Welcome to Motivational Mondays!
First things first, what is Motivational Mondays?
Just like it sounds, to motivate, to empower, and to encourage you on the first day of a fresh week. I don't know about you but Mondays can be a drag for me, so sometimes words of encouragement and positivity are helpful to start my day off right.
Motivational Monday's topic is: Obedience Is Better Than Sacrifice
Hello there Golden Dreamers, let’s jump right into today’s topic reading, Obedience. From the title has anyone heard of the scripture, Obedience is better than Sacrifice! Speaking for myself, I’ve heard it practically all my life but, I really didn’t fully understand what it meant, let alone who said it, and why they say it in the first place. So let’s start my heading over to the Word.
Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices
as much as in obeying the Lord?
To obey is better than sacrifice,
and to heed is better than the fat of rams.
1 Samuel 15: 22
I wanted to give you the backstory of who said this scripture and why they said it in the first place. What was happening and what can we gain in knowledge to understand and apply this to our lives. I encourage you to read 1 Samuel 15 to get a full understanding of what's going on, but for now, I’ll give you a synopsis of what is mentioned.
STORYTIME:
So Boom! We have God, Samuel, and King Saul in this passage. God commands Samuel to tell King Saul to go out and destroy the Amalekites by killing them ALL, saving none which included killing their livestock. Well, King Saul decided to do things a little differently. But Saul and the army spared Agag and the best of the sheep and cattle, the fat calves and lambs—everything that was good. These they were unwilling to destroy completely, but everything that was despised and weak they totally destroyed. 1 Samuel 15:9 The Lord once again came to Samuel and said, “I regret that I have made Saul king, because he has turned away from me and has not carried out my instructions.” Samuel was angry, and he cried out to the Lord all that night. 1 Samuel 15:11 The next morning Samuel went to King Saul to tell him that God was not happy with him. Upon seeing Samual, Saul looked at him in delight but Samuel explained to Saul what God said. Saul replied, “The soldiers brought them from the Amalekites; they spared the best of the sheep and cattle to sacrifice to the Lord your God, but we totally destroyed the rest.” 1 Samuel 15:15
So Samuel once again tells King Saul that he has disobeyed God’s commands that were set out for him and in doing so he is stripped from being king over Israel. King Saul tries to explain that he kept the good livestock and sacrificed the bad ones as a burnt offering for the Lord. But in doing so he failed in following the commands God set forth for him to do.
Lastly, Samuel replied to King Saul by saying,
Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices
as much as in obeying the Lord?
To obey is better than sacrifice,
and to heed is better than the fat of rams.
For rebellion is like the sin of divination,
and arrogance like the evil of idolatry.
Because you have rejected the word of the Lord,
he has rejected you as king.
1 Samuel 15:22-23
Once King Saul realized that he had sinned for not obeying God he begged for forgiveness and worshipped God.
THE END
I’ve had my fair share of moments where I should have listened to God and obeyed but, instead I wanted to do it my own way like King Saul. It was me, trying to do it my own way, that always made me regret my decision and made me wish that I had listened the first time. How many can relate? Hmm!! It’s so hard to listen when we want to do things ourselves. Asking for help is something I’ve always struggled with, ask my friends, they’ll tell you.
Jesus answered and said to him, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him. He who does not love Me does not keep My words; and the word which you hear is not Mine but the Father’s who sent Me.
John 14:23-24
I would rather go around my whole elbow twice just to get to my head before I would ask ANYONE for help. God knows it!! He knows it so well that he tested me on it several times. I wrote a previous blog post about a time where I was struggling with asking my father for help because I thought I could do it myself. If you haven’t read it, please take the time to do so. Learn from my mistakes because at that moment I was wrestling with myself and God. There’s a price with saying Yes to God. You have to give up a lot of things when choosing to apply His Holy Word to our lives.
Read at your convenience: Motivational Mondays # 14: Humble Yourself Or God Will
I mainly wrestled with this scripture because I chose to be rebellious. I knew what God wanted me to do but I wasn’t ready and I had no interest in doing what God told me to do. With Hindsight Being 20/20, it was simple things that God was asking of me like calling someone that I had not spoken to in a long time, finishing a project that had not been completed, or other things that had been tugging at my heart/mind to do. There were many times where God had wanted me to take the initiative to apologize first and not expect one back. It is and was in those simple tasks that God continues to nudge me to let me know, “Umm ma’am, are you going to do what I said or no. No!?!, Oh okay, then I got something for you later. Don’t you worry, stay right there.” Y’all God is unmatched and so is his Word.
I encourage you to be obedient to whatever God asks of you.
Therefore you shall love the Lord your God, and keep His charge, His statutes, His judgments, and His commandments always.
Deuteronomy 11:1
Anytime we are not following the bible we are being disobedient. PERIODT. This is why the Bible instructs us to know the word and to keep it on our minds, hearts, and on our lips at all times. We do that because the Word is there to correct us and to show us how to operate and live according to his will. Once we fall short, which we will, a lot, we have to repent.
There's a multitude of sins that we commit every single day and an act of repentance to God washes that away. One thing I love about God is that if we go to Him we are granted forgiveness, just like that. It doesn't matter what we do, what we say, what people say, or what the world thinks. God is the same today as he is yesterday and as he will be tomorrow.
What is God asking you to do? Have you done it?
If not, what is keeping you from obeying?
**I hope everyone has a safe and blessed week and I will see you all on Saturday for our Weekly Topic Saturdays**
~Just Breathe...A Golden Dream~
Amen.
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