When you make mistakes… Because you will..  forgiveness and compassion will be waiting for you.

Jesus, in the moment that the enemy surrounds him, time and time again, looks the enemy in the face and shows that he is unflinchingly committed to God’s word.   ~~~   Yesterday we saw that in 1 Samuel 13, Saul disobeyed God’s word when others started running away from, heading for the hills. Another excuse Saul gave for abandoning God’s word was that the enemy was starting to gather around him. We need a king who trusts the word of God: WHEN THE ENEMY GATHERS The text says that the Philistines had 30,000 chariots, 6,000 men on horses, and ground troops that were innumerable, and that they were encamped at Michmash. That is where Saul was previously, and perhaps that is why the Philistines went there initially. But Saul is not there, but he can see the growing tide of Philistines. After all, they were not that far away from Gilgal. I get it. No one likes to stand alone. No one enjoys watching people run away because they do not think you can overcome the situation or because they do not think you know what you are doing. It is usually at this point, when people scatter away from and the enemy starts to gather around us, that we get antsy and feel like we have to do something, anything other than wait on the LORD. So Saul realizes that his forces are getting depleted. His forces are too weak, too scared, for him to be able to do anything about the enemy. And what we see is that Saul’s believes that his reign depends upon the strength of others, the strength and might of the army around him and the weakness of the enemy in front of him. This is what makes David such a better king than Saul, which we will see in 2 Samuel. But I can even do you one better. Jesus is a better king than David. Jesus does not abandon God’s word, even when the enemy gathers around him. One of my favorite words of Jesus comes when the enemy is gathering around him at his betrayal, and Jesus is says, “This is your hour, and the power of darkness.” It may not sound like much, but this is a declaration of power and authority from Jesus. He is telling the enemy that they have fixed amount of time before the power of God reigns down on the power of darkness. Jesus, in the moment that the enemy surrounds him, time and time again, looks the enemy in the face and shows that he is unflinchingly committed to God’s word. What a man, what a Savior, what a King we get to follow day by day.

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Even when life as we know it has been completely shaken, we should remain focused on God.   ~~~   Is this season one that finds you trying to find a new normal? I’m right there with you. What was… is no longer. Something has changed. Something has shifted in life. For me and my family, we lost my Dad. We’re trying to find a new normal. Some days I feel like a new born calf trying to stand and walk. I’m emotionally wobbly in a way because something’s missing, something is not as it was. A BIG piece of my heart and life is gone from this world. Can you relate? I KNOW you can. I KNOW you may be hurting, emotionally wobbly in some way for some reason. Maybe you’re an empty nester. Maybe you’ve been uprooted and moved across the country. Maybe you’ve lost a loved one or maybe you’ve lost everything. Maybe a diagnosis stares you in the face every single day. While the circumstances vary that may leave us wobbly or searching in some way for a new normal, the root ache I think is missing what life used to be. What used to be was awesome and now it’s not as awesome. We miss what was because what was, was beautiful and full of life and laughter. We can still laugh and have hope and joy in the midst of it all, but it’s a new normal and we’re all in some way trying to find our way. If you’re wobbly today, trying to take a step forward, you’re not alone. I guarantee you, every single person you pass by, connect with or watch in your stories, is walking through something. I’m thankful for new morning mercies and grace we can share. They are poured out for each new day. Lamentations 3:21-23 Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. If you’re not familiar with the book of Lamentations in the Bible, it is often called the most sorrowful book in the Bible and it is believed to have been written by none other than the weeping prophet, Jeremiah. Devastation, desolation and sorrow consumed what was left of Jerusalem. What once was, was no longer. What I love about Lamentations is that these are honest cries. We should never hide our grief or pretend we aren’t hurting. Those seasons should move us closer to the Father with our arms raised high for Him to hold us and mold us through it. We can find rest there. We can find strength for each step of each new day as we seek the Lord first and try to find a new normal. In our own seasons of lament, like we read in Lamentations 3, we can call to mind and remember the Lord’s great love, His compassions and His faithfulness. It’s only THROUGH the faithfulness of God that we can stand, even when our steps may be a bit wobbly. I love the phrase, desolation brings restoration. When the landscape of life as we’ve known it is altered, our focus should remain on the faithfulness and goodness of God because THAT is what ushers in healing, comfort, new growth, new possibilities, new purpose for today and bright HOPE for tomorrow. That’s the truth. If you’re finding your way to a new normal, remember… Great is thy faithfulness! Morning by morning new mercies I see: all I have needed thy hand hath provided-- Great is thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me! I’m Lori Cline

