Tuesday Reading: 1 Samuel 16:6-13
Key Verse: 1 Samuel 16:11
11 And Samuel said to Jesse, Are all the young men here? And he said, There remains yet the youngest, and behold, he keeps the sheep. And Samuel said to Jesse, Send and bring him, for we will not sit down until he comes here.
Devotion:
Somehow I cannot see how David ever thought that he would become king; and when we read from this chapter he was not alone in those thoughts. Samuel had to be told by God not to look at the ‘outer package’ but rather what was on the inside. That is something that we often find hard to do because we take first impressions and they tend to stick. When God chose Saul (1 Samuel 9) to be king it was because of his outward appearance. God was not fickle in choosing Saul but instead knew what the people were seeking for a king – someone that looked the part.
When God then sent Samuel to go to Jesse to find the next king he started by looking at the ‘biggest and best’ and continued looking until God told him to stop. The person that God chose in the end was the youngest, smallest and least obvious choice by man’s standards. This time God was going to allow the people to see what He wanted from a leader instead of what the people wanted; God looks at the inside where He can see inside people’s hearts and minds.
There are not many people who know what they are going to be doing at an early age. I can remember times when I thought that I may be a tractor driver – because that looked cool when I was tiny. Then there was a time when the tractor gave way to a train and a train driver was next in my aim, then a pilot, then an engineer, then a designer and what I actually ended up doing was programming computers! Now I know that what I do enjoy doing most of all is teaching children about God and I have a feeling that that is what God was trying to get me to do from the beginning but I certainly was not listening! We need to do what Samuel was doing: listening to God and obeying Him. God does know what is best for us – trust Him!
Points to Ponder:
Do you always know what is best?
Are you obeying God?