Samuel is grieving over Saul’s disobedience. The Lord tells him to let it go and get to work. The past isn’t going to change. We look to the Lord today to see what He wants us to do. It’s not going to be to go back into the past and do something differently.

See the goodness of the Lord right now, today, and rejoice and follow Him onward.

Samuel is listening and ready to obey. He knows the Lord, but he’s afraid of Saul. I want to be free from fear, but I don’t know if we can ever get free of our emotions.

What does Samuel do when he’s afraid Saul will kill him? He does what we need to do. When he felt afraid, he turned to God, got the counsel of the Lord, trusted God’s word, and acted on it. Samuel holds a sacrifice, true, though really an excuse to be able to spend time with Jesse and his sons in order to anoint one of them king.

We get the famous verse in this section of Scripture about how God looks at the heart, while man looks at the outward appearance. We’re then told how handsome David was. We’ll learn soon enough, though, that David was a young man of worship, who knew the Lord and trusted in His God. Just like the Spirit came upon Saul, the Spirit rushes upon David “from that day forward.”

As students of the Bible, we know the rest of David’s story. We know his eyes aren’t going to be always on the Lord. We know that even though God is with him and he has been chosen and anointed, it will still be years before the word that he would be king is fulfilled.

How do we know? How do we know we have the Lord’s anointing, blessing, purpose, when it might look like everything has gone wrong, when we’ve messed up and gone the wrong way? Saul was anointed. Now the Lord has left Saul.

How do we know? How do we know we’re not going on feelings like the Israelites rejoicing over the abandoned ark when the Lord wasn’t with them at all? We walk by faith, not by sight, but at some points there has to be sight, signs that God is with you. Like what? Prosperity and worldly blessing? No!

It looks like a life abiding in Christ, transforming into the likeness of Christ, obeying God’s word, producing the fruit of the Spirit, bringing the kingdom to the world with humility and grace.