"Listen! God Is Speaking"

“And if I may put it this way,’ he said as his voice began to crack, ‘I....miss....Him!”

Stroble writes: “With that, tears flooded [Templeton’s] eyes. He turned his head and looked downward,

raising his left hand to shield his face from me. His shoulders bobbed as he wept.”

Do any of us miss Jesus?

Has it been a long time since we’ve listened to God speaking to us?

As He talks, do we mumble, “Uh, huh,” and just continue doing what we are doing?

Through our Scripture Lesson for this morning God is speaking to us at the very heart of our faith.

God’s will and purpose in our lives is very often a call to relinquish our plans and our dreams for God’s

higher good.

In order to listen to God, we very often, must give up or lay down something we wanted to grasp or

control.

When we begin reading about Samuel, it appears that Samuel is a sort of passive person who seems very

content to remain in the background.

But, by the conclusion of 1st Samuel Chapter 3, Samuel emerges as a prominent figure on the national

scene.

How does Samuel move from the shadows into the spotlight?

He does it by listening to God, and making himself available to God.

Samuel was being trained to perform priestly duties...

...to carry out the rituals of temple worship; however, God interrupted Samuel’s function in priestly duties and

called him to be a prophet.

This twelve year old boy became God’s spokesperson of God’s purpose and direction for God’s

people....

....in the days when “the word of the Lord was rare” and “there were not many visions.”

Verse 19 tells us:

“The Lord was with Samuel as he grew up, and he let none of his words fall to the ground. And all Israel

from Dan to Beersheba recognized that Samuel was attested as a prophet of the Lord.”

The call of Samuel was a crucial moment in Israel’s history.

As we continue reading the book of 1st Samuel we see that Israel responded to the words of Samuel and

followed his counsel.

Israel returned to God and worshiped God only.

And God used Samuel to seek out and find David...

...whom Samuel anointed and the Spirit of the Lord came upon David in power.

I’m sure most of us remember the cartoon character Popeye the Sailor Man.

When old Popeye would become frustrated or when he wasn’t certain exactly what to do, he would

simply exclaim, “I yam what I yam.”

Popeye was a simple seafaring man who loved Olive Oyl.

He was unpretentious, and yet his story belonged to him: “I yam what I yam.”

When we looked closely at Popeye, it seems that he is saying, “Don’t get your hopes up; don’t expect too

much. I yam what I yam, and that’s all.”

And before Samuel listened to God Ancient Israel could say: “I yam what I yam.”

But God didn’t want Israel to stay like she was.

Therefore, through Samuel, God called Israel to a new resolve, a new beginning.

And this new beginning was characterized by God’s Word as it came to Samuel.

The Bible tells us that God has a new beginning planned for all of us through the Word that “became

flesh and made his dwelling among us.”

Have we seen His glory?...

... “The glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” ?