I smile at my enemies!
1 Samuel 2:1”And Hannah prayed and said: " My heart rejoices in the LORD; My horn is exalted in the LORD. I smile at my enemies, Because I rejoice in Your salvation.”
There is something undeniably lovely to sleep in the wee hours of the morning ….! I can see gleeful faces acknowledging my statement. Hang on, I have not finished yet; I crucified the urge to sleep and I woke up very early to pray, while it was still dark….however, there was an oppressing spirit that was hovering over my head, bringing negative thoughts to my mind and smothering my passion to pray. I took immediate action, I selected some upbeat spiritual songs and started singing loudly…I tell you, I felt joy surging in my heart. I kept praying non-stop for the next one hour. The Bible reading portion that day was from the book of Samuel and one line simply touched my soul, Hannah’s song: I smile at my enemies. I kicked the enemy of oppression with joyful songs that day! Hannah did that too. She said:I smile at my enemy! Man, it’s powerful! Get ready to break into a jig this morning……..and rejoice in the Lord! Glory to Jesus!
Friend, Hannah is introduced to us as a weeping, mourning woman but she took a determined step in her life that gave her a new title. What is that? Mother of prophet Samuel! All of us love that name Hannah, don’t we? Well, what was the step that she took? Walking into the presence of the Lord! I want some of you to be touched by this message, I want you to have revival in your prayer life, I want to take you to a higher spiritual level of getting intimate with God….
There is a price that we have to pay of crucifying our flesh and arise to get closer with our Lord and Savior Jesus. Let me tell you my experience, when my son was an infant and I was working then, I would carry him over my shoulder, tip toe out of the room, get into a separate room and drop on my knees to pray…Since my son was just a few days old baby, I would keep rocking him and talking to my Lord. I cannot express my joy in words! I would have slept late the previous night after reading the Bible in the quietness of the night; yet, nothing could stop me from waking up early to meet my Master. May be you ask me, ‘from where did you get such strength?’ From my hot desire to be with Him at any cost! There are many out there, who give excuses to pray: I come very late from work, I have two children to attend to, I feel weak, my family do not cooperate and so on. “Frivolous excuses are the language of prevailing slothfulness in religion said Mathew Henry.”
My passion to pray has not diminished even after a decade and more. Besides attending to work at home that includes cooking for my children, I attend to various other activities of our ministry and spend most of my time at our school and also teaching my school children. You can click ABIDE PUBLIC SCHOOL to know of our free school for the poor, where we offer free education. I begin my day with prayer and spend minimum two hours in prayer and Bible reading before I start the day. I wind up the day in the night with prayer as well. I get charged here. I get ammunition to fight the enemy here. Let me tell you, when you have an encounter with God, you can surely smile at your enemy like Hannah! Clap your Hands for God!
May be you have a court case to face, may be your colleagues are mocking you, may be you have people attacking you from all fronts, may be your own family have disowned you, may be there is marital problem facing you like a mountain, may be you are suffering from prolonged illness………..whatever, today get into the presence of God which would give you the energy to smile at your enemy.
God bless you!
