If you’re someone who knows your Bible, you might take a
pause for a moment there. That’s what I did, because 1 Chronicles 5 is at first
glance simply a list of geneology of the tribes of Israel. I’ve always found
those lists comforting because part of my heritage is Jewish, so I thought at
first that was what the Lord wanted to remind me of – that I had a whole line
of people behind me who were warriors before the Lord and worshipers in His
temple. I was satisfied with that, but then thought I’d move on to something
else that would speak more directly to my situation, but the Holy Spirit kept
saying to stay there and keep reading, carefully – that was the key – not to
skim – to read very carefully. At first glance I had been skimming, but He said
to go back and re-read very carefully. So I went through line after line of
name after name, who begot whom, and who was from what family. And then in
verses 18-22 I read this, “The sons of Reuben, the Gadites, and half the tribe
of Manasseh had forty-four thousand seven hundred and sixty valiant men, men
able to bear shield and sword, to shoot with the bow, and skillful in war, who
went to war. They made war against the Hagrites, Jetur, Naphish, and Nodab. And
they were helped against them, and the Hagrites were delivered into their hand,
and all who were with them, for they cried out to God in the battle. He heeded
their prayer because they put their trust in Him. Then they took away their
livestock – fifty thousand of their camels, two hundred fifty thousand of their
sheep and two thousand of their donkeys. Also 100,000 of their men, for many
fell dead, because the war was God’s. And they dwelt in their place until the
captivity.”
Look at those numbers for a moment – the children of Israel
who went to war totaled 44,760, and they took 100,000 men captive and there were others who
died. Look at the numbers of livestock – 50,000 camels, 250,000 sheep, 2,000
donkeys. It looks like an impossible math game, but there is nothing impossible
for God, and the passage tells us that the battle was His, that in the smallness
of their numbers, they cried out to Him, and He heeded their prayer because
they put their trust in Him. When I looked up the word “heed,” Webster’s online
dictionary says it means “to give consideration or attention to” or “to pay
attention.” God gave consideration and paid attention to their prayer because
they put their trust in Him, and instead of the 44,760 men being totally
overwhelmed and outnumbered by who knows how many hundreds of thousands of men, those
44,760 men walked away with men and livestock that totaled exponentially more than
they did. They didn’t just have a victory, they had an overwhelming and
supernatural one.
When I first read that passage yesterday morning, I had to
go back and read it again. When the word of God comes into my heart like that,
it’s like life giving water and a shot of adrenalin all at once. All the way on my way
to the train I had been talking to Him, asking Him what I should be doing. I
know that He’s trained me well – I am a warrior, and skilled in battle because
He’s taken me through and shown me how to go to war when I have to. I know my
word, I know how to pray. I can speak in tongues and pray in the spirit. I can
sing praise and worship, and lift holy hands, and I’ll do it any time anywhere
that He wants me to. I’ve been doing all of those things over these months,
because He had warned me early on that there was going to be a battle. But
today when I read His message to me, I heard His promise that He had heeded my
prayers because I trust in Him, and He let me know that the battle was His.
There have been many things these past months that have come
to tell me that I shouldn’t be trusting in God’s word. My own doubts and fears
have risen up, and my own weakness and lack of strength have allowed me to feel
discouraged. Solutions to the problems have appeared, things that would have
meant that I’d have to change the course of my own life and take the solution
into my own hands, but they were easy to do and at times I have so much wanted
to do them. I understand now in a very deep and visceral way why Abraham and
Sarah thought it would be a good idea to have Sarah’s handmaid be the mother of
Abraham’s child – the child God had promised them – but there was a problem in
that scenario, because God had said that Abraham and Sarah would have the
child, and so instead of the child of the promise, the maid had a child,
Ishmael, who was an enemy of the promised child Isaac who was born as God had
promised, and whose descendents were enemies of his children. (Genesis 16)
When God has made a promise to us, there will always come
things to tell us we haven’t really heard Him right. People will question us,
they’ll offer their opinion without our asking, they’ll pry and probe and try
to find something they can hold onto in order to say things to make us doubt.
Then if that doesn’t work, other things will start coming against us from other
places, things that wear us out and wear us down, things that make us feel weak
and outnumbered and ready to give up the battle. It’s at those times that we
need to draw even closer to God, to ask for His help, to cry out to the Lord
our God. It is at those times that instead of giving up, we need to look up,
and let Him know we put our trust in Him.
I’ve come to understand a little something about
supernatural math. My father was an engineer, and so I’m used to looking at
equations that make no earthly sense and knowing there must be a solution there
somewhere. In story telling and play writing there is a term called Deus Ex
Machina, which literally means “God in the machine.” It is something that
happens at a certain point in a story that turns everything around, and that is
truly how God does work in our lives when we feel like there’s no solution
except to give up and try something else. If we can hold on to God in those
moments, and trust in His faithfulness, He’ll show up in a way that we never
expected and we will never forget.
In the past two weeks some opportunities have come up that
seemed at first glance like they were the answers to my prayers. They seemed like
they would have made things so easy, and that all of my problems and woes would
be gone. But as I talked to the Lord and asked Him what I should do, He
reminded me that the very things that seemed the hardest were the things that
He had promised me, and that if I could just hold on to His promises, He’d show
me what He could do.
I don’t know how He’s going to do it, but I know that I
can trust Him, and I know I can trust Him to do what He has promised. What
seems like the easy way out wouldn’t really be easier in the long run, because
that’s not what the Master Planner has planned. His plans are always perfect,
and He knows in our weakness it’s hard for us to wait and trust in Him, so part
of the way that God works in the machine is to make sure that we have what we
need to keep trusting in Him. It’s not about what we can do, and it’s not about
what makes sense to us, it’s about His faithfulness and what He can do. And if
we can wait on Him and trust Him at His word, we’ll see the answer to our
prayers in a way that could only have come from Him.
Blessings,Jannie Susan
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