1 Samuel 15:9 (NKJV)
\u201cBut Saul and the people spared Agag and the best of the sheep, the oxen, the fatlings, the lambs, and all that was good, and were unwilling to utterly destroy them. But everything despised and worthless, that they utterly destroyed.\u201d
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Obedience is good, and partial obedience is better than no obedience, but God desires more. It may seem too demanding not to be satisfied with partial obedience, but God is Creation\u2019s Sovereign, and He demands all or nothing. Thinking He should accept less is the start of a type of wisdom that begins to contradict God\u2019s divine expectation for His people.
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Aim for radical, unthinking obedience. And the way to enter into this is to die to personal wisdom and opinion. Our greatest folly lies in somehow believing in our personal convictions that have no root in God\u2019s instructions. There is so much compromise among God\u2019s people because we somehow think that our perspectives are wiser than God\u2019s. They are not!
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God is called, \u201cThe Only Wise God\u201d for a reason. He is the only wise One in all of creation, and anyone who claims wisdom outside of God is only fooling himself. The Bible says there is a way that seems right to man but the end of it is death (Proverbs 14:12). Too many believers have chosen death instead of life, by simply choosing their opinion over God\u2019s clear instruction.
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That\u2019s what happened with King Saul and his people. We know the story. They looked at what was good and spared \u201cthe best of the sheep, the oxen, and all that was good, and was unwilling to utterly destroy them.\u201d Why? Because, in their wisdom, it seemed like a complete waste. It seemed! That\u2019s the power of human wisdom versus divine wisdom, a wisdom that breeds death.
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To maintain our walk with God, we must turn away from our human wisdom. Our greatest betrayer will be our wisdom. Human wisdom, operating outside of God, will usher us into the dark closet of death and destruction. And death is the departure of God\u2019s presence. Human wisdom will break our pilgrimage. Our greatest battle is against human wisdom.
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Whether God makes sense or not, we must choose what He says over what we think is right. To be very honest, obeying God many times actually seems foolish and out of touch with common sense. But in reality, it is not. He sees what we don\u2019t. His ways are much higher.
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So, let\u2019s agree to have a healthy disrespect for our human wisdom, and choose obedience to God\u2019s instructions over human reason and reality. We must daily confess that we are not \u201call-wise\u201d and that even our strongest convictions and best intentions, outside God\u2019s clear directions, is foolishness. This daily confession is the only pathway to living in God and pleasing Him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
1 Samuel 15:9 (NKJV)\u201cBut Saul and the people spared Agag and the best of the sheep, the oxen, the fatlings, the lambs, and all that was good, and were unwilling to utterly destroy them. But everything despised and worthless, that they utterly destroyed.\u201d\u00a0Obedience is good, and partial obedience is better than no obedience, but God […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7372,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-reflections-from-1st-samuel"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/1-Samuel-Cover.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6757"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6757\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6759,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6757\/revisions\/6759"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}