Barely a month to go for the much awaited EN2010 World Conference. Speakers and special guests include Darlene Zschech, Efren Peñaflorida, Grace Aiyedogbon (Laos, Nigeria), Ron Lewis, Rice Brooks, Steve Murrell, and many others.
Help from Unexpected Places
June 16, 2010 by · 2 Comments
Hagar had a good life. God promised her that her son Ishmael would have descendants that will be too numerous to count. Then a quick turn of events caused her and her son to be kicked out of Abraham’s household, sending them blundering in the wilderness without enough food and water to sustain them. With their supplies running out and the boy getting very weak of the journey, Hagar laid Ishmael under a shrub to die while she went a little farther to give in to her despair.
Who’s gonna hear her there? No one. They were alone in the wilderness, her son was dying and she has resigned herself to the same fate. All she could do was cry. No, it wasn’t a prayer, just plain, hopeless bleating. She was weak, too weak to even see her son draw his last breath. She was waiting for grief and despair to claim her. But she forgot one thing: God’s promise that Ishmael would be great.
In his dying state, Ishmael did something he learned from his father- he prayed to the God of the Hebrews. He prayed hard, in fact, the Bible says he lifted up his voice and cried. I know most translations would say it was Hagar who prayed but in the original Hebrew, the voice that was lifted up was masculine, indicating that it was Ishmael who prayed. Gen. 21: 27 confirms it, it says that the Lord heard the voice of the lad.
Hagar’s deliverance came from an unexpected place. It was brought about by a genuine prayer of a dying boy and the faithfulness of the God who never forgets any of His promises. Just when her last strand of hope was about to snap, God stepped in and by miraculous providence, a spring of water appeared near them and sustained them in the dessert. They were not going to die after all. Even if Ishmael’s posterity would grow to be the fiercest enemy of Isaac’s children for generations, God simply doesn’t abandon those whom a promised is made to.
You might sometimes find yourself in a situation where you are too discouraged to even get up and breath. Don’t despair. Even the castaways are never forsaken. They live on and they find hope in God. They find help even in unexpected places. Yes, even a dying boy’s prayer can be your ticket to deliverance. Just hang on and say a prayer.
Free Bible Resources
If you are serious about getting the most out of your Bible reading or if you simply want to delve deeper into the word of God, there are lots of free resources online that could help you. I’m posting here the tools that helped me in my devotional readings over the years.
1. BibleGateway.com. BibleGateway is an easy to navigate online Bible with a wide selection of different versions in different languages. I use it mainly to copy-paste Bible verses in my blog and to compare passages in different versions.
2. King James Bible Online. Very useful when you want to know some word counts and other Bible statistics. I’m sure there are better tools out there but for now, this is the only resource I know. In case you’re wondering, word counts are very useful when you want to find out how many times a specific word is mentioned in the Bible. This would help you determine how much a certain idea is emphasized in the Scriptures.
3. E-Sword. E-Sword is a Bible study software that is both feature rich and user friendly you would not believe it’s free. It contains lots of free Bible versions, commentaries, dictionaries, maps, devotional tools and many others. If you’re really serious about studying the Bible, E-Sword is the tool for you.
E-Sword Features Highlights:
Bibles. The KJV with Strong’s Concordance alone is great enough. For starters, Strong’s Concordance is a tool you use to find out the Hebrew and Greek origins of words. I know that sounds frightening already but think of it this way: when Peter was asked if he loved Jesus, we only see one English word there- LOVE. When I first read it, I thought Jesus was being redundant and annoying and that He was forcing a confession out of Peter and Peter was too macho to say I love you to a guy (okay, at least not that last part, lol). What I didn’t know was that in the original Greek, Jesus was actually using three different kinds of love in there. It’s all very interesting if you are fond of linguistic nuances like me.
There are also many Bible versions available in E-Sword like Contemporary English Version (CEV), Revised Version (RV), and American Standard Version (ASV), to name a few. The only versions I missed are the ones I want, namely, the Amplified version, the NIV and the Message. But there’s nothing to worry, these versions are all available for a small fee from their respective retailers.
Commentaries. Since I lived in a pastor’s home when I was in college, I was quite familiar with the different commentaries out there. E-Sword offers most of them for free and my recommendation is for you to download Matthew Henry’s Commentary of the Whole Bible. If I ever get stranded in an island and I get to choose one book aside from the Bible, I’d insist to take Matthew Henry’s 6-volume commentary with me. He simply is the best.
Dictionaries. No, not Merriam Webster’s but Bible dictionaries to help us understand ancient words better. I already mentioned Strong’s Concordance above so there’s no need to repeat it here. What I do recommend is the E-Sword version of Spiros Zodhiates’ Complete Wordstudy Dictionary. When I was a Bible student a few years back, it was Zodhiates’ books that I was drooling over. I would often go to a Christian Bookstore in Tacloban City and pray over Zodhiates’ books. I never got to buy any of them because they were very expensive. A few nights ago, I finally purchased an E-Sword version of his works and I find it very useful in my readings.
There are many other free and paid tools available at E-Sword like devotional books, maps and other Bible study resources. They only occupy a very small space of your hard drive so what are you waiting for? Download these resources and start devouring the word of God!