{"id":2410,"date":"2023-03-02T09:17:41","date_gmt":"2023-03-02T14:17:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=2410"},"modified":"2023-03-02T09:17:41","modified_gmt":"2023-03-02T14:17:41","slug":"i-samuel-316","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2023\/03\/02\/i-samuel-316\/","title":{"rendered":"I Samuel 3:16"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To listen to this reflection as a podcast,\u00a0<\/em>click here<\/a>.

Every day during this season of Lent we\u2019re looking at one of the \u201c3:16\u201d verses of the Bible, spotlighting some of the significant theological statements that happen to fall on the 16th<\/sup> verse of the third chapter of a number of Old and New Testament books.\u00a0<\/em>
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\u201cEli called him and said, \u2018Samuel, my son.\u2019 Samuel answered, \u2018Here I am.\u2019\u201d

During the course of one long night, Samuel\u2019s life changed forever.
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It was the first night he ever heard the voice of the Lord.
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His mother Hannah \u2013 overwhelmed with gratitude that God had allowed her to have a child \u2013 has surrendered him as a kind of living gift to God\u2019s service.\u00a0 Samuel, though just a child, spends all his days in Israel\u2019s tabernacle, the sacred tent that housed, among other things, the ark of the covenant.\u00a0 He lives under the authority of Eli, an old man who had served God only half-heartedly.
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One night Samuel is awakened by a voice calling his name.\u00a0 \u201cSamuel!\u201d\u00a0 He runs to Eli.\u00a0 \u201cHere I am.\u00a0 You called me.\u201d\u00a0 Eli insists it wasn\u2019t so, and Samuel finds his way back to bed.\u00a0 Then it happens again.\u00a0 And then a third time.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0
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\u201cThen Eli realized that the Lord was calling the boy.\u00a0 So Eli told Samuel, \u2018Go and lie down, and if he calls you, say, \u2018Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.\u2019 So Samuel went and lay down in his place.\u00a0 The Lord came and stood there, calling as at the other times, \u2018Samuel! Samuel!\u2019\u00a0 Then Samuel said, \u2018Speak, for your servant is listening\u2019<\/em>\u201d (I Samuel 3:8-10)\u00a0
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This is the beginning of a life of service during a period of Old Testament history when few of God\u2019s people seem even remotely interested in what God has to say.\u00a0 But Samuel listens.\u00a0 Our \u201c3:16\u201d verse is the continuation of this night\u2019s extraordinary three-way conversation \u2013 the difficult moment when Eli asks the young boy to pass along what God just said to him, which he accurately suspects is going to be some long overdue accountability for his own failures as God\u2019s representative.\u00a0
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Does God still speak today?
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If so, what would it be like to hear from him?\u00a0\u00a0
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It\u2019s tempting to imagine a sonorous voice like that of Liam Neeson, James Earle Jones, or Morgan Freeman calling us by name in the middle of the night, then showering us with nuggets of wisdom for the days ahead.\u00a0 But if we\u2019re honest, what we\u2019re most likely to hear tonight is sheer silence<\/em>.\u00a0
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If God actually wants to be known and genuinely wants to be found, it\u2019s maddening that he seems so shy.\u00a0 Why doesn\u2019t he blow away all of our doubts (and blow all of our minds at the same time) by orchestrating some kind of unmistakable visual demonstration?\u00a0 The celebrated 19th<\/sup> century atheist Robert Ingersoll used to begin his public presentations by daring God to strike him dead.\u00a0 He would wait a few moments and then sigh dramatically, \u201cWell, now that we\u2019ve got that out of the way\u2026\u201d\u00a0 If God wants to make it absolutely clear that he is God, why didn\u2019t he turn Robert Ingersoll into toast?
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The answer is actually rather simple.\u00a0 God\u2019s real target is our hearts.\u00a0 Strategically directed lightning bolts, signs in the sky, and Purdue winning this year\u2019s March Madness (we\u2019re talking about miracles here) might get our attention.\u00a0 But they wouldn\u2019t transform us into people who truly want to know God at the level of the heart.\u00a0<\/em>
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God\u2019s love is always persuasive.\u00a0 It is never coercive.
