It’s All About Proximity

I wasn’t planning on writing a blog today.

Too much to do.

But the first chapter in my daily reading plan was 1 Samuel 3… and here I am. I can’t not write a blog.

Young Samuel is serving as an assistant to the High Priest, Eli. Eli is an over-weight, over-fed, over-indulgent priest. His sons are out of control and he either won’t or can’t do anything about it.

Tragically, Eli is God’s representative for the fledgling nation of Israel.

This is at the tail end of the period of the judges in Israel’s first 325 years in the Promised Land and everything is a hot mess. “All the people did whatever seemed right in their own eyes” (Judges 21:25).

So, it comes as no surprise, in Samuel 3:1, that we learn that “messages from the Lord were very rare, and visions were quite uncommon.”

I think the verse in Judges describes the state of our country right now and 1 Samuel 3:1 the state of the American Church.

This story in 1 Samuel 3 convicts and stirs me so deeply.

Eli, the spiritual leader of the nation, is fat, blind and asleep in his bed… at the very time he was supposed to be making sure the “lamp of God” didn’t go out.

Fortunately for us all, at the same time young Samuel was sleeping “in the Tabernacle,” where God had chosen to have His Name and His presence rest, “near the Ark of God.”

The text doesn’t say why Samuel chose that spot, but presumably he was there to ensure the “lamp of God” didn’t go out and just to be close to where God’s presence rested between the wings of the cherubim over the mercy seat of the Ark.

So, when God spoke to Samuel, he was in a place to hear.

That is really my main point in this blog… that the Samuel generation of our day position themselves close enough to God that we can hear when He speaks (James 4:8).

The voice of the Lord was so rare in those days, and Samuel so new to the experience, that at first he didn’t recognize God’s voice.

And Eli was just clueless.

Only after being awakened from his food-induced hangover for the third time did Eli consider that the voice calling Samuel was God.

So, the next time Samuel heard God’s voice, he was ready to respond, “Speak, your servant is listening” (1 Samuel 3:10).

O, the amazing patience of God with us all!

And the ministry of the Lord’s prophet was launched!

Can we determine right now, to be a Samuel… and spend our lives in such proximity to God that we can hear His voice and carry His message to a dying nation?