1 Samuel 16:1 (NKJV) 1 Now the LORD said to Samuel, “How long will you mourn for Saul, seeing I have rejected him from reigning over Israel? Fill your horn with oil, and go; I am sending you to Jesse the Bethlehemite. For I have provided Myself a king among his sons.”
As we continue to look at how to win every day, we are discussing the necessity of cooperating with the changes that inevitably come in our lives. Many changes that we must deal with are the simple flow of life. We have children, the children grow and develop and eventually leave home. All of those things bring tremendous changes to our lifestyle. We age and that comes with change as well. They can be as traumatic as they are inevitable. There are also myriad changes over which we have no control. How we handle change is a major factor in whether we win every day or are overcome.
Our attitude toward change is very important. Do we see change as a new adventure or disruption to a life that we like just the way it is. In 2015 I was teaching in my church on the book of Acts. I came to the point in Paul’s travel where he called the elders of the Ephesian church to meet him in Miletus. He told them that he was going to be traveling to Jerusalem and they would never see him again. Obviously, they were not happy about that. As I was teaching, the Lord spoke to my heart very clearly. He said, “Changes are coming, and you are not going to like some of them.” He was right!
By February of 2017, my wife and I had turned our church over to my second son. Although we believed God was opening a new chapter in our lives, I had a hard time with some of the things that happened. Even though I may have been right in some areas, my attitude caused me many sleepless nights as I struggled with these changes. My struggles did not stop the changes from happening but it did cause me to lose a number of days to frustration and sadness that I could have won by keeping my attitude right and praising God for all the good things he was doing.
Being angry, sad or even depressed about change will not stop them from happening. If we keep our heart right with God and go to him, he will help us see how to get more in sync with what he is doing now. He can gently help us repent where we may need to. He can also show us where we may not be wrong and help us love others through the changes we face. The things that we cannot control we must leave in God’s hands and not try to take them into our own. That never works out very well.
In the scripture are some examples of attitudes we need to develop that will help us deal with change. In today’s scripture, We see the prophet Samuel at one of his lowest points. Samuel had anointed Saul as King of Israel. God had shown him Saul was the man at the time he anointed him. However, things did not work out very well with Saul. Saul proved to be far less qualified on the inside to be King than on the outside. God told Samuel that he had rejected Saul as king. This change caused morning and I am sure more than a little bit of confusion on the part of Samuel.
When God spoke to him to go to Jesse’s house because he was going to use him to anoint a new king, Samuel was not too excited about the idea. He expressed a concern that Saul might kill him if he did that. Although I am sure that was a real danger, to me that is out of character for Samuel. He began his prophetic career by telling his mentor that God was judging him. His mentor died and Samuel became the prophet and judge of Israel. He was not one who was easily threatened. I think there was something else in play here.
When I was very young in the ministry, I performed my first wedding. At the reception, the bride’s father had a stroke that eventually proved fatal. While this couple was still on their honeymoon, I got a call from the bride telling me the groom decided he did not want to be married to her. My first wedding became my first funeral and my first divorce. How do you think I felt the next time someone wanted me to marry them?
I can see Samuel feeling a little like I did. He had anointed one king and it turned into a disaster. Saul was Samuel’s “guy.” He wanted him to succeed. When he did not, I am sure Samuel would have felt like it was his failure as well. It was difficult to “get back on the horse” so to speak. Look at what God says to hin.
“How long are you going to mourn for Saul seeing that I have rejected him from ruling over Israel.” When I read this, I hear God saying to Samuel, “Get back in the game! We have work to do.”
What was Samuel’s problem. He could not get past his own role in anointing Saul king. He felt he must have failed somehow. Besides that, he just did not like the turn life had taken. God Said to Samuel, “Get up and get to Jesse’s house. I am not done yet and neither are you.”
Saul’s failure was not Samuel’s. God anointed Saul king; Samuel was only a vessel God used to do the physical part of the process. God had not changed and neither had Samuel except that he could not get by the past. Many times, that is our problem when dealing with change. We may have liked things the way they were. We may not understand why they had to change. I have certainly been there. We may feel like we somehow are to blame for something that went wrong. If we are, we must repent. God will forgive us. Many times, it is not anything we did wrong. In Samuels case it was Saul that sinned and caused God to reject him.
One of the most difficult things to learn about change is that we are not responsible for other people’s choices. We cannot make them change. If we have the opportunity to talk to them and show them in the Word where they are doing something wrong, we should do that. In the end it is up to them. Samuel continued mourning for Saul long after God had rejected him. He had a difficult time accepting that Saul could have made such foolish mistakes as king.
The second difficult thing we must deal with in cooperating with change is the possibility that we may have been wrong. Most people have a hard time handling being wrong. They either feel they have disqualified themselves or that they have been unfairly treated. Either case may be true, but feeling bad or angry will not help. Being wrong is not being bad or unqualified. It is just being wrong. God can easily deal with getting us back on track, but we must accept responsibility, repent if necessary and learn. I know that this is not always easy, but we have a God who will help us through if we let him.
The last thing I want us to see from Samuel’s situation is that we cannot keep going in a direction God has closed. Saul was no longer God’s king. Samuel was still called as God’s prophet. Saul’s failure did not change that. He had a job to do and to do it he had to move on from Saul. Sometimes things change because that is the will of God for us. I wish I could say that I always like the will of God for my life. Often, my flesh does not. Whether we like God’s new direction or not is irrelevant. If it is God’s direction, that is what we do. We must be willing to step into what he has for us today and not keep trying to do what he led us to do yesterday. I have known many people who could not do that and both they and those around them suffered for it.
Once Samuel finally obeyed God and went to Jessie’s house he was able to anoint a king called David who was a man after God’s heart. David was where God was going all the time, but he needed the people to see that a real king was one who was right on the inside not just one who looked good on the outside. Change is coming to your life. Trust God when it does and allow him to lead you through it. As great as what went before might have been, when God moves us into something new it will be for the best not the worst in our lives.
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