April 12 – 1 Samuel 15-17

Below are my thoughts from the daily Bible reading of the West Side Church of Christ. Today’s reading comes from 1 Samuel 13-14. Before reading I invite you to pray and asked God to speak to you as you read his word.

Photo Credit: Cyberbrethren

How obedient are you? Do you follow God’s commands with flying colors? Do you fail from time to time? I think we all do from time to time. We all have moments of weakness, moments where we do not glorify God. Whether that is in the things we choose to use the internet for, or the tone we speak to our spouses and children with, or simply the attitude we go through life with. We all fail God no matter how hard we try.

It’s what we do after our moment of failure that matters. Today Saul failed God majorly. He was God’s chosen king of Israel, but he weakened to the voices of those he was called to lead. God told him to destroy everything of the Amalekites, but the people wanted to keep the best of their livestock. This was in direct disobedience. Side note, when you choose leaders for your churches, if they seem to be following God, if they seem to be scriptural, but you don’t like it because it is different, submit to their leadership, especially if you choose them. Saul listens to his men and disobeys God.

He tries to justify himself to Samuel, he shares that he wanted to offer the best to God, but this isn’t what God wanted. Saul eventually came to the right point when he said … “Yes, I have sinned, I have disobeyed your instructions and the Lord’s command, for I was afraid of the people and did what they demanded. But now, please forgive my sin and come back with me so that I may worship the Lord.” 1 Samuel 15:24-25 NLT. I think the thing to do is to begin with repentance. Don’t justify your actions, don’t skirt around the issue, don’t make excuses, but repent when you are wrong. Here’s the cool thing … in Christ we are forgiven, we will mess up, but we are forgiven. We must have heart of repentance.

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