Do you have some ebenezers in your life?

As we embark on the new year of 2024, do you have some ebenezers in your life? No, I am not referring to the “Scrooges” or “Bah-humbugs” that most of us encounter at times. When a new year dawns, I often find myself reflecting on the ups and downs of the previous year and wondering about the unknown ups and downs about the year before me. Having ebenezers in our lives are essential as we seek to put our confidence in Him.

Ebenezers are powerful faith strengthening tools for those who know Jesus! For to know Him is to experience His patience with us and faithful promise to us, “I am with you always, until the end of time” (Mathew 28:20). How wise of us to look back on the previous year and set up memorials of how He has persevered with us and has been faithful to His promise! His faithfulness in the past is the fuel that helps us trust Him for the uncertainties of the future.

Literally “ebenezer” is a transliterated word from a Hebrew word that means “a stone of help.” Samuel raised an ebenezer to memorialize God’s powerful victory over Israel’s persistent enemy, the Philistines, as recorded I Samuel 7. Though we do not name them “ebenezer,” national monuments, gravestones, and those little piles of stones you often see at tourist locations or on hiking trails serve as memorials. Samuel’s ebenezer gives us a deeper memorial meaning for the ebenezers we should have in our lives. “Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen. He named it Ebenezer, saying, “Thus far the Lord has helped us” (I Samuel 7:12).

So, once again do you have ebenezers in your life? The hymn writer put this thought to music way back in 1758 before our nation was founded. As a twenty-two year old, Robert Robinson penned,

Come, Thou Fount of every blessing, tune my heart to sing Thy grace; Streams of mercy, never ceasing, call for songs of loudest praise.

Teach me some melodious measure, sung by flaming tongues above; O the vast, the boundless treasure of my Lord’s unchanging love!

Here I raise my Ebenezer; hither, by Thy help I’m come; And I hope, by Thy good pleasure, safely to arrive at home.

Jesus sought me, when a stranger wandering from the fold of God; He to rescue me from danger, interposed His precious blood.

O to grace how great a debtor daily I’m constrained to be!

Let that grace, Lord, like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to Thee.

Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love; Take my heart, O take and seal it, seal it for Thy courts above.

Many of you have been an ebenezer for Alaska Bible College. You read this faith page article and pray for us! Your prayers for ABC are a testimony to God’s faithful promise for His work at the college. As we seek to train up servants who will lead with Christ-like character in vocational ministries and non-vocational ministries, you are a reminder that, “thus far the Lord has helped us!

Thank you from the bottom of my heart!

Dr. David Ley is the President of Alaska Bible College.