Written by Chuck Swindoll, these encouraging devotional thoughts are published seven days per week.
As for Samuel, the boy who heard God's voice, the closing words of this episode tell us that the sleepy, spiritual indifference that had lulled Israel into complacency was about to come to a screeching halt. A man of action was on the scene, and Israel's spiritual drift was about to end. Even as a little boy, he not only heard the Lord, but he obeyed His voice.
Nine months before that wondrous night in Bethlehem, the Father sent His Son. Christ willingly left His seat of absolute power in heaven, set aside the voluntary use of His divine authority, and became a helpless infant. As a human, subject to all the pains and sorrows and limitations that affect us all, He would mature, learn, minister, suffer...and die. If the Father was willing to release His own Son to us, what could be so much more precious to us that we would withhold it from Him?
This isn't a movie. As far as Abraham was concerned, the drama didn't have a surprise ending. The knife goes up in order to bring it down into his son's chest or across his throat, and what will happen next is the death of his boy. This is real! This is faith in the wild where the stakes are incredibly high—life and death!
Some of you parents may find yourselves in a similar situation as you read these pages. Your relationship with your child may have reached a point where you have no other choice but to commit him or her completely to God's care. You would love to work out the details, but you cannot. You know the Lord is good, and you have prayed for a resolution, but nothing has changed. Only God can intervene.
But I do know that when God does a transforming work in you that involves a trial, He's not testing other people; He's testing you. Because this experience is designed for you, it isn't necessarily required or even appropriate for you to share the whole story with everyone else. Or, for that matter, with anyone else. Occasionally, strength is mustered in keeping it to ourselves...completely.
This has to be one of the toughest questions any parent has to consider: Do I adore the gifts God gives me more than I adore the Giver? Have I begun to worship the relationships that God has granted me rather than the One who gave me these delights?
Each of our children grew to become a self-sustaining, responsible servant of Jesus Christ, in his or her own way. As God intended from the beginning, we released them to follow their destinies.
I'm reminded of the distraught father in Les Misérables whose only plea comes in a powerful song about his son as he cries, "Bring him home!" Our Father, too, pleads with us to help guide His straying children back home to Him: "Bring them home!"
I've lived long enough to be convinced that suffering is not an enemy. It seems strange to put it this way, but the truth is, suffering is a friend. Not until we acknowledge that will we glean its benefits.
Since our God is sovereign, we must prepare ourselves for both blessing and adversity. Because He is God, He's unpredictable. My advice here? Don't be disillusioned. Because our God is sovereign, we must prepare ourselves for blessing and adversity.
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