Message: In 1 Samuel 28 Saul found himself at war with the Philistines again. This time the Philistines had recruited David to fight with them since he had been living among them in his escape from Saul’s pursuit of him. Saul was terrified to the point of shaking but when he tried to inquire of God he heard nothing because God had removed his hand from him. Saul became so desperate that he wanted to consult a medium. The problem with this was that Saul had ousted all of the mediums and mandated that consulting the dead was punishable by death. He disguised himself and asked the medium to consult Samuel. This terrified the medium and she knew the disguised man was Saul so she feared for her life. When Saul spoke to Samuel he complained that he was in serious trouble and God was not speaking to him. Samuel reminded him that God had taken the kingship from him and that by the next day he and his sons would be with him in death. What I found interesting about this was Saul’s desperation to be advised even though his track record showed that he didn’t follow it anyway. This was exactly why he was in this position. It seemed Saul wanted to hear the comfort of direction, but he also wanted to choose for himself how much of it he would follow. In the last incident he had been given very specific directions and even after he failed to follow them, he still somehow believed that he did follow them. He convinced himself and tried to convince Samuel that he obeyed but Samuel called him out on the disobedience. I feel like we do this too. We pray about our situations and God reveals to us in his word what we need to do. We do part of it and call it obedience, but then we wonder why God is silent or why things fell apart. We convince ourselves and even try to convince God that we aren’t walking in disobedience. This really makes me feel the need to evaluate some areas in my life where I might be walking in partial obedience but really I am just lying to myself.
