Have You Been To Mizpah Lately?
1 Samuel 7:3-6 (New International Version)
3 So Samuel said to all the Israelites, “If you are returning to the LORD with all your hearts, then rid yourselves of the foreign gods and the Ashtoreths and commit yourselves to the LORD and serve him only, and he will deliver you out of the hand of the Philistines.” 4 So the Israelites put away their Baals and Ashtoreths, and served the LORD only. 5 Then Samuel said, “Assemble all Israel at Mizpah, and I will intercede with the LORD for you.” 6 When they had assembled at Mizpah, they drew water and poured it out before the LORD. On that day they fasted and there they confessed, “We have sinned against the LORD.” Now Samuel was serving as leader of Israel at Mizpah.
When we walk with the Lord closely we can tell when our walk gets off and our prayers are hindered. Things just do not seem to flow and the struggle to be at peace seems to be present. We seem to rush into God’s presence only to ask Him to help or give us something, with no real time or connection. Some months back, when our Bishop was teaching on prayer and how to get your prayers heard I remember him explaining the up, down in and out and up process. The process of exalting God and honoring Him first and then asking that we be forgiven our sins and binding up forces that may hinder us, or cause us to falter; then asking for His will be done, then what ever our petition is before God and then closing our prayer with thanksgiving and praise to God. Often we don’t humble ourselves enough to be in tuned with God. We just want God to hear us, and do what we want, or need Him to do, without having to admit where we mess up, where we fall short or the areas in our life that are full of mess and sin. We do not ask for help or admit that we are wrong because we do not see that we are out of step with God because we have been doing us too long, because we have gotten so used to our way being the best way for us, hardly ever noticing that we are off balance, that our walk has gotten off kilter and that we have gotten disconnected from God. We think we can honor ourselves, exalt our jobs and do others as we please and that we can go to God and ask whatever we will and He will hear us and answer us. But we are missing the point; we are missing it because we are no longer walking close enough for God to speak into our lives or speak to us, because as my mom use to say to us, that we have gotten too big for our britches.
One of the key and essential elements in our relationship with God is humility and repentance. It is realizing that we need Him to deliver us and save us, even from ourselves. We may want God to hear us, but if we are in refusal to see that we are in need of more of Him than just someone that we go to like a Genie in a bottle, or someone that will wave a magic wand over our situation and make it right. When we have been engaged in idol worship (when we have placed other things above God), we need to go to a place like Mizpah. It is a place to go and humble ourselves, and repent before Almighty God and get back in right standing with Him. It is a place to get real with God about our messes and to come clean before Him, in order to come back into right relationship with Him. So many of us are figuring we are good to go, because we go to church every time the church doors are open and we know how to say the right things that make people think we know God, but we have thoughts that are far from Godly. We do things to people in retaliation for what we feel they have done to us, on the down low, thinking no one is noticing, all the while forgetting God sees our heart. We can do things for people all the while telling others all that we have done for people to make ourselves seem that much better, forgetting that God was the one that gave you the ability to get wealth and to be able to bless people anyway. We are doing things that seem right for all the wrong reasons, and yet we think it is all good with the Father, but it is not. We need to get to Mizpath and get to God. We need to allow Him to show us ourselves in order for Him to really come into our lives and become the part that works in us, instead of us working Him into our part.
God is calling us to Mizpath. He is calling us to come to Him and strip all the pretenses and all the things that may look right or not so right before man, and be focused on and striving to be right before Him. It is time for us to stop worshipping ourselves, our way, and our plans, our agenda and to stop allowing other people and other things to rule our time and our focus. It is time to get to Mizpath and it is time to get our relationships with God right, so that our prayers are no longer hindered and our life will be really changed!
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