I wonder if there will ever be a day when I read the old testament without face palming over the Israelites. That day hasn’t come yet, and I’m back breaking it down more. In the first book of Samuel, the Israelites are a bit of a mess. They seem stuck on the perpetual hamster wheel of disobedience. Every other verse it seems we see generations flip flopping between obedient follower to greedy power grabber serving their own interests.
By the time we reach Samuel 8, Samuel is an old man and his sons are taking on more responsibility. The more the Israelites follow this forgetting generation, the more losses to the Philistines they start experiencing. So as anyone experiencing so many losses would, the Israelites start looking around for what could be the reason for all this defeat. And in a spectacularly foolish move, they start looking at all these other nations and instead of looking inward for why they’re not succeeding. So they come to Samuel with a bone to pick.
“Finally, all the elders of Israel met at Ramah to discuss the matter with Samuel. ‘Look,’they told him, ‘you are now old, and your sons are not like you. Give us a king to judge us like all the other nations have.’” (Samuel 8:4-5)
Samuel goes on to warn them of how bad things will get if they have a king, but they insist. They want a king just like everybody else. With our hindsight we can see how badly this goes and feel sure that we wouldn’t make the same mistake, but if we really look at ourselves closely, how often do we do the exact same thing?
Being a Christian and really living for Christ is hard. One of the main things that makes it so hard is that we’re asked to reject the world and what is says we should be going after. We have that unified purpose in Christ, but the noise of the world doesn’t lessen. We are in the thick of it constantly and it is inescapable. “Do this to be important!” the world chants, “Do that to matter!”. Like the Israelites before us, we are constantly confronted what gives other people success in the world and the temptation is to grab for it ourselves. But like the Israelites, we can’t afford to do so.
When you’re following God, the model for success is going to look different than the rest of the world. If you’re called to live differently it follows that you will likely have a different life from those around you. You can’t let the world dictate how you achieve success.
I struggle with this a lot. There are things I want to be and places I want to go that I just can’t seem to get to. Things that other people seem to achieve with ease without God in the picture at all. Sometimes I want to holler up at God, saying “Are you seeing this? Are you seeing how I’m losing and everyone else is winning? Can’t you just give me what they have and then we’ll finally be on our way!” But whatever the “one thing” is I’m asking for, at the end of the day it’s no different than the Israelites just wanting a king. Because it’s not about the thing, it’s about the attitude towards God and his plan.
We have to make the constant ongoing attitude adjustment to reject the world’s success in favor of God’s provision. This is hard work. It requires us to constantly remember that we are choosing to live set apart from the world while still in it and measure our needs accordingly. We have to ask God to remind us what he has planned for us and do the hard work to trust that he will make good on it.
There are certainly things we need in life, but another king (however that looks in your life) is not one of them. Whatever losses we feel in our low moments are nothing compared to the glorious wins God has planned for our future. He is not a passive God. He is active and with you. No king could be better than that.
Let’s find some joy,
Avalon Robinson Author 