Life Around "The Fire"
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Life Around "The Fire"
Samuel's Call: Finding Divine Purpose Amid Family Chaos
Have you ever wondered if God still speaks today? Samuel's story reveals how divine calling works even in the most dysfunctional environments.
Samuel's very name—meaning "God hears"—carries profound significance. While we often encounter people who barely listen to us, God genuinely attends to our prayers with perfect understanding. But in this exploration of 1 Samuel 3, we discover something equally important: how we can learn to hear God's voice in return.
Young Samuel served in the temple during a spiritually barren time when "the word of the Lord was rare." Three times he mistook God's voice for Eli's, running to the aging priest before finally learning to respond with the transformative words, "Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening." What makes this encounter remarkable is its context—Eli's household was riddled with corruption. His sons abused their priestly positions as thieves, gluttons, and sexual deviants, while Eli failed to discipline them properly. Yet God bypassed this dysfunction to speak directly to Samuel, who would become one of Israel's greatest prophets.
This narrative offers profound hope for anyone who has experienced family dysfunction or difficult circumstances. God doesn't excuse negative environments, but He isn't limited by them either. Samuel's journey from confusion to clarity demonstrates that discerning God's voice is a learned skill that develops through relationship. Even if you've never clearly heard God speak, this story invites you to position yourself where His presence dwells and adopt a posture of receptivity that could change everything.
Whether you're struggling with your past, questioning your calling, or simply wanting to deepen your spiritual connection, Samuel's story reminds us that God can speak powerfully through imperfect circumstances. Listen to discover how you might recognize the divine whisper that's been calling your name all along. Share this episode with someone who needs encouragement that God is bigger than their broken beginnings.
Loving Yeshua/Jesus, Loving people... Come as you are and you will be loved!
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Shalom to you and your home.
We've been looking into the book of 1 Samuel and right now we're at chapter 3. One of the interesting things about the book of Samuel is that it took about 100 years to actually live out this portion of the book, samuel. It's actually divvied up into two sections, 1 Samuel and 2 Samuel, but in its original writing it was one book. It was one scroll. The book of Samuel bears the name of Samuel, and the name Samuel means God hears, or God heard me, and that's a very reassuring name to have the fact that God heard Hannah's prayer and gave her son Samuel, who's going to be one of the greatest prophets in all of Israel until the time of Jesus. He's equated with, at times, the same breath as Moses, with, at times, the same breath as Moses, and so Samuel carries a very large stick, even though he's a man that was in a time of transition. He actually had to bow out or away from being the premier or primary leader in Israel so that a king could become the leader in Israel. The people no longer wanted judges to judge them and prophets to speak to them and God to lead them. They wanted a king like the other nations, and so God granted them their wish. And Samuel was the one who was the first one to anoint the kings of Israel, saul and David, first two kings. And so God heard Hannah's prayer. God hears our prayers. That's a very significant thing to hear for all of us. When we pray, god listens, unlike sometimes, people around us we could be talking and they don't hear a word we say, or if we do say something, they really couldn't care less. But God really listens. In fact, there's an art to listening and here's a little secret in listening. Good listening is not thinking about what you're going to be saying next while someone else is talking is a real good practice in listening. And the other little key to listening is reciting back what the person said to you. There's little keys to just tuck away, but God hears, he really listens, and so Samuel, his name, god hears, or God listens. It's significant. But in this particular chapter, chapter 3, verses 1 through 11, is what we're going to be looking at. Samuel was going to be looking at. Samuel was going to learn how to hear. God heard. But now Samuel was going to learn how to hear the voice of the Lord and again, that is an important thing for all of us to learn how to know and communicate with God, to know his voice. And so in 1 Samuel, chapter 3, we pick up our study with the scripture saying the boy Samuel ministered before the Lord under Eli.
Speaker 1:In those days the word of the Lord was rare. There were not many visions. One night, eli, whose eyes were becoming so weak that he could barely see, was lying down in his usual place. The lamp of God had not yet gone out and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the Lord where the ark of God was. Then the Lord called Samuel. The Lord called Samuel. Samuel answered here am I. And he ran to Eli and said here I am, you called me. But Eli said I did not call. Go back and lie down. So he went and laid down. Again. The Lord called Samuel and Samuel got up and went to Eli and said here I am, you called me, my son. Eli said I did not call. Go back and lie down. Now. Samuel did not yet know the Lord Interesting. The word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him. Then the Lord called Samuel a third time and Samuel got up and went to Eli and said here I am, you called me. Then Eli realized that the Lord was calling the boy. So Eli told Samuel go, lie down, and if he calls you, say speak, lord, for your servant is listening. So Samuel went and lied down in his place. Then the Lord came and stood there, calling, as the other times, samuel, samuel. Then Samuel said Speak, for your servant is listening. And the Lord said to Samuel see, I'm about to do something in Israel that will make the ears of everyone who hears of it tingle.
