When it comes to obeying God, we can’t pick and choose what we want to obey and what we don’t. Obeying God needs to be all or nothing. In this passage, we see what happened when Saul decided not to obey God fully, and what the consequences were.
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Parenting is one of the hardest things that you can do in life — and it is also often a thankless task. It seems to be valued less and less by society. Yet, God values it hugely. In this passage we see the contrast between Elkanah and Hannah and Eli in the way they brought up their children, and what difference it made.
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In Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s musical “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat”, the message people come away with is: ‘dreams can come true.’ It doesn’t mention God at all! Perhaps people might read this story of Hannah and Samuel and think that the message here is the same. But here, as with Joseph, the Bible’s message is something very different: God has to be central.
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If you wanted to change the world, how would you go about it? Become an activist or a politician? Try to get rich? The world is full of people trying to do just that — but God’s ways are very different to our ways. In fact, they are almost the complete opposite. God chooses to use people who look nothing like what the world would expect.
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