There Samuel took a stone and set it up as a monument between Mizpah and Jashanna, naming it Ebenezer for to this point, he said, “the Lord has helped us.” 1 Samuel 7:12 (New English Bible)
Perhaps you read my recent devotional message (“From Bad Boy
to Pastor” posted on August 2)
conveying my love for the old hymn, “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing.” If it isn’t a favorite hymn of yours, then maybe
the word “Ebenezer,” which is in the first line of the second verse is a
strange word to you. Maybe it’s a strange
word even if “Come Thou Found of Every Blessing” is a familiar hymn to you.
How can we sing our praises to God using the word, Ebenezer,
if we don’t know what we’re praising God for? It just seemed wrong to me. So, I set out to learn what in the world an Ebenezer
is.
The word, Ebenezer, is only found 3 times in the Bible in
the book of 1 Samuel (4:1, 5:1
& 7:12). In Hebrew, Ebenezer (ebhen
ha-ezer) is defined as “a stone of help.” The stone Samuel erected was a monument to
God’s helping the Israelites achieve victory over the Philistines in a battle
near Mizpah.
The prophet, Samuel, intended the Ebenezer stone to be a
constant reminder to the Hebrew people (each time they walked by it) of God’s
unfailing help in answer to prayer. Now that
I know what an Ebenezer is I think I can say or sing those words of praise to
God knowing that in my 80 plus years of living He has been “my Ebenezer” many
times.
Prayer: Heavenly Father, we praise and we thank You for all the times in our lives that You have answered our prayers. You have been “our stone of help, our Ebenezer.” In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen
Judy Welch
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