2 Samuel 22:30 For by you I can run against a troop, and by my God I can leap over a wall.
2 Samuel 22 are the words of song that David spoke to the Lord when the Lord had delivered him from Saul and from all his enemies. As I mused over them, I felt so stricken knowing that I myself hadn’t been so disciplined and diligent to put to record all of God’s goodness and glorious workings in my life. While David’s own song beautifully recounted God’s mercy, salvation, and deliverance, I had nothing to make reference to as I reflected on the several times the Lord had indeed graciously saved me out of trouble, both when I had called on him and when I had been unable to pray as I ought, even then he had still answered a terribly done prayer; I had been in darkness and he gave me light; on eagle’s wings he had borne me up through difficult and uncertain seasons; he had restored my health and healed all my diseases; he had returned my joy after periods of gloom and stifling distress; all that and much more yet I had no songs to sing, no testimonies to tell, nor any passages to delight in in remembrance of all these past deliverances.
Though I have sometimes wished it were so, the truth is that God’s intervention in my life has never been as dramatic and dreadful as David takes time to describe in 2 Samuel 22:8-20. There hasn’t been all the flashing and thunderclaps. My experience, like Elijah’s, of God’s glorious presence and wonderful succour, as has many people’s, been in his still small voice. I have often felt I was at my end; confused, uncertain, frustrated, depressed, and at times even suicidal. People of course have quite different troubles, mine have often involved finances, and have several times too had to do with the guilt for some secret sin, or the frustration that follows a carelessly lived life and the disappointment that is a result of derelicted responsibilities. I was at my wits end one evening when I came back home from school to the report that auctioneers had been at our door that day in search for us on account of our rent arrears. It isn’t easy to forget the desperation and confusion I felt as I tried to understand their letter which really wasn’t so hard to understand. But as I write this, I do have a roof over my head, and walls around me, which in retrospect, now becomes good enough proof that God bore me in a season when I imagined I was so lost and done.
There’s this very inspiring story that Kivutha Kibwana, quoting from Margaret Fishback’s Footprints, recounts in his Walk With Me, God:
One night I had a dream. I dreamed I was walking along the beach with God and across the sky flashed scenes from my life. For each scene I noticed two sets of footprints in the sand, one belonged to me and the other to God. When the last scene of my life flashed before us I looked back at the footprints in the sand. I noticed that at times along the path of life there was only one set of footprints. I also noticed that it happened at the very lowest and saddest times in my life. This really bothered me and I questioned God about it. “God, you said that once I decided to follow you, you would walk with me all the way but I noticed that during the most troublesome time in my life there’s only one set of footprints. I don’t understand why in times when I needed you most, you would leave me.” God replied, “My precious, precious child, I love you and I would never, never leave you during times of trial and suffering. When you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I carried you.”
There’s something particularly chilling about watching Ron Weasley and Harry Porter running into a wall, but then afterwards, there follows the strange relief and wonder when they magically go through it and on to their way to Hogwarts. Sometimes, life feels so much like we are running straight towards an imposing brick wall, yet God seems to say nothing other than “go on ahead, son” or as is often the case, there’s only a dreadful silence and we only get back the muffled eerie echo of our own question. However, when we trusted God and ran on, and sometimes even when we doubted him, it suddenly, though much later, dawns on us that there’s no longer any wall ahead. We had gone through it, or better yet, “leapt over it.” But how? Over a wall so high? We did it by God, because by Him we can run against troops and leap over walls. When Elisha’s servant was quite shaken by the Syrian army that had come to apprehend the Prophet Elisha, Elisha prayed and his servant’s eyes were opened and he beheld a hitherto invisible host of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha. “Do not be afraid, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them,” Elisha had told him earlier (2 Kings 6:15-17).
It is no lie that the troops that will be set against us on certain occasions in our lives will seem so huge and dreadful, the troubles that we will have to bear will feel so heavy and crushing, and our trials, like Paul’s in Asia, will be so fierce and of the sort that would make us despair even of life itself. Yet even then, as Paul himself would later testify, “that was to make us not to rely on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead” (2 Corinthians 1:8-10). Charles Spurgeon calls Apostle Paul the great arithmetician when in verse 10 Paul does the accounts, saying: “He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again”; he delivered us (past), so he will deliver us (now), and he will deliver us again (future). Therefore,
Oh, fearful saints, new courage take:
The clouds that you now dread
Are big with mercy and will break
In blessings on your head.
Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,
But trust him for his grace.
Behind a frowning providence,
He hides a smiling face.
William Cowper, God Moves in a Mysterious Way, verse 2
Alongside David, we too sing: “By him I can run against a troop, by my God I can leap over a wall.” Only we must also write our own songs that praise God’s great deliverances, and tell of his wonderful testimonies– the Church will be glad and edified to hear them, as are we when we read and sing David’s songs and Psalms.
Prayer:
Dear Lord, we are grateful to look back and see just how much you have helped and carried us through. This far, you are Ebenezer. Thank you for the sustenance, protection, and victory. Thank you for the strength to defeat the enemy troops, and for grace to leap over walls. You have done mighty things, and our hearts rejoice in recounting them. In Jesus Name. Amen.