Walking in His Guidance- In His Word- 6-26-17
Thinking on this subject today I found this old article from 2009
and thought I would bump it up to today!
Be blessed this week!
“Lord, I did what you said but…”
Samuel also said to Saul, “The LORD sent me to anoint you king
over His people, over Israel
And he said to him, “Speak on.” So Samuel said, “When you were
little in your own eyes, were you not head of the tribes of Israel Israel
1 Samuel 15:16-22
Saul was rejected as king
because he did not follow God’s commands anymore. I was asked about someone
being a Christian the other day. My answer was, “Kind of.” Then after
thinking I answered again, “Well, yes but he has not grown.” I think Saul
was focused on God when he was first made king. He was obedient to the Father,
not to the people’s cries. He did not grow closer to God and listen to Him and
so he sinned against God.
The biggest mistake he made
was in trying to please everyone. He had thoughts like, “The people won’t like
me if I don’t give them what they want." That is what brought him down. If
we read his story through we will find that it brings him to the point of
disaster and death. He who was a wonderful king, who loved God in the
beginning, seems to have forgotten his first love. He began to love himself
more than God. This is evident in that he was more concerned with his own
praise than what God had told him to do.
That is what we do when we
choose to ignore God’s commands or direction in our lives. We choose to love
ourselves more than God.
Why do I say that?
If we love God we know God.
When we know God we choose to spend time with Him listening to Him and jumping
up to obey when He directs our lives and walk with Christ. If we do not listen
to His direction we are putting our own desires over the Lord’s. I don’t think
we always recognize that we are saying that we are more important than God but
that is pretty much what Saul was doing and it is in truth what we are doing.
He put the desires of the
people he was supposed to be guiding in God’s direction before God Himself when
he allowed them to bring back some things and “fixed it” by calling them a
sacrifice.
When we choose to disobey
God, or even what we may consider to put him off for a while we will reap the
consequences for our poor choices. That does not mean God loves us any less but
that we are showing God that we do not honor Him.
Now maybe that’s not even
what we were thinking, but it is what we are showing Him is in our hearts.
Forever remember that God
knows our hearts, not only our thoughts but our deepest stuff; feelings,
emotions, doubts, worries, things that we do not even think about all that
often, but are there just the same. God knows when we are troubled over
something and that the problem is keeping us from doing His will. Our job is to
go to Him with it.
Saul would have done better
to tell them men to slaughter the animals and destroy the carcasses as well as
any other plunder. As rigid as it may seem if he had killed everyone back then
the change would have resulted in a better life for the Israelite's.
The sins of Saul have left
their effects on today’s Jews! They continue to fight enemies of the past. If
they would only turn to God and see what His will really is for them and follow
after Him again, for good this time, all would be peaceful.
Saul set a precedent for the
men to follow. He allowed them to commit the sin of disobedience to God. So it
was not just himself who was affected.
When we do not do what God
has ordained, called, or directed us to do we can cause others to stumble? Yes
we can.
But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your
faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control
perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and
to brotherly kindness love. For if these things are yours and abound, you will
be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For
he who lacks these things is shortsighted, even to blindness, and has forgotten
that he was cleansed from his old sins. Therefore, brethren, be even more
diligent to make your call and election sure, for if you do these things you
will never stumble; for so an entrance will be supplied to you abundantly into
the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. 2 Peter 1:5-11
When we come to Christ,
invite Him into our lives, ask Him into our hearts, give our lives to Him; we
make a choice to put His will over ours. We begin a life of getting to know Him
more, and more so that we do not have to wonder if we are doing His will, but
that we automatically can say to the person who asks us to do more than we
should, “No, I am sorry I cannot do this.” When we can say that and have peace
in our hearts and minds then we know we are following His will.
When we do not follow God’s
design for our lives we are not walking in the Truth, instead we are shortsighted
because all we see is our way. We will stumble ourselves if we keep trying to
do it on our own. We have to bring God into every situation, because after all
He is already there. Wherever we go; there He is!
If we follow the scripture in
Peter we see that we don’t become instantly there, but we add to our
perseverance godliness and with that we can add brotherly kindness and to that
love. It’s not all at once, but as we grow closer to God through prayer and
reading the Word, and worshiping Him not only in the congregation but alone in
our car or home. That is when we will add to our faith and redeem the qualities
God wants to give us, the patience and perseverance in times that seem tough,
the ability to truly rejoice and to thank God in all things. The Word of God
tells us in everything give thanks not for all things.
If Saul had chosen to follow
God over the people around him, he would have added to Him these things, bit by
bit, day by day. He would have been the “man after God’s own heart” that David
was. That same man we can become today. Don’t you want your epitaph to say
“She/he was a woman/man after God’s own heart?” I do. I want those I leave
behind when I go on to Heaven with my Lord to know how to find Him, to love
Him, to follow Him if by nothing else than watching me. It is the desire of my
heart to worship and adore Him, to bow down to my King and put His will, His
dreams, His direction ahead of my own.
Still just as I am human I
fight it. I want what I want, and sometimes that is not what God would have me
do. It is those times that I give over to God that I am the most blessed though
and more and more I am learning to give in to Him first, selfishness last.
The desires of my friends and
even other so called godly people can stop us from following our call. Even
when they mean well as the soldiers who fought did, and Saul could have
justified his actions with the fact that the men needed something for morale,
but God would have blessed Him so much if he has only said, “No.”
“But Lord, my friends’
neeeeeeed this, or they really waaaaaaant me to do the other… I know you said
no but it sounds like something I could do, something I would like to do,
something I could get gratification from!” No. When God says no, we need to listen.
When God says go, we need to go. We need to obey His commands and no longer put
ourselves before Him.
Oh, if we are putting our
desires before God are we not making ourselves gods? Anything we put before God
is an idol.
Dear Heavenly Father,
help each of us today to hear your voice and obey it. Help us not to doubt Your
voice is yours but to know you well enough to hear your voice just as Your
sheep should. Then give us that little nudge to remind us to follow your will,
not others desires. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Suggested readings: 1 Samuel
15:1-34, 2 Peter 1:1-21, 2 Peter 3:1-17,and Hebrews 10:all.