I've been reading in 1 Samuel lately, I just finished chapter 11 this morning and I have already enjoyed this book SO much! Gods really brought some things to life for me.
Today God really spoke to my heart about king Saul. Many times, I feel, when we think of king Saul we often remember how he finished his course...and that wasn't so good. But we forget how well he started!
In chapter ten Saul is anointed king over Israel. In verse nine we see that God gave Saul another heart, in verse ten we see the Spirit of God come upon him and him prophesy among the prophets. At the end of the chapter Samuel brings Saul before the people to show them their king! Everyone shouted! It was a very big day in Saul's life! At the end of the day, Saul went home to Gibeah. Some were happy about Saul being the king, but verse twenty seven tells us that the children of Belial despised him! They questioned his abilities and brought him no presents. Was Saul offended by this? No. The bible says, "...But he held his peace." Saul didn't try to prove God's will to them. He knew that God was working out His will and everything would fall into place in His time. So, for now....he went home to Gibeah.
In Chapter eleven Israel receives threats from Nahash the Ammonite. Messengers are sent all throughout the coasts of Israel. When they came to Gibeah, where did they find Saul? Was he sitting in a castle, on a throne, being waited on hand and foot, just waiting for someone to come to him needing him to save the day! No. He was in the field working. In fact the messengers didn't even find him. He came out from the field to find the people weeping, and had to ask what was going on. He was ready to help, and he did. With the help of God, he defeated the Ammonites, and then at the end of the chapter the people made Saul king before the Lord in Gilgal. But he wasn't sitting around before that. He was faithful in the field before he was ever victorious in the battle and received a crown.
To me this speaks volumes of Saul! He was anointed king! He could've been lazy and had feelings of entitlement. After all, Samuel had already even told the people he was the one that God had chosen as their king! I guess what I'm trying to get at is, how do we act when we are in the waiting seasons of life? Do we just sit around waiting for God to start doing the big things or are we staying faithful in the little things?
I think Oswald Chambers explained this well in his book, My Utmost For His Highest (Which I highly reccomend you read if you haven't!!) He said, "The tendency is to look for the marvelous in our experience; we mistake the sense of the heroic for being heroes. It is one thing to go through a crisis grandly, but another thing to go through every day glorifying God when there is no witness, no limelight, no one paying the remotest attention to us. If we do not want medieval haloes, we want something that will make people say - What a wonderful man of prayer he is! What a pious devoted woman she is! If you are rightly devoted to the Lord Jesus, you have reached the sublime height where no one thinks of noticing you, all that is noticed is that the power of God comes through you all the time.
Oh I have a wonderful call from God! It takes Almighty God Incarnate in us to do the meanest duty to the glory of God. It takes God's Spirit in us to make us so absolutely humanly His that we are utterly unnoticeable. The test of the life of a saint is not success, but faithfulness in human life as it actually is. We will set up success in the Christian work as the aim; the aim is to manifest the glory of God in human life, to live the life hid with Christ in God in human conditions. Our human relationships are the actual conditions in which the ideal life of God is to be exhibited."
Are you living out everyday for the glory of God? Or are you waiting for the extraordinary days? If we aren't faithfully serving everyday, we won't be ready to face the extraordinary!
Let us live out everyday faithfully serving HIM and bringing him glory in all we do!!
