Tag: Saul

1 Samuel 16: The Deception of Appearances

Obedience is the path to open up intimacy with God. If you are going to know Him better, you must do what He tells you to do. God teaches us this truth over and over again. Disobedience has consequences, and it leads us away from God. Obedience, on the other hand, draws us closer to Him. This is a lesson we often learn through brokenness and pain. This brokenness also teaches us to depend on God; our strength comes from Him.

1 Samuel 15: A Rebellious Redefinition

Where is your trust? Either you will be like Saul and trust in yourself, or you will trust God and realize that satisfaction only comes from obeying, knowing, and loving God.

1 Samuel 10: Our Gracious King

The only way to find what you’re looking for is to die to yourself and surrender to God. Every day, we have to decide whether we will die to ourselves and seek God, or whether we will fall prey to the temptations of the world and walk in rebellion.

1 Samuel 9: Trusting the True King

The temptation to seek after the visible and temporal rather than the invisible and eternal is not new. Looking at 1 Samuel, we see that the Israelites struggled with this temptation in regard to their rulers.

Acts 9: From Persecutor to Proclaimer

God grants His ordinary disciples the privilege of being involved in His work. It’s not fame but faithfulness that God calls us to. Even a small, unknown person can be used by God in magnificent ways.

Acts 8: Counterfeit Gospels

No one asks for persecution. But God in His wisdom has made it so that when anyone persecutes His Church, it is like taking seed and scattering it so that it goes everywhere.

Image of fence-lined path heading toward a beautiful, unseen view

Faith and Obedience

This article borrows heavily from Walter Henrichsen’s A Layman’s Guide to Applying the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1978). [lead]There are four ingredients essential to the assimilation of Scripture: knowledge, understanding, experience, and application.[/lead]Of these four, the one most heavily emphasized in Scripture is application.[note]Henrichsen, Layman’s Guide, 19–21.[/note] The Bible