Let’s take a minute and go back to the instance where faith was first founded within us. Can you remember several clearly defined moments where faith allowed God to change your life?
I consider these places of influence as spiritual waypoints. These waypoints need to be kept protected and revered and spoken about by the word of our mouth. There is astounding overcoming power by the word of our testimony. It is where God placed His hand upon us and we were never same again.
God commanded Israel to carry the ark of the covenant everywhere they set their feet for a remembrance to them and their generations of the deliverance from Egypt by the mighty hand of God. This was intended to seal any questions concerning impossibilities they would encounter in their future.
God wanted Israel to assuredly know what He did once—He could certainly do it again. This ark of testimony had a power that brought surrender to everything around it. It even brought blessings to fall upon territories it rested upon. The ark held God’s authentication in time of question.
Within the ark there were three distinct items of memory necessary to carry them through the most difficult future.
The three monuments of miracles were as follows:
1. Ten inscribed laws of protection. God’s covenant law to the first children of Abraham, the father of all them that believe.
2. Manna. The sustenance of God’s natural provision in places of total impossibility.
3. Aaron’s rod that budded. Showing forth the one who God anointed and causes to bloom in the day of question.
The importance of carrying the ark of the testimony was not an option. It was all they needed according to God to sustain them all those years. But let’s see at once what happened! David speaks about this in Psalm 78. Please read the whole chapter.
Psalm 78:39 For he remembered that they were but flesh; a wind that passeth away, and cometh not again. V.40 How oft did they provoke him in the wilderness, and grieve him in the desert! V.41 Yea, they turned back and tempted God, and limited the Holy One of Israel. V.42 They remembered not his hand, nor the day when he delivered them from the enemy. V.56 Yet they tempted and provoked the most high God, and kept not his testimonies: V.60 So that he forsook the tabernacle of Shiloh, the tent which he placed among men; V.61 And delivered his strength into captivity, and his glory into the enemy’s hand. do not understand why God delivered His strength into captivity, and His glory into the enemy’s hand.
I do need to understand the lesson in not robbing God’s strength by neglecting HIS testimony and forgetting the importance of remembering HIS strength and not forgetting how HE delivered me, even if it may have been years ago. The testimonies of God’s sovereign intervention concerning our life belongs to Him.
Let us protect His testimony, beginning now. Revelation 12:11 And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death.
The testimony of God’s intervention in our life in the beginning and all the waypoints are enormously powerful! The devils, the enemies, the unbelieving, the backslidden, the discouraged, the believer, the saint, the holy and unholy need to hear it over and over again! Speak it in prayer and in the closet and in the streets and cry it from the housetop!
Declare its glory and its cleansing and saving power. Do not neglect the power of God’s testimony with you! You might say you are not where you should be at this time in your spiritual life. Let me speak this truth into your soul. Wake up to the ultimate importance of crying out God’s testimony.
Go alone with God at once and deliver this glorious experience to the throne of God. Let’s never neglect to speak forth what God has done. The testimony is His forever and it carries eternal power and strength and extreme courage in the darkest hour. If God did it once He will do it again. Carry this in your heart and watch the dross of discouragement flee like dust in the rain. Hall-elu-Jah!
When the ark and its testimony were stolen from Shiloh in 1094 BC, Shiloh went extinct and the glory of God went right with it. I have been to Shiloh several times and it is still dormant.
Where did the ark of testimony go? V.61 And delivered his strength into captivity, and His glory into the enemy’s hand.
When we walk away from God’s testimony in our life it goes into the hand of the enemy and there he throws it into our face with mockery and it bends us deeply into discouragement so that it becomes unbearable. Now the cherished moments of our past gaze upon us with hopelessness beyond despair! Take back the ark from the enemy at once.
The testimony belongs to God and His redeemed child. This experience will bring you back where you left off.
