Life Around "The Fire"

Trusting God Guides Us Through Hard Transitions

• Hoot • Season 60 • Episode 19

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Change doesn’t just test plans; it tests hearts. We walk through the turbulent handoff from judges to monarchy in 1 Samuel and explore why some leaders bless the next season while others cling to control and crumble. Samuel stands in the tension, tasked with anointing a king the people demanded, modeling how to honor the past and obey God without being ruled by public pressure. Saul reveals the cost of pride and people pleasing, choosing his own plans and others’ opinions over God’s command. David offers a counterexample—humility, patience, and trust in God’s timing—showing a path for anyone facing a hard shift.

Across the conversation, we draw out practical lessons for transitions: how to bless new leadership, when to let go of approval, and why obedience beats optics. We talk about preparing for new roles without leaning on borrowed conviction, learning to hear God for yourself when mentors step back. We also dig into spiritual perception—seeing beyond what’s measurable to discern what’s true—so decisions aren’t driven by fear or trend-chasing. If you’ve ever felt torn between doing things the old way to keep peace and doing the right thing to keep faith, this one will steady your hands.

You’ll leave with simple, usable practices: cultivate humility and trust, evaluate choices by obedience rather than applause, and “stay in your lane” by aligning with God’s will instead of comparison. We close with prayer for wisdom and courage, inviting you to keep growing whether you’re starting a new role, handing one off, or standing in the messy middle. If this encouraged you, follow the show, share it with a friend who’s in transition, and leave a quick review to help others find these conversations.

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SPEAKER_01:

The story of King Saul in Samuel teaches that transitions, right? Transitions are often challenging. And they're marked by a struggle between human pride and the need for obedience to God. That prepar you know, in order to have a healthy transition, there needs to be proper preparation, including humility and trust in God.

SPEAKER_00:

Those two things right there, humility and trust in God are essential for navigating through transitions successfully. I'm gonna say that again.

SPEAKER_01:

Humility and trust in God, or in other words, obedience, learning how to obey God, not just our human pride impulses, but to humbly acknowledge the fact that often by ourselves we don't have all the answers. But when we turn to God, He can help us by providing us insights into the situation that we're facing. In fact, that's what relationship's all about, and that's what we're talking about is relationship with God.

SPEAKER_00:

When we have a real open relationship with God, being humble in the presence of someone who is greater than you is really not that difficult.

SPEAKER_01:

But it's when we somehow place God in a smaller category, and our problems or our own pride in a larger category, larger than God, that's when we run into complications. And so humility and trust in God is essential for navigating through transitions successfully. And Samuel's role as the last judge and first prophet highlights the difficulty passing from a previous system to a new one. And there will be difficulty in transitions.

SPEAKER_00:

The challenge is what do we do with the difficulty?

SPEAKER_01:

Self-reliance and fear can lead to poor decisions and ultimate failure, even when a person initially is chosen by God. Amazing. And so we're highlighting in this particular podcast episode some lessons about transition because we've been looking at the book of First Samuel for quite some time now, and we're right now moving beyond this call that the nation had for them to no longer be ruled by a judge or for God to be their king, but they wanted a human king. And so God granted them their desires, and Samuel was going to be the one that was going to facilitate the transition. An unenviable position, might I add. And if you've ever been involved in helping even a small group of people go through transition, you can understand the fact that if you are a leader in that position of helping, it's often like volunteering to be ugly, because if you even bring up a problem, you become the problem when there is an environment that is anticipating a change to go their way, but yet they're counting on you to make it happen.

SPEAKER_00:

Kind of passing the buck, right?

SPEAKER_01:

And there is a temptation for people involved in the position of facilitating a transition to take upon themselves too much responsibility for the change or too little responsibility for a change. So my heart goes out to those who are in the position of facilitating a transition because you're really not going to be able to please everybody. And if you have a people-pleasing nature, it's going to put stress on you like nothing else. But if we can humbly look to God, set our agendas aside, and trust in Him during times of transition, the transition is going to still have challenges, but they're not going to be as difficult as if we were just relying on ourselves or our own fear to guide us.

SPEAKER_00:

So some lessons about transitions.

SPEAKER_01:

The challenge of new leadership. The transition from judges to a monarchy was a significant shift that tested the people and their new leader, Samuel, the last judge, in his position of having to anoint the first king ushering in a new era. That was a challenge for the new leadership to be able to have the old leadership bless them. And if you are in a situation where you are going through a change and you are part of the old regime, one of the biggest challenges that you're going to face is to bless the new leadership. If you're being asked to step aside, it is a very unnatural thing to be gracious during that time. And Samuel was given that opportunity, and by and large, he passed with flying colors. But that nonetheless is the challenge of new leadership, and that is to receive the blessing of the old leadership. The danger of pride. Saul's pride and self reliance led to his downfall as he often prioritized his own plans and others' opinions. Get that? He prioritized his own plans and other people's opinions over God's will. This serves as a cautionary tale about the dangers of elevating oneself above divine guidance.

SPEAKER_00:

The need for humility and trust is another lesson about transitions.

SPEAKER_01:

In contrast to Saul, David is presented as an example of humility and trust in God's timing and plan. The story suggests that true leadership in times of transition requires trusting God rather than oneself.

SPEAKER_00:

Interesting. Trusting God rather than oneself.

SPEAKER_01:

And Samuel passed the test of transition, of changing leadership. Saul didn't. He was unable to bless the new leadership.

SPEAKER_00:

Samuel did, Saul didn't. However, that doesn't excuse the new leadership from doing things in the right way. Because a temptation can be to try to please the old leadership and do things the old way. But sometimes things have to be done differently.

SPEAKER_01:

However, it's by staying in tune with the will of God. We don't want to do things differently just because other people are doing things differently.

SPEAKER_00:

We need to stay in step with what God has in store for our lives. In essence, stay in your own lane. The importance of obedience another lesson about transitions.

SPEAKER_01:

The narrative emphasizes the importance of obedience to God, highlighting the consequences when leaders fail to follow his commands, such as Saul's failure to fully obey God's instructions regarding the Amalekites.

SPEAKER_00:

And last but not least, preparation for new roles.

SPEAKER_01:

The story shows the importance of preparing for a new role. Samuel's early intercessions with Saul and the instruction for Saul to go on alone likely symbolized the responsibility Saul now had to make his own decisions.

SPEAKER_00:

That's something that goes along with change.

SPEAKER_01:

The new way of doing things is required to hear God for themselves. We can't rely on other people's anointings. We can't rely upon other people's experiences. We have to be able to hear from God ourselves. And if we only want things that we can tangibly see, that we can tangibly touch, that we can tangibly we can feel with our five senses, well, there's going to be some difficulties. Because when we're talking about spiritual life, we're talking about things that are not perceived, excuse me, we're talking about things that are perceived, not always seen with the naked eye. We have to learn how to see with our spirits and trust what we see. Just like we trust what we see with our eyes when we are going from one room to the next. We trust that we're not going to stumble because we can see what's in front of us. Same thing is true when we learn how to see things spiritually. We learn how to navigate. But we can't rely upon someone else to see for us. We have to be able to see ourselves. And that's something we're going to be looking at in the upcoming episodes is how do we see things spiritually? How do I perceive things?

SPEAKER_