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We may not hear an audible voice as Samuel did, but we can choose every day to \u201ctune in\u201d to the rhythms of God\u2019s grace.\u00a0 How exactly do we do that?
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Right now the place where you are sitting is being bombarded with tens of thousands of messages carried on radio and television waves.\u00a0 Your body is being penetrated by sports chatter, political talk radio, updates on the war in Ukraine, and some misguided disc jockey playing My Achy Breaky Heart<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0 Whether or not you choose to hear those messages is simply a matter of tuning.\u00a0
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To hear from God we have to make a choice.\u00a0 We have to bet our lives that the invisible world is real, and that its values are more important than those the visible world is continually imposing upon us.\u00a0 To put it simply, we have to want <\/em>God to speak to us in order to hear from him.
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In his book Hearing God,<\/em> Dallas Willard writes, \u201cGod is not trying to play hide and seek with us.\u00a0 He is not a mumbling trickster,\u201d making it as hard as possible for us to know what he\u2019s up to.\u00a0 But the fact remains that we shouldn\u2019t expect to hear anything from God if we have already decided that we\u2019re not going to do what he tells us.\u00a0 Receiving guidance is not about deciding whether God\u2019s advice is good advice.\u00a0
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Why doesn\u2019t God just do a data-dump right into our brains \u2013 you know, the way the characters in The Matrix <\/em>can quickly \u201clearn\u201d things they have never actually learned?\u00a0 Why doesn\u2019t God automatically download helpful programs like How to Be Patient in Traffic<\/em> and How to Forgive that Annoying Person in My Family<\/em>?
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The answer is that God created us to be in the kind of relationship with him that requires us to want<\/u><\/em> to stay on an ever-steepening spiritual learning curve.\u00a0 A huge part of knowing God is wanting<\/u><\/em> to pursue him through his Word.
\u00a0
It\u2019s Willard\u2019s opinion that when we need to hear a specific word from God, most of the time we will hear it from another person.\u00a0 Sometimes the one thing we most need to hear comes from a surprising source \u2013 our own lips.\u00a0 From time to time when I\u2019ve been talking with someone I\u2019ve spoken the very word of encouragement, or warning, or direction that I myself needed to hear.\u00a0 Because of the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, each of us is capable of speaking more wisdom than we actually know.
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What if God remains strangely silent?\u00a0 What are we supposed to do if we aren\u2019t getting a specific leading of any kind on a decision that we simply have to make?\u00a0
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We must choose wisely.<\/em>
\u00a0
As Willard points out, \u201cWhat a child does when not <\/em>told what to do is the final indicator of who or what that child is.\u201d\u00a0 We are not the Stepford children of God \u2013 robots programmed to obey God whether we like it or not.\u00a0 Within a living, active, ever-maturing spiritual relationship, we are given the privilege and the responsibility of making decisions.
\u00a0
You may be wrestling even today with a major decision about job opportunities, financial investment, or committing yourself to a life partner.\u00a0
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If, after you have consulted the wisest counselors that God has placed around you \u2013 and if you have openly, honestly, and attentively listened for God\u2019s guidance, and still no particular word of direction has come \u2013 it would seem that God\u2019s call is for you to make the wisest decision you can make.\u00a0\u00a0
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That\u2019s what God\u2019s grown-up children must learn to do.<\/em>
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And we do so by coming to God with open hands, open ears, and open hearts.\u00a0
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Samuel, it turns out, had it just right: \u201cSpeak, Lord, for your servant is listening.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To listen to this reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here. Every day during this season of Lent we\u2019re looking at one of the \u201c3:16\u201d verses of the Bible, spotlighting some of the significant theological statements that happen to fall on the 16th verse of the third chapter of a number of Old and New Testament books.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cEli called him and said, \u2018Samuel,… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2411,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[571],"class_list":["post-2410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-316-verses"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2410"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2410\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2412,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2410\/revisions\/2412"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}