Speaker 1:Verses 1 through 11. Now we got to rewind a little bit. Now we got to rewind a little bit and remember that the house of Eli was not in the best shape. Eli had two sons, hophni and Phinehas, who were thieves, gluttons and perverts, sexual deviants, and Eli was a glutton himself and he was not really very good at disciplining his sons. And so let's just say it was a dysfunctional household. It wasn't functioning all that well, and Samuel was brought into that household to be raised as a priest before the Lord, under Eli's tutelage. Eli couldn't even take care of his own two sons, let alone a three-year-old, and yet Samuel turned out to be one of the greatest prophets in all of Israel.
Speaker 1:How does that work? You see, here's how it works, even if we're raised in dysfunctional homes, god is bigger than the dysfunction in our homes. Praise God. God was bigger than the dysfunction in Eli's house. Now, he didn't excuse it in Eli's house. Now, he didn't excuse it, but he was bigger than it. And God doesn't excuse the negative things that go on in our homes, but he is bigger than them. And if you've been raised in a dysfunctional home, it doesn't necessarily mean that you have to be a scarred person. Granted, there might be things that need to be taken care of to renew your mind so that you can see things differently. But you can become a great servant of the Lord, even if you're raised in a dysfunctional household. That's good news, man. God is bigger than dysfunction. Now, eli was to his credit.
Speaker 1:Eventually Eli was able to direct Samuel in the right way by saying Eli, I mean Samuel, that's probably God talking to you, which, again, that was a rare thing. The word of the Lord, prophetic words, were not common. At that time they were rare, and even sometimes these days, prophetic words can be rare, visions can be rare, because things need to be purged in the land, sometimes within our own fellowships. But if they have been rare, that means at one point in time they were prolific and also that's good news and we can look forward to some real times of prophetic ministry good, solid, real prophetic ministry. Not fake phony stuff, not fabricated, but straight from the heart of God, his word, his ways, his vision. Samuel was the recipient of God, his word, his ways, his vision. Samuel was the recipient of that.
Speaker 1:In a dysfunctional household, stepbrothers or whatever you call them when you're adopted stepbrothers, I guess Eli's sons, I mean, they were sleeping with the women who would be tending to the things in the temple. They were having affairs with them, adulterous and fornicating affairs with those women, and stealing food from the altar of God to line their own pockets. They treated the ministry like it was a profession, like it was their cash cow, and we've already talked about the fact that some people are doing that today and I'm not going to belabor that point, but I am going to underscore it one more time. If that's you, man, turn, turn from that. Ministry is servanthood, it's servant leadership. It's not a way to have a job so you can have some sort of security for your retirement. It's more than that, for your retirement. It's more than that. It's a calling God called Samuel, and some of you are being called.
Speaker 1:I remember the day that I was called by the Lord. He spoke to my heart and said I've called you into the ministry. And he said it several times and I wanted to make sure. So I went into it fast, where I wasn't going to drink any water or sleep, until I really heard the Lord say to me emphatically that that's what he wanted me to be as a minister of his completely. And a friend of mine who lives 30 miles away from me, one day during my fast, called me on the telephone and said David, whatever it is you're doing and whatever it is you need God to say to you, here's the answer. The answer is yes. Here's the answer. The answer is yes, he goes.
Speaker 1:I almost fell off my bike with God telling me call David and tell him, yes, he goes. I don't know what that means, but maybe you do. And I knew exactly what it meant and I said thank you, kenneth. His name is Kenneth, thank you, kenneth. Hung up the phone and then I went and had a bite to eat, celebrating the fact that I knew for a fact God had called me, called me, called me. I was the one who had created a dysfunctional household and in the midst of that, god called me.
Speaker 1:God's bigger than dysfunction, and I think that point is well made in this passage, because Samuel was called by God in a dysfunctional household and became a prophet of God. That was one of the chief ones for all Israel and for us today. The word of the Lord came to him and through him, and we have it today and it still lives and it is having effect in the world that we live in. Praise God, let's pray Father. Thank you that you're bigger than dysfunction, that you could take things that were intended for evil and you could turn them around and they become good because they're in your hands.
Speaker 1:I love you, we love you, we honor you. Holy Spirit, I invite you to continue to mold and shape us into the very likeness of Jesus. Jesus, we lift high your name and we consider you King and Lord, savior of our lives. We place our faith in you and walk in your steps, and in your steps and in your name we say amen, amen, amen, amen. All right, folks, we love you. If you have any thoughts, questions, concerns, please feel free to drop us a line at lifearoundthefire at gmailcom. That's our email address or you can type in lifearoundthefire and look us up on the web, check some things out. We'd love to hear from you In the meantime. God bless you. Adios amigos.