Today topic : AN
IGNORANT PRAYER
Memorise:
Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from
you. James 4:7
Read: 1st Samuel
15:17-22(KJV)
17 And Samuel said, When thou wast
little in thine own sight, wast thou not made the head of the tribes of Israel,
and the Lord anointed thee king over Israel?
18 And the Lord sent thee on a
journey, and said, Go and utterly destroy the sinners the Amalekites, and fight
against them until they be consumed.
19 Wherefore then didst thou not obey
the voice of the Lord, but didst fly upon the spoil, and didst evil in the
sight of the Lord?
20 And Saul said unto Samuel, Yea, I
have obeyed the voice of the Lord, and have gone the way which the Lord sent
me, and have brought Agag the king of Amalek, and have utterly destroyed the
Amalekites.
21 But the people took of the spoil, sheep
and oxen, the chief of the things which should have been utterly destroyed, to
sacrifice unto the Lord thy God in Gilgal.
22 And Samuel said, Hath the Lord as
great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord?
Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams.
23 For rebellion is as the sin of
witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because thou hast
rejected the word of the Lord, he hath also rejected thee from being king.
Bible in one
year: Numbers 5-6, Jeremiah 15:10-21, Hymn: Sing hymn 9
MESSAGE:
I have
always admonished believers never to pray that God should humble them; this is
an ignorant prayer. The truth is that God has given everyone the capacity to
choose whatever he or she wants to do, and He will not interfere with our
choices. For this reason, every man is responsible for his or her actions. Why
is this so? This is because man, unlike other creatures, was created as an
agent of free will. The Bible in Deuteronomy
30:19 says:
“I call
heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you
life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and
thy seed may live:”
The above
passage of Scripture explains God’s attitude to man’s fall in the Garden of
Eden. Although He had instructed Adam and Eve not to eat the fruit of the
knowledge of good and evil, He did not try to stop them when they did eat it,
even though He is omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent. His righteous nature
would not allow Him to hold back the free will He had already given to them. 18
April 2017 an ignorant prayer Open heavens devotional. However, they
lived to bear the consequences of their choice to disobey God. In our Bible
reading today, King Saul momentarily forgot the low estate he occupied before
he was made the king of Israel. His forgetfulness caused him to think that he
could flout the instructions given to him by the King of kings. He decided to
listen to his human counsellors, and he began to rationalise the instructions
God gave him. King Saul therefore became swollen-headed, and Prophet Samuel who
anointed him as king became “old school” and “old fashioned” in his eyes. To
him, there should be no ‘waste’; after all why destroy valuable fatted cows?
Moreover, great kings would begin to pay tribute to him for sparing their
lives. Contrast this attitude against his humble demeanour before he became
king. He himself had once said in 1st Samuel
9:21:
“…Am not I a Benjamite, of the smallest of the tribes of
Israel? And my family the least of all families of the tribe of Benjamin?
Wherefore then speakest thou so to me?
Remembering this, Prophet Samuel in 1st Samuel 15:17 said:
“….When thou wast little in thine own sight, wast thou not
made the head of the tribes of Israel, and the LORD anointed thee king over
Israel?”
May the Lord deliver his children from pride in Jesus’ Name.
Our approach to humility should be heed the counsel of submission in today’s
memory verse; the reason being that if we do not humble ourselves voluntarily
and God has to do it, one could end up like King Saul, whom the Lord rejected
from being king over His people (1st Samuel 15:26). May that not be your portion in Jesus’ Name.
Prayer Point
Father, I submit myself to Your Lordship. I will seek what
You want, and what You hate, I will hate. Help me to stay truth to this
commandment in Jesus Name.
Open Heaven Daily Devotional, written by Pastor
E.A Adeboye,
The General Overseer of the
Redeemed Christian Church of God, one of the largest evangelical church in the
world and also the President of Christ the Redeemer's Ministries.
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