{"id":4517,"date":"2023-01-20T18:52:31","date_gmt":"2023-01-21T00:52:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nazareneblogs.org\/pastorscott\/?p=4517"},"modified":"2023-01-20T18:52:31","modified_gmt":"2023-01-21T00:52:31","slug":"devotional-on-1-samuel-9","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/devotional-on-1-samuel-9\/","title":{"rendered":"Devotional on 1 Samuel"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure style=\"width: 1600px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large\" src=\"https:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-zUYrfhU--oo\/XcnESlL0RJI\/AAAAAAABCxc\/fVAYObUuye4DFCOntvEkr3sK0fLkSM_cACKgBGAsYHg\/s1600\/100_3402.JPG\" width=\"1600\" height=\"901\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">2014 &#8211; Jerome, AZ<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Caution, God at work here<br \/>\n1 Samuel 7: Throughout Israel there was a widespread, fearful movement toward God.<br \/>\nThe enemies of Israel, the Philistines, have had enough of the Ark of the Covenant. Not only have they had to repair their idol Dagon, things are not going well at all throughout their territory. There\u2019s general sickness and death and they know that it\u2019s related to the captured Chest. They decide to send it back and be rid of it once and for all. It ends up at the town of Beth Shemesh, but not without incident. Some of the locals look inside this holy relic and are struck dead for their irreverence. This causes the fear of the Lord to fall on that place. It also reminds them that God is real and not just the product of old stories. The Ark is moved to Kiriath Jearim, where it remains for 20 years. It&#8217;s during that time that people become more and more &#8220;God aware.&#8221; It\u2019s been a long journey from the dark ages of the book of Judges to this point, but, once again, these people are becoming a people of God. The words, &#8220;there was a widespread, fearful movement toward God&#8221; are the result of God&#8217;s faithfulness to a people who don&#8217;t deserve it. Even though they\u2019re far from God, he\u2019s at work and the boy Samuel is part of his plan. When they use the Ark as a good luck charm, and thus lose it, God is working. Even when the men at Beth Shemesh treat the Ark in an inappropriate way and lose their lives, God is working, setting things in motion to change the attitude of the nation. I pray that God is working in my nation too. I pray that he\u2019s doing things in places and in ways that I don\u2019t even see, changing attitudes, preparing the way for a &#8220;widespread, fearful movement toward&#8221; himself. And, if he can use me in any of that I want to be available to him, a willing partner in his gracious work in my society.<br \/>\nTake Away: The Lord sometimes works in ways unseen by us and only recognized after the fact.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Caution, God at work here 1 Samuel 7: Throughout Israel there was a widespread, fearful movement toward God. The enemies of Israel, the Philistines, have had enough of the Ark of the Covenant. Not only have they had to repair their idol Dagon, things are not going well at all throughout their territory. There\u2019s general [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1473,7],"tags":[56,114,439,480,928],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4517"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4517"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4517\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14204,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4517\/revisions\/14204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}