them right back to bondage.
But our good Lord looked not on their doubts, fear or disrespect and kept to His word to deliver His children from bondage and lead them into abundance – Exodus 3:7-9. I strongly believe that the Israelites’ story foreshadows the lives of believers here on earth. Believers like myself who were once tied up with sin and lived in oppression by sin, then brought into liberty through Jesus Christ, then the faith journey through life led by our father with the help of the Holy Spirit who He has given to us through Jesus Christ. John 14:26.
By God’s mighty power through Moses, interceding and standing in the gap for the Israelites, the red sea was parted for God’s children to pass through into the land of abundance God was taking them to. That was a huge huge miracle in my opinion! “I do not think that If I saw something like that happen”, I would ever doubt God, I used to say to myself back in the day. When I began to study the bible for myself sometime in 2018, I rolled my eyes a lot at the Israelites, condemned them perhaps and questioned how they would quickly doubt the great God who parted the red sea, sprung forth water from rocks and so on.
Right now! I think I can say that I may be able to comprehend how and why God’s people will forget His mighty works so quickly. Because!!! Has the Lord not left me in so much awe since I started walking with Him. He literally has parted red seas for me, sprung water out of rocks for me, made ways in desert lands and has just been good to me. But in the past week, I let myself sink into that dark hole of ingratitude and not acknowledging my great God. He is good, periodt!!! And for as long as I walk with Him, every single thing that He allows to happen to me, He is able to turn it for my good. – Romans 8:28
Romans 1:28 resonates so much with me right now; Apostle Paul talks about how knowing God and refusing to thank Him leads to a darkened heart. The moment we just start to think of God as the enemy, forgetting how good He has been to us and begin to throw stones at Him, the devil says to himself, ah! ah! and takes advantage of the opportunity to just slide in to start to fill a once lit room with darkness.
My healing started on Sunday when the sermon in church was about thanksgiving which really helped shift my focus from where it was to God’s beautiful hands on me and His presence with me. Then during the week as I read the book of I Samuel, chapter 7. I came across the word Ebenezer which for me symbolized a people that recognized how much they had been marvellously helped by God.
Yet again, they had gone through a phase where the felt abandoned by God and then darkness gradually crawled into their hearts and they began to worship false, powerless gods. But as soon as they turned back to God and put away their deities – I Samuel 7:4, they began to see the possibilities in their situation. More so, they became charged up to pray their way through their success I Samuel 7:8. God gave them victory over the philistines who were terrorizing them and Samuel, their leader at that time put a stone up at the point where they had been victorious and he called the stone Ebenezer which means the stone of help. I am almost sure that as often as the Israelites saw the stone, they were reminded of their victory through God their strength.
In this moment, I am reminded that it is great to mark the points and places that God has helped us, it may not necessarily mean raising a stone. It may just be internalizing and journaling every single thing God has done and you will surprised what the Lord has done.
Just as the hymn by JR Hutson and Johnson Oatman Jr encourages us –
When upon life’s billows
You are tempest tossed
When you are discouraged
Thinking all is lost
Count your many blessings
Name them one by one
And it will surprise you
What the lord has done
One of the beauties of marking the places God has helped us which is clearly evident in my life right now is peace. I Samuel 7:14 tells us how there was peace in Israel and even between them and their neighbors- the Amorites.
The peace of God surpasses all understanding and I pray that it transcends through your soul as you turn back to God, recognize all the ways He is good to you and give Him praise.
Amen.