LEAVE THE SMALL THINGS

King Saul started out a good and humble man but became so blinded he was unable to discern as a result of which he made wrong choices. He also became so self-obsessed that he did not know when, as we say in Nigeria, “his cup was full” and so short-sighted he based he could not see beyond the immediate. Unfortunately he lost his throne as a result and a lot of us believers are losing our God given gifts for similar reasons despite that we have the Spirit of wisdom to guide us. The thing is we are often too overwhelmed by emotion to do as He suggests. There is an urgent and compelling need to ‘understand the times’, whether it is with regard to a relationship or a business, state of affairs in the society etc., if we will make appropriate decisions and suffer less loss.  

1 Chronicles 12: 32 “From the tribe of Issachar, there were 200 leaders of the tribe with their relatives. All of these men understood the signs of the times and knew the best course for Israel to take.”

There is a category of people that “do not know when to stop.” These people “cross the line” with others going on notwithstanding what response they are getting. They are so wrapped up in themselves that they get carried away and refuse to acknowledge that they are not getting their desired result. Sadly, such people often suffer loss of God given gifts in the form of relationships and then they don’t understand what went wrong. Of course it can never be their fault that anything went wrong since they are so nice. Fortunately, these are not our focus today. 

Today, I am focused on believers who like Saul, are so blinded by their overwhelming desire to get what they want when they want it that they have become short-sighted only seeing the now and unable to see the impact of their actions on their future. Such people often suffer great losses, even irreplaceable ones. When Saul should have been worried about Samuel’s prophecy that he had lost the kingdom, all he could think about was protecting his image so that by the time he realized he had lost the kingdom, it was too late to fix it. Just like such believers, Saul was so wrapped up in himself he did not realize he had “crossed the line” with God and had walked away from a God given gift. For us today, the gift could be anything from a business to a relationship and so on. 

1 Samuel 15: 27 “As Samuel turned to go; Saul tried to hold him back and tore the hem of his robe. And Samuel said to him, ‘The Lord has torn the kingdom of Israel from you today and has given it to someone else-one how is better than you. And he who is the Glory of Israel will not lie, nor will he change his mind, for he is not human that he should change his mind!” The Saul pleaded again, ‘I know I have sinned. But please, at least honor me before the elders of my people and before Israel by coming back with me so that I may worship the Lord my God.”

There are some things that nobody will tell you; so we need to ask the Holy Spirit to help us assess ourselves. So we can then begin to walk toward correcting ourselves. Don’t ever take anything God gives you for granted; it may not always be there. Saul realized too late that he had lost the throne and decided it was best to kill his successor; he did not realize that he was trying to fix in the physical, something already upturned in the spiritual for heaven had taken back the throne since he did not understand his purpose on it.