Careful what you ask for

1 Samuel 7:5, “Now give us a king, to lead us, such as all the other nations have.”
1 Samues 7:7. [God said], “it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king.”

I used to think the Israelites were so stupid. Why did they constantly reject God? Why did they always do the wrong thing? Then I realized I WAS the Israelites. Almost every time I look at them now, all I see is me. To me, they are a mirror of the human heart.

I can’t count how many times I have looked to the world around me to give me some “standard” of how to measure or conduct myself. “How does the world invest it’s money and it’s time?”, “How does that person define themselves?”, “How should I define myself?”, “What has value?”, “How valuable is that person?”, “What does it mean to contribute?” This is all exactly same as the above verses.

The Israelites were so busy trying to be like the people around them, they were rejecting the God who loved them and saved them. They wanted to look like the other nations because they were a little “weird” having no king. God WANTED them to look different so that HE could get the credit. God WANTED the rest of the world to look at and marvel at Israel – a nation who’s KING is GOD not whose king ACTS like he’s God.

From now on the question should be, “God, what do you think about this?” May God’s be the first opinion I look to.