What God Wants From You

In certain areas of my life I like to be organized, and I've realized that a blog is one of those areas. I have a few ideas of categories I will try and tackle every week (this may be a case of new blogger ambition), and one of those is "Sermon Reflections." This will be great for me to process and apply some of what I learned, and hopefully a good read too. So even though I'll be picking up in the middle of the sermon series, I figured this week was a good time to start.

The church I attend and work at, The Summit Church, is led by the teaching pastor J. D. Greear. The sermon series he is presently preaching through is called "Search for a King" and is about the life of David. However, this series is so new that he hasn't even arrived at David's life yet! That doesn't mean the messages aren't just as powerful and convicting, and this week's sermon was no exception.

As much as I want to provide some background and set the stage here, I'm going to restrain myself because I'm trying to keep this post short and readable. If you want the full story of Saul and how he became king to begin with, it's found in the Old Testament book 1 Samuel. This particular sermon covers chapter 15, and you can listen to the whole thing here.

One of the repeated themes of this sermon is that we all get caught in our mistakes and sins, but it's what we do next that makes the difference. In this story, Saul did a variety of things from blame-shifting to attempting to justify his disobedience: the very things that I do in my own life. It's alarming to think of the amount of times I have tried to defend my sins before God in order to make them okay. In my mind, I can make complete disobedience become partial obedience and in some cases full obedience. Mental battles that include phrases like "but this isn't hurting anyone,"  "my situation is different," and "I'm still kind of obeying" are all favorites of mine to negate sins. That is exactly the kind of self-deception that caused Saul to be rejected by God as king.

Self-deception is a bad disease that can creep in and cause you to totally lose sight of what is most important to God: an obedient heart. He doesn't want excuses and justifications. He doesn't want deals and make-ups. He wants obedience.