Good Lord: A 5-Day Devotional From David LeonardSample

You Never Let Me Down

Afterward, Samuel took a stone and set it upright between Mizpah and Shen. He named it Ebenezer, explaining, “The Lord has helped us to this point.”

– 1 Samuel 7:12

In 1 Samuel, God’s people were in a bad place. They had forgotten God and experienced a soul-crushing defeat. After that, it took them another twenty years to remember God’s goodness. Samuel called them to return to God with their whole hearts—and they did. In response, God defeated their enemies. So, Samuel built a stone altar as a symbol to help people remember what God had done for them, as we read about yesterday in Joshua 4. He named that altar Ebenezer, which means “stone of help.”

That stone monument reminded Israel of God’s loving discipline and faithfulness. It was a reminder to know and trust in God’s goodness. They had been unfaithful and did not deserve for God to rescue them, but He heard their honest cry and intervened. He would never let them down.

We see in 1 Samuel what we saw in Joshua 4—we need to remember what God has done. We are no less forgetful today. God has rescued us above and beyond what we can ask or imagine through His Son Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection. And even when we know this in our heads, we often forget it in our hearts. Whether this forgetting lasts a day, a week, a month, a year, or twenty years, we are tempted live as though God’s goodness doesn’t apply to our present details and to believe He might somehow let us down.

He won’t. As a reminder, we must also create Ebenezers—monuments to His faithfulness. We shouldn’t view the events in our lives simply as circumstances or seasons to push through to get to the other side. In our hearts, we need to make each of those moments a stone, a marker of God’s goodness that draws us closer to Him. God’s rescue doesn’t mean we won’t do battle in this world. But in our battles, we can turn to God in faith and obedience, knowing He is good and we are always in need of Him.

·Why do you think Samuel said, “to this point”? What did he want to communicate to Israel about their present and future?

·We often move on to whatever is next too fast. What has God done in your life lately that you need to remember as a marker of His goodness? Practically speaking, what would it look like for you to do that?

·Thank God for never letting you down. Confess your tendency to live as He might.