When David and his men came to the city, they found it burned. Their wives, sons and daughters had been taken captive. Then David and the men who were with him wept loudly until they could weep no more. David’s two wives had been taken captive – Ahinoam the Jezreelite and Abigail the Carmelite, Nabal’s widow.
Then David said to the priest Abiathar son of Ahimelech, “Bring me the ephod.” So Abiathar brought the ephod to David.
David inquired of the Lord, saying, “Should I pursue this raiding band? Will I overtake them?”
He said to him, “Pursue, for you will certainly overtake them and carry out a rescue!”
[1 Samuel 30:3-8]
Let’s say you had several bags full of goodies that went missing. In one bag, there were toy guns; the kind that shoots lights. You’re sure there’d be trouble at home if you went back without the toy guns because all your siblings love toy guns, and will insist on having them. Later, you were able to recover three of the toy guns but you realised that other bags got missing too – a bag full of cookies, and another of marshmallows. Then, you find some of the bags but some of the contents are missing. You only find three cookies left, out of five, and one marshmallow left, out of two.
So you resign to fate and say, “I’ll settle with whatever I can get, it’s okay.” But you’re on your way home when someone calls you to inform you that the rest of your property has been found. Just imagine what you would have lost!
In the same way, spiritually, the reason we seem not to have as much as we should, is because we are contented with having little. God wants us to have the mindset that we can recover everything that has been lost. Many times, Christians do not think this way. The Bible says, “You do not have, because you do not ask.” (James 4:2). The typical attitude many people have is the one that says “Let me take this one. At least, I’ve gotten something. Let’s be thankful to God that at least we’ve gotten something”.
But God has a different plan. He says, “No, don’t thank Me that you’ve gotten something, I want to give it all back to you.”
The question for you is this: “Do you want to be given back everything you’ve lost? Or are you contented with as little as possible [instead of asking for more] just so that you can have a right to complain about the state of things?”Sometimes it seems like people want to have a right to complain. They like to have something to complain about. This is demonic; it’s like an evil spirit that makes people think, “How dare everything be good? Now I don’t have a reason to complain!”
God wants to do a lot for us. But we must desire everything that He has for us. Have the attitude that says, “God if You give this thing to me, I’ll take it. God I would really want You to do this in my life.”
It is God’s will that you recover everything that has been lost. You may have lost your peace, joy, grace, your unction – all the good things you used to operate in, in the past. David lost things too; he and his people lost their wives and children. But he went after them and recovered them all.
How to Recover All
David did not recover his belongings by sitting down to cry. His men were already crying over their lost wives and children, so much that they resolved to stone David for their loss. As if it was his fault. They were looking for who to put the blame on, saying things like: “If David didn’t take us out of the city to battle, we wouldn’t have lost our wives and children. Why did we go? We should have stayed back.”
The Bible tells us what David did in the midst of this situation: He encouraged himself in the Lord His God. When you encourage yourself in the Lord, that’s you saying, “Lord no matter what happens, I will give You praise. I lift You up Lord, I trust You.” It is in encouraging himself in the Lord, that the Lord instructed him to pursue, overtake and recover all. That’s how they went after the enemy. Instead of lazily staying behind to say, “Well, there’s nothing I can do [about the situation]; I’m so tired and depressed,” they pursued the enemy all night long and got to them.
David struck them down from twilight until the following evening. None of them escaped, with the exception of four hundred young men who got away on camels. David retrieved everything the Amalekites had taken. He also rescued his two wives. There was nothing missing, whether small or great. He retrieved sons and daughters, the plunder, and everything else they had taken. David brought everything back. David took all the flocks and herds and drove them in front of the rest of the animals. People were saying, “This is David’s plunder!” (1 Samuel 30:17-20).
Not only did they recover all, they came back with spoils. In the same way, spiritually, pursuing and recovering all will get you far more than what was lost. You come back with more things at the end of the day. Picture a situation where you’ve lost something, and after recovering all that you lost, you got an additional, “Oh, and we apologise for the stress you went through; please give us your bank account. We’ll make a small deposit as compensation.” Now you’re happier, because what you’ve gotten is better than what you had before.
— Pastor Ita Udoh
[27th May, 2021]
© God’s Lighthouse 2021