1 Samuel 2:6
These prophetic words from Hannah at the dedication of Samuel are still true today! The Lord makes alive! He alone holds the power of life and death.
The Lord has pretty vividly impressed this truth on me during the last few days! Some of you may not be aware that, but for the intervention of God, I would not be around. I am grateful that the Lord used some emergency room doctors to insist that a gall bladder, later found to be full of infection, and a large stone, needed immediate removal. Otherwise I would not be here. A sobering experience! But also an affirmation from the Lord, that I have work to do before I leave.
Though this was a very dramatic way of showing that I still have a purpose for remaining, none of us needs that kind of high drama to know that we have a God-to-be-fulfilled destiny.
I love Luke’s description of the life of David: “When David had served God’s purpose in his own generation, he fell asleep” (Ac. 13:36). David had a God-purpose for his generation! The Lord was going to keep him alive until he had finished. This is also true for you! And for me!
Our enemy would like to take us out prematurely, but he does not have that authority. Jesus holds the “keys to death” (Rev. 1:18).
King David had many close encounters with death, going all the way back to the times when, as a young man, he killed a lion and a bear, then the many times King Saul tried to kill him. But David had a destiny from God.
David later declared: “You have delivered me from death and my feet from stumbling, that I may walk before God in the light of life”(Ps. 56:13). “Unless the LORD had given me help, I would soon have dwelt in the silence of death” (94:17).
These words from David are our words as well! We have been delivered from death, and from stumbling, that we may walk before God in the light of life! Let’s lean into the future and fulfill that God-ordained, Jesus-saturated destiny!