Lockdown Reflections… 📝Food from my Host Kitchen Table 🍽️🍯🥛🍴
Take a Break with Jesus in the Lockdown 🍞☕
Day 8, 270 Days Bible Reading, Wednesday, 22.7.20.

Let our Homes Return to Bethel in this Lockdown to Build Family Altars so that we can be equipped and empowered to face the Covid Chaos…Genesis 35:1.

🧱It is the Hallmark of Christian Maturity when we can become the Living Sacrifices on the Altar, which God has asked us to Build. It can be anywhere, any place where He has Planted US, be it our Kitchen, the Boardroom, the Market Place, Or the Mission Fields. In this unprecedented Lockdown our Homes have gone from being a Comfort Zone to become a Combat Zone. Our homes have become offices, classrooms, playrooms, boardrooms, zoom rooms, a viral video vitual reality place, among other things. Everything is now determined by the corona time and corona spaces. What is important is whether our homes have become House Churches with a Spiritual Altar for God to speak to us, a sacramental space for God to commune?

🧱Many homes who didn’t have family prayers are restoring the much lacking prayer time. The invisible virus is bringing families to their knees. Homes are becoming prayer cells at a rapid rate. Broken prayer altars are being repaired spiritually. Only when we humble ourselves, repent, and seek God in prayer can our nations be healed from this pandemic situationsituation, 2 Chronicles 7:14. We as the Redeemed people of God, have to become the firewall for our nations. We should come out better than when we went in.

🧱Jacob had a God encouter at Bethel, which means the House of God. Every home should house the presence of God.

🧱Jacob returns to Bethel the place where he had a God encounter on his way to Laban’s home, Genesis 28:17. The Stone he rested on for the night became the Pillar.

🧱He Returns to Bethel a Second Time after God spoke to him in Genesis 35:1, soon after God’s Promises to Jacob were Fulfilled just as He said, in his Dreams, in Genesis 28:12-16. In Genesis35:3, Jacob gives the reason why he would build an Altar. It was the place where God answered his prayers in distress.

🧱In the First Visit, The Stone Pillow became the Pillar. On his Second Visit, the Pillar became the Altar. The Stone Pillow became the Foundation for the Pillar, The Pillar becomes the Solid Structure for the Altar. The Stone became a Pillar and the Pillar became the Altar.

🧱God will take us through a Process from using the Stone He gives, to get us to the Place where we Build Our Altars, so that We can become the Living Sacrifices, Romans 12:2. God will not Bypass the Process to get us to our Destination.

🧱He will ask us to Lay our heads on some Tough Stones to make us Tough to Lay on the Fiery Altar as We Grow from Faith to Faith, Strength to Strength and Glory to Glory.

🧱After building the Altar, Jacob buries three people who were close to him, Deborah the Nurse, Genesis 35:8, Rachel his beloved wife, Genesis 35:19, and his Mentor Father Isaac, Genesis 35:29.

🧱His Worship was followed by Three Funerals. God will always empower us to face different kinds of dilemmas in life.

🧱Especially in this Covid 19, we have seen the horrendous death rates and seeing our loved ones and near ones die in spite of praying for them. Our prayers won’t immune us from facing untimely death and unexpected deaths in the family, but it will definitely shield us from uncontrollable sorrow and I had my fair share as well in the past. No matter how many faith prayers, I have said and how many promises I have stood on, I had to go through the painful process to mature and be richer in the things of God. Yes, looking back, God was always there, to have to give me a Bethel to bring Beauty out of Ashes, Isaiah 61:1-3.

🧱Jacob the Deceiver by nature who robbed his brother twice of his birthright and blessings, had to go through a process to have his name changed to Israel, Genesis 32:28. He didn’t want his son stigmatized with a name that will send out negative identity, that he changed the destiny of his son by renaming from *Ben-Oni to Benjamin after the second Bethel Experience, Genesis 35:18.

The backdrop….
🤰🏽Rachel went into labor as Jacob’s family was moving and was traveling along rough roads. She developed complications during labour and she was dying.

🤰🏽Fortunately, she gave birth and it was a son. Her midwife said, that it was another son, and she should have been very happy.

🤰🏽But Rachel must have began to think 💭….
“I did have a son, but I am dying now. How sad he will be without his mother! How painful it will be!”

🤰🏽When she thought of her son’s future, it was so miserable, so she named her son “Benoni” meaning, son of sadness, son of sorrow or son of my struggle and pain, and she died.

🧱However, in Jacob’s heart was God. God promised Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that He would give them many children like the stars in the sky and the sands of the sea. Therefore, this son was also part of the process of this promise becoming fulfilled, Genesis 35:11-12.

“If so, then how is he a son of sadness? There are times of sadness and pain in life, but this child is not Benoni.”

🧱Jacob changed the child’s name to “Benjamin meaning the son of my right hand” From then on “the son of sadness” changed into the “son of my strength”

🧱Had the name of the son of sadness remained as Rachel had given, that child would have always carried that title of sadness in his name as self prophecy.

Imagine the stigma of a name with a negative energy. You are what you think. Proverbs 23:7.

🧱Growing up without a mother is bad enough but to be reminded that he was the cause of it is even worse. Benjamin was the only child to be born in the Promised Land. Out of the Tribe of Benjamin came the Greatest Apostle of the New Testament Saul who became Paul.

🧱Child of God, Remember this, we need to have a Bethel experience in whatever situation we are in. After a Bethel Experience A Benjamin is Born! Jacob experienced the House of God’s Presence and The Right Hand of God in his situations, and that is what we need. Turn every tough stone into an altar so that Bethel Experience will be a Reality for raise up a Benjamin Generation, for Christ Jesus in this Lockdown, so that they can build altars in any future Lockdowns when we are not around….Amen🙏

anniekoshy@God’s Thirstydeer🦌 Breaking the Chain with You….⛓️