“Invite Jesse to the sacrifice, and I will show you what to do…” – 1 Samuel 16:3
Allow me to share a brief word with you about how God is working in your life today. He is doing with you what He was doing in the verse above with Samuel 3,000 years ago. He is doing with you the same thing He did with Abraham 4,000 years ago. God is working in your life in a similar manner to how He worked in Gideon’s life around 3,300 years ago. Two-thousand years back, God was working in John the Baptist’s life, Peter’s life and Paul’s life with the same design that He is working this very day in your life. What way does God delight to work in our lives?
He gives you what you need to trust Him for today. We are not promised more light than this. We have been called to live as people who are content with our daily bread.
Most of us wished Jesus had taught us to pray, “Give us this month our monthly bread.” Some who truly feel the need for more information from God in order to be calm and at peace would rather that Jesus had said, “Give us this year our yearly bread.” Those of us who might be conditioned to the American dream more so than the call to live by faith have exchanged this daily bread concept for our own, “Give us today sufficient bread to store up for our retirement in a few decades.” God has always ordained that His people live according to promises, not according to a comfortable level of overstock.
God told Samuel above, “I will show you what to do.” That revelation to Samuel would only become reality if Samuel did what God was first requiring of him. Revelation drafts in the tailwinds obedience. God told Samuel to go to Bethlehem, find the household of man named Jesse, and inspect Jesse’s sons because God would be choosing one of those young men to replace the unreliable Saul as king over Israel. That was all that Samuel was told and the assignment to Samuel came with risk. It entailed some hard work and a fairly long journey for the aged Samuel. It demanded faith and much patience. He did not understand all that God was doing and, like us, Samuel might have been tempted to demand more data from the Lord. Samuel, like we so often have, might have had dozens of questions about the eventual outcome of the assignment God was giving him. Yet Samuel moved out in faith and obedience and ate the daily bread of what had been made clear to him from God.
“Go…and I will show you what to do.”
That is what God is doing in your life today. That is what He is always doing in the lives of His children. He is stretching us beyond lip-service love, truncated trust and fickle faith. We tend to focus on what might come after our obedience before we actually obey. We are addicted to information. We love full disclosure. We do not enjoy being left in the dark about what comes next. Yet, God is looking for a man or woman who will live the life of true trust in His goodness. Information and full disclosure are not the primary ingredients of the life of faith – and they are never actually promised to us. The life of faith is about trust and obedience.
Be where God tells you to be. He will show you what to do when you get there.
During the last while it has been a struggle because I have not heard from GOD a place to be or what to do. I still trust in Jesus with all my heart and my obedience although is weak at times is still do nothing more or less than what he tells me to do. Sometimes I wonder if my ears are stopped up.
True, confirming words. So many times in my walk with Jesus I want to know what tomorrow will bring because today, yesterday and last month weren’t all that great. The Lord is teaching me daily trust in HIM is where I need to be, the past is past and the future…our future is in His well capable Hands.