We should be glad that Jesus didn’t abandon God’s word when others abandoned him.   ~~~   Saul had gathered his army for war, but he had been instructed by Samuel for seven days. Seven days came and went. And this is where Saul’s impatience gets the best of him. He decides to go ahead and offer sacrifices, even though Samuel has not arrived yet. And just as soon as he finishes up the burnt offering, Samuel strolled into town, saw what was goin on and said, “What have you done?” Samuel does not exchange pleasantries with Saul. He doesn’t ask how the family is doing or if he is enjoying his time as king. Two words in the Hebrew language. He wastes no time and no words in getting to the heart of the matter—“What have you done?” So what is the big deal here? Saul wants the Lord’s blessing over the battle that is about to take place. Time was running out. The enemy was moving in. The people needed to have a rally point or else there was going to be no army left. What else was there to do? What would you have done? Im pretty sure I know what I would have done, and it probably wouldn’t have looked a lot different than Saul’s action. We notice that in 1 Samuel 13 11, one of the motivating factors in Saul’s abandoning the word of God for his own authority is when the people start hiding themselves in caves and holes and rocks and tombs and in cisterns. The approaching Philistine army is so overwhelming that men are hiding in above ground caves and underground water tunnels, and others just flat out ran away from the place altogether. Samuel will tell Saul that God desires a man after his own heart. And that man will ultimately be Jesus, who does not abandon God’s word, even when other abandon him. There were many occasions in Jesus’ ministry when people just stopped following him as they once did. The most poignant of those times was on the night of his betrayal, when the disciples ran away as Jesus was arrested. And you and I should be glad that Jesus didn’t abandon God’s word when others abandoned him. It was his devotion to His Father that brought him to the cross.

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We are called to live a crucified life.

We are to serve God faithfully with all our hearts in every area of our lives.   ~~~   Serve God This God we hear about, this God we fear, His word is meant to be lived out. You will notice that it says in 1 Samuel 12:24 to serve him faithfully with all of your heart. When we hear this, we often think that it means with all of our energy, or with everything we have. And it does to an extent. But it also means that every area of our life is to be his. There is not to be a sacred and secular divide. Every part of your life is religious. Every part of your life is worship. The reason this is so is because the earth is the LORD’s and the fullness thereof. Every nail you drive into a piece of wood, the nail and the wood, and the hammer belong to God. When you mow your grass, you are actually mowing God’s grass. When you mix asphalt, it belongs to God. When you pave roads, cut hair, handle money, paint buildings, raise children, teach subjects, they all belong to God! And we are to serve Him faithfully with all of our heart in every area, as he instructs us.

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Your prayers are important. They’re not getting lost on their way to God. If you’re praying for something then you are doing the most important thing you could do.

Believers must make an effort to strengthen our faith and be more like Christ.   ~~~   Are you familiar with leg day? If you work out you most certainly are! If you are not familiar, here’s a little leg day 101. Leg day is any day that focuses on the lower body muscles, such as glutes, quadriceps, hamstrings, and calves. The goal of leg day is to target all of the major muscle groups in your lower body, strengthening the areas you need for daily movement. Without strong legs, climbing up stairs, running after your toddler, and lifting or carrying heavy boxes all become a little more difficult. My youngest daughter plays middle school volleyball. They had leg day. She came home limping. They were strength training and working out their legs so they can move quickly and have strength and stamina on the court. She needed to recover a bit and she was super glad that the next day they focused on upper body! Her soreness was expected. She hadn’t worked out much all summer and her coach knew those girls needed some working out to get in shape. I heard that if you can walk after leg day, you’re doing something wrong! I guess her limp proved she was doing it right. I started thinking about my walk with the Lord. Does my faith walk need a work out? Should we be walking with a spiritual limp as a result of training, repetitions and really wrestling it down and working it out? We don’t usually think about it that way do we? Just keeping it real, my preferred faith work out is my quiet time with God, digging through scripture in my big comfy chair, coffee in hand, with a blanket and my beagle dog laying on my lap. I can tell you right now I’m not working up much of a spiritual sweat. But… what if we did. What if we seized the day, every day, with a no pain no gain attitude for growing in maturity, self control, discipleship and strength in the Lord? What would THAT look like? Well you might be surprised to know that we are in fact supposed to be ‘working OUT our salvation’. Philippians 2:12-13 Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose. What Paul is NOT saying here is that we must work FOR our salvation. Salvation is a gift of grace through faith in Jesus alone. Here though, Paul is highlighting the importance of staying fit for Christ through our consistent faithfulness to the Lord and through our obedience. Dr David Jeremiah puts it this way, “The Christian’s role is to work OUT what God has worked IN by cultivating the characteristics of a godly life.” I love that! What naturally takes place is as we work OUT what God has worked IN us, we will then be a light in the darkness through the life we live and the works we do for Him that He created us to do. Paul tells a young Timothy, ‘train yourself to be godly’. Our goal as believers is to be like Jesus. This doesn’t happen overnight and the process only begins when you give your life to him. Just like in physical training or even leg day, there is intentional movement in the areas that are weak. There is daily discipline to follow a healthy diet of good choices and deny the bad. If you’re looking for a place to start when it comes to working out your faith, here are some places to start. Read, study and memorize scripture. Pray and spend time talking to God daily. Intentionally give of your time and resources on a consistent basis. Gather with believers by committing to a church and invest in discipleship growth in both large and small gatherings. Deny yourself through fasting food, social media, movies or something you need to take a break from. Seek simplicity, practice silence or maybe plan a day to celebrate the goodness of God in a season. Are you limping yet? See what I mean? I think we can all use a good spiritual work out and as we move and work OUT our salvation, we will see more of God working OUT of and through our lives. That’s the truth. Hey no pain no gain and the goal set for us all, as we work it out, is ultimately to look more like Jesus. I’m Lori Cline.  

