{"id":4525,"date":"2023-01-24T19:08:28","date_gmt":"2023-01-25T01:08:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nazareneblogs.org\/pastorscott\/?p=4525"},"modified":"2023-01-24T19:08:28","modified_gmt":"2023-01-25T01:08:28","slug":"devotional-on-1-samuel-13","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/devotional-on-1-samuel-13\/","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\/-EyGCEjJt1JU\/Xc9gz17IehI\/AAAAAAABC1w\/mNmzrzfjJlIJ2ONPNNNq6MZpafmPU2TOwCKgBGAsYHg\/s1600\/100_3512.JPG\" width=\"1600\" height=\"901\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">2014 &#8211; McDonald Observatory &#8211; Fort Davis, TX<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>By God\u2019s help we can live steady, Christ-like lives<br \/>\n1 Samuel 7: Samuel gave solid leadership to Israel his entire life.<br \/>\nThis is a powerful and important statement about Samuel. Only rarely do we encounter such high credentials, even in the Bible. Abraham messed up by trying to &#8220;help&#8221; God in his relationship with Hagar. Moses failed at the Waters of Meribah Kadesh. Just about all the heroes of the Bible have blots on their records. But it\u2019s not so with Samuel. From the time that as a lad serving in the house of God at Shiloh he hears God&#8217;s Voice to the end of his life Samuel is faithful. As a result, some of the golden days of the Old Testament are before us in our Scripture reading. Of course, this is actually a God-story more than it is a Samuel-story. It\u2019s God who answers Hannah&#8217;s prayer that brings Samuel into the world in the first place. It\u2019s God who initiates contact with the boy Samuel. And it\u2019s God who continues to lead Samuel even as Samuel leads Israel. We see today that spiritual failure doesn\u2019t have to be part of anyone&#8217;s story. I know it\u2019s true that just about everyone has a story of spiritual breakdown, but here we see that the Lord\u2019s able to keep us as we allow him to work freely in our lives. Isn\u2019t it wonderful to be reminded that because the grace of the Lord is freely available to us that we don\u2019t have to stumble our way through life hoping we can hold it together just enough to squeeze through the Pearly Gates at the finish line of life?<br \/>\nTake Away: The Lord provides us everything we need to live faithful, victorious Christian lives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By God\u2019s help we can live steady, Christ-like lives 1 Samuel 7: Samuel gave solid leadership to Israel his entire life. This is a powerful and important statement about Samuel. Only rarely do we encounter such high credentials, even in the Bible. Abraham messed up by trying to &#8220;help&#8221; God in his relationship with Hagar. [&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":[114,342,430,1131],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4525"}],"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=4525"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4525\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14211,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4525\/revisions\/14211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}