July 23, 2006 | Seth Barnes | Courage | 2 Comments | Views 0

Confronting the terror of Ziklag

Courage

Yesterday’s blog described David’s horrific experience of having his tribe ravaged at Ziklag (1 Samuel 30). Maybe you’ve lived a Mayberry RFD life of white picket fences, but as I look around the country, I see it’s pock-marked by Ziklags – places where our enemy has snuck into our camp and carri…

By Seth Barnes

23 July 2006, 12:07 am

By Seth Barnes

23 July 2006, 12:07 am

I was going to blog about an experience of escaping from a place that became a Ziklag for some friends, but it’s too sensitive to do so – there are good friends still struggling. I’ll say this. Recently, my 21 year-old boy called up and said, “Thanks for getting me out of that environment – I could easily have fallen into that lifestyle.”

For those of us who are heartsick, living in the Ziklag reality of loved ones being carted off by the enemy – our children choosing to do drugs, sleep around, no longer following the Lord, we can’t afford to be passive. We need to do as David did and inquire of the Lord, “Lord, what is my responsibility here? What would you have me do?”

Jesus is the original liberator – it his passion and mission to set the captives free. He’ll show you what to do.

Comments (2)

william

April 22, 2008 at 1:47 pm

Reply

I’ll respond to this article. Confronting the terror of Ziklag.
My wife and I are both youth pastors, our son of 21 was living home with us (his bro.19) and working and attending school. I feel that we had a good relationship but he was very secerative and one day we approached him about a young girl who we knew his older brother 27 had a relationship with. He swore that they were not seing each other. Then five months later he comes to us and said that he had lied to us and now this young girl 19 was pregnant. My whole world just dropped, because this was the son we expected to remain a virgin until marriage, boy, WOW. This was the young girl’s second child with another man, this was not what we wanted for our son, but what could we do? Pray. we tried to talk with him and give wise counsel, but he would stay out late , get up early 6.00am and go by her apt. to baby sit the 4 yr old and then drop her to day care and he headed to work and school@ 5pm.
This contunied for some 2 months then one day he came again and said I am going to move in with my girlfriend. We said no, but one month later after much prayer we just saw where this was not working, he was a young man 21 and this was what he wanted to do no matter him being a Christian. So he packed up and left to shack up all against what we had taught him. My heart as a dad was broken and crushed, caused he added later as we talked about his move that they were gonna get married. I asked him who counselled them no response. So when is the wedding, no response. So I felt shut out as a father, wow, what pain. Now my son is going to live in Ziklag.
So our responsibility right now is to pray for him, we realize that he’s a young adult and he has to live his own life, even though he’s now heeding to wise counsel.
What should we do Lord? Pray for the scale to be removed from his eyes and pray for your healing as a father just to release him and allow Jesus to heal this relationship
seth

April 22, 2008 at 10:41 pm

Reply

Wow, William. What a horrific thing. I pray that Jesus meets you in your place of desolation and brings your prodigal back home. Let me know if there’s anything we can do. I may know some people in the area if you need some believers to pray with you.