We do not have to be afraid of the LORD’s harsh discipline if we are trustingly serving him.   ~~~   Fear God We ended last week by seeing that in 2 Samuel 12, Samuel gave his farewell address and encouraged the Israelites to hear from God as he continued to pray for them and instruct them. That would be their proper response, but not the only response. Not only were they to hear from God, they were to fear God. This is an interesting one. In verse 20, Samuel says, “Do not be afraid; you have done all this evil.” And then in verse 24, Samuel says, “Fear the LORD.” So in one verse he says, “Fear not.” And then turns around and says, “Fear the LORD.” What are we to make of this? I think if we read it with the context in mind, we will see that we do not have to be afraid of the LORD’s harsh discipline if we are trustingly serving him. If there is a greater reverence, if we see Him as He truly is and as He presents himself to us, we will not have to fear his judgment because our lives will be aligned in His ways. So we must fear Him, revere Him, stand in awe of Him. The type of fear that Isaiah had, when after seeing him in His glory, and becoming undone, but then having the cleansing of that piece of coal brought to His lips, Isaiah was ready to go anywhere and say anything the LORD commanded. So we are to hear from God, and when He is made plan to us through instruction, we are to fear Him in reverence and awe.

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We were made for community, we were saved and are to be placed in community.   ~~~   What were the Israelites to say and do in response to this miracle? What are we to say or do in response to the way God has acted on our behalf? Samuel gives three main responses (19-25). He lists them in the negative and in the positive, but they fall into these three main categories. Hear God’s word We hear Samuel tell us what are his responsibilities, and that is to pray for the people of God and teach the people of God God’s word. So one main response that should be taking place in our lives is to be hearers of God’s word. We must be underneath the instruction of God’s word. This is a primary means of our relationship with God. God’s word is food for our souls, air for our lungs. We are to hear God’s word preached and proclaimed from God’s appointed men, from God’s ordained church. This is no light thing we do here week after week. I do not hammer this home for my own sake, but because we see it explicitly and implicitly all over God’s word. We were made for community, we were saved and are to be placed in community. We need each other pointing each other to Christ. We are being built up into a holy temple, a dwelling place for God.

Rather than be afraid, we should be confident that we can trust God with anything.   ~~~   Is God calling you to step out of the boat? What are you afraid of? If you recall the story of Peter stepping out of the boat and walking on water, it started by him asking Jesus, “Lord, if it’s you, tell me to come to you on the water.” He put it out there. He took the risk of asking Jesus to call him to step out. So what happens? Jesus said, “come”. He stepped out of the boat. It was going great! He was water walking! Then, he took his eyes off of Jesus and looked around. He saw the waves. He saw the deep water. Then what happened right before he began to sink? Matthew 14:30-31 But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, “Lord, save me!” Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. “You of little faith,” he said, “why did you doubt?” Did you catch it? The thing that derailed him from his water walking experience with Jesus, was fear. Maybe you can relate. You’ve been water walking with Jesus full of faith and trust and then BAM, fear. But Jesus what if THIS… I’m just afraid that… Did you see the giants I’m facing? I’m afraid I’m not good enough… I can’t see how this will work out… Fear takes root when we believe the lie that God can’t handle what we are facing and the deeper root lie is that God can not be trusted. Fear IS a liar. Fear says, ‘you can’t walk on water’ and we buy into it even when we are literally walking on water with Jesus in our gaze. The thing is we love to take things into our own hands. We do our own ‘water walking’ risk management in a way, looking at all the possible ‘worst case scenarios’ of what COULD happen all for the sake of trying to control the outcome. Carefully weighing probabilities and seeking sound wisdom and council IS a good thing, but if you move forward with a root of fear in anything in life, you’re not going to get as far as you would without it! What fear is holding you back? I read an article recently that stepped on my toes a bit. It basically said to stop asking the question, ‘what’s the worst that could happen?’ Thinking like that may move us forward, but in our mind we’ve already tried to control the outcome by managing our expectations all for the sake of accepting the probability that something bad WILL happen or that something GOOD will not! We limit what God wants to do in and through us as we attempt to manage our own outcomes. I’ve been guilty. Do you do that? What lie are you believing that has led you to be afraid? Ask God to forgive you and lay it as His feet. Trust Him with all the lies you’ve been believing. Trust Him with every single part of your life, even the scary parts you try to manage. The phrase ‘fear not’ is in the Bible 365 times, that’s enough for every single day. Dig into more of what God has to say about fear if you struggle in this area. You’ll find so many scriptures to encourage you in choosing faith over fear. One of my favorite scripture verses is one I had my girls learn when they were little. Psalm 56:3 When I am afraid, I put my trust in you. It’s so simple. That’s why I love it. I trust in the Lord because I stand in awe of who He is and His neverending love for me. That’s the truth. When I stand in that kind of love, I can say with confidence each new day, “what’s the BEST that could happen”? Let’s get out of the boat. I’m Lori Cline.

The greatest miracle God does is the miracle of changing sinful hearts.   ~~~   God shows He is faithful to his covenant with Israel by the men he gives to lead, and in the mercy he displays. But we also need a miracle. We need a miracle to show us our true condition and lead us to repentance. How is it that hard-hearted people like you and me ever realize our need? Ever realize the grace of God? It is a miracle of God that it happens. You see, what Samuel is doing is accusing the people of God, the Israelites, of sin. They have rejected God and exalted Saul. They believe they are on their way to being a great and mighty nation. But Samuel stops the party, and says, “You have acted sinfully in asking for a king like the other nations. And if you can’t trust that I am speaking honestly to you, then maybe you will take heed from this miracle.” And so Samuel tells the Israelites that God will bring forth thunder and rain right then. This would be like us experiencing a snow storm in the middle of our July. IT was the word of God, the action of God that brought the people to fear and repentance. Are you not thankful that the word of God worked a miracle on your stony heart? The Holy Spirit drew you in, softened your heart towards God, hardened your heart towards sin, and made you new. Miracle of miracles.

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The basis of God’s faithfulness to His people is the covenant He made with His people.   ~~~   Not only do we see God’s covenant faithfulness in the men God uses to guide us, but in the ever-present mercy God gives us. We read about this mercy in 1 Samuel 12:6-16, and it is staggering. Samuel begins by commanding the people to stand still, to stop whatever they were doing. And what were they doing, they were rejoicing (11:15). How interesting is it that Samuel interrupts the party and worship service in order to teach the people about God’s character. Why would he do this? Because the people were heading in a wrong direction with their worship and thinking. They were headed down the path of thinking that all was good in the hood, when it was not. So stand still, “that I may plead with you before the LORD concerning all the righteous deeds of the LORD that he performed with you and for your fathers.” Two phrases become immensely important here. First, Samuel does all of this “before the LORD.” In other words, I am going speak honestly with you, and if I am not honest, then God is here watching and listening and He will judge me. All that I say will be said in front of the LORD. So Samuel is quite serious at this point. Next, he says he wants to plead with the people concerning the “righteous deeds of the LORD.” That word “righteous” means “the fulfillment of just expectations between two parties. That which corresponds to being just.” What are those righteous deeds? God brought the Israelites out of the oppression of the Egyptians to dwell in the promised land. And when the people turned their backs on God, He disciplined them because he loved them. And when they cried out to Him in repentance, He rescued them…again, and again, and again. It was a cycle of rebellion, repentance, and rescue. Generation after generation. Time after time. Why? How can God say, “Do not fear,” to people who have rejected him, and not just once, but over and over again? What is the basis of God’s faithfulness to His people? Could it be that God sees something in us that we do not see in ourselves…that one day, we will finally get it right, that we will turn this thing around?…Since God knows how it all ends, does He see that we will finally come around to being completely faithful to Him on our own? No! No! No! The basis of God’s faithfulness to His people is the covenant He made with His people.When it is all said and done, and the people of God surround the throne of God, no one will be talking about how wise God was in choosing good people, smart people, wise people, strong people, from every tribe and nation and tongue. But rather, we will all be utterly astounded at the grace of God in rescuing and changing such sinners like you and me into being trophies and spoils of His Grace!

Our hope is ALIVE!