{"id":4527,"date":"2023-01-25T19:12:37","date_gmt":"2023-01-26T01:12:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nazareneblogs.org\/pastorscott\/?p=4527"},"modified":"2023-01-25T19:12:37","modified_gmt":"2023-01-26T01:12:37","slug":"devotional-on-1-samuel-14","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/devotional-on-1-samuel-14\/","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\/-P7mlZsGxdOc\/XdBn8BZCX9I\/AAAAAAABC18\/3etqjUaftIkLz9klbwQTCilY9YSvtKuYACKgBGAsYHg\/s1600\/100_3539.JPG\" width=\"1600\" height=\"901\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">2014 &#8211; Davis Mountains State Park, TX &#8211; Skyline Drive View<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Vacuum of leadership<br \/>\n1 Samuel 8: They are not rejecting you. They&#8217;ve rejected me as their King.<br \/>\nSamuel has been a faithful, capable, Spirit-filled leader of Israel for decades. Now he\u2019s getting old and some of his responsibilities are falling on his sons. But they aren&#8217;t up to it. They have the authority of their father but lack his relationship with God. Ever since the great revival and victory over the Philistines many years earlier, Israel has served God under the faithful guidance of Samuel but now people are wondering what\u2019s coming next. Clearly, Samuel can&#8217;t continue forever and his sons are miserable spiritual leaders. So what will they do? The decision is to ask for a king. Samuel is heartbroken but takes their request to the Lord. God says, &#8220;Samuel, don&#8217;t take it personally &#8212; this is about my relationship with them and isn\u2019t about you.&#8221; What&#8217;s going on here? We have before us a failure to trust God. The people are correct in recognizing the leadership problem. However, they\u2019re mistaken when, instead of going to the Lord and asking his direction, they come telling him what they want done. As we turn the pages of Scripture to look into their future we see that there are some good kings coming. However, by and large their kings fail them, leading to their destruction. How different the story might have been had they come to Samuel and said, &#8220;You\u2019re getting old and your sons aren&#8217;t the spiritual leaders that you have been&#8230;pray to the Lord and ask him what we\u2019re to do next.&#8221; How often do I limit what God can do in my life by telling him what I want him to do rather than asking him what he wants me to do?<br \/>\nTake Away: The Lord is willing to work with us; to hear our requests. The wiser route though, is to seek his will first.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Vacuum of leadership 1 Samuel 8: They are not rejecting you. They&#8217;ve rejected me as their King. Samuel has been a faithful, capable, Spirit-filled leader of Israel for decades. Now he\u2019s getting old and some of his responsibilities are falling on his sons. But they aren&#8217;t up to it. They have the authority of their [&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":[114,373,501,668],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4527"}],"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=4527"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4527\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14212,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4527\/revisions\/14212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}