Author: Kevin

I am a follower of Jesus, husband, pastor, author, and caffeine addict. Please follow me on Facebook or Twitter. You may also want to consider subscribing to the RSS feed.

The Blessings of 8th Place

1st Samuel 16 introduces us to one of the most well-known characters in the Bible: David. What you may not realize is just how unlikely a choice he was to be the King of Israel.

God told Samuel it was time to stop moping around and dwelling on the dismal leadership failures of Saul, Israel’s first king. Samuel was ordered to anoint another king, but this time it would be different. Saul was exactly the type of king the people wanted, but the new king would be the kind of man God wanted.

Samuel was told to go visit Jesse in Bethlehem. There he would meet Jesse’s sons, one of whom would be God’s choice for the next king.

The meeting eventually happened, and Samuel was immediately presented with the most obvious choice: Eliab.

Eliab had won the genetic lottery in more ways than one. He was the firstborn son, which meant he would be the leader of the family once Jesse passed away. This also meant he would receive twice the inheritance of any other sibling. Even now, being first has its advantages: firstborn children tend to surpass their younger siblings in both leadership ability and intelligence.

Eliab had something else going for him: he was tall and handsome–an impressive physical specimen of a man.

All things considered, this alpha male was the obvious choice to be Israel’s next king. Even Samuel was impressed: he was ready to cast the one and only deciding vote for Eliab.

But God had a different plan–a plan so surprising that it had to be spelled out in no uncertain terms. God told Samuel that He was looking for something that Samuel couldn’t see:

 But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”

-1st Samuel 16:7

Eliab was clearly not God’s choice, so Jesse did the most sensible thing he could think of. He presented Samuel with the second-born, then the third-born, an so on until he had presented seven of his sons as potential candidates. God rejected them all.

“Are all your sons here?” Samuel asked. There was one more, but no one in the family thought he should even be invited. David, the youngest, had been assigned to watch the sheep while everyone else attended to these more important matters.

Samuel sent for him, and God made His choice clear: David would be Israel’s next king. He was anointed on the spot–right in front of his higher-status brothers.

Why David? Because God wanted a man after His own heart (1st Samuel 13:14).

David is an example of something we see repeatedly in the Scriptures: God delights in using the unlikeliest of people to do extraordinary things. Social status, appearance, wealth, or any other external measure of “success” are meaningless in His eyes. God looks at one thing above everything when deciding who He will use: the heart.

When God Wrecks Your Plans

Many are the plans in the mind of a man,
    but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand.

Proverbs 19:21

“How many of you know what it’s like to have God wreck your plans?”

I asked this question while preaching a couple of weeks ago. Several hands were raised, and even more smiled and nodded. This is one of those nearly universal Christian experiences. Our lives rarely go exactly the way we thought they would, and we find ourselves wrestling with God for answers–answers that He doesn’t always seem eager to give.

Let’s be honest: sometimes God wrecks our plans because we never included Him in the first place. Our plans were motivated by selfish ambition, foolish desires, or some other toxic source. Sometimes our faithful Father lovingly disrupts our lives in order to expose our idols and offer us an opportunity to repent. Hopefully we get the message and start over with godly priorities.

But this is not always the case. God reserves the right to do as He pleases, even with our best intentions. I can think of no better example than Paul’s itinerary, found in Romans 15.

I hope to see you in passing as I go to Spain, and to be helped on my journey there by you, once I have enjoyed your company for a while. At present, however, I am going to Jerusalem bringing aid to the saints.

Romans 15:24-25

Paul had been preaching for around 25 years by the time he wrote Romans. He had planted churches in several of the urban centers on the eastern side of the Roman Empire. Paul now had his sights on Spain, the western edge of the Roman Empire.

His plan was to stop by Jerusalem to bring financial aid to the believers there (money he had collected from other churches). From there he would pass through Rome and spend some time with the church there before heading to Spain.

That was Paul’s plan. It was prayerfully created and energized by Paul’s ambition to preach Christ where His name had never been heard (Romans 15:20-21).

But God shipwrecked Paul’s plan–literally. He encountered hostile opposition in Jerusalem and was placed in Roman custody for his own protection. He appealed his case to Caesar before the Roman authorities. They granted his request and arranged for a sailboat to take him to Rome. The boat encountered a storm strong enough to crash it upon a reef. Paul and his fellow prisoners swam for their lives or rode planks to the shores of Malta.

Paul eventually made it to Rome, but his stay was not brief. He spent two years under house arrest, preaching and teaching those who came to visit him.

The events I’ve just described (recorded in Acts 21-28) were clearly not what Paul had in mind.

We don’t know, in fact, if Paul ever made it to Spain as he had planned. Here’s what we do know: Paul wrote the “prison letters” during this time of house arrest in Rome. These letters are recorded in our New Testament: Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon. These scriptures have blessed and instructed millions of believers–far beyond the geographical borders of Spain and long after the Roman Empire had fallen. God, as always, knew exactly what He was doing with His trusted servant.

This quote comes to mind:

God places His saints where they will bring the most glory to Him, and we are totally incapable of judging where that may be.

-Oswald Chambers

Lord, teach us to trust in Your greater purpose–even when this requires You to change, disrupt, or even destroy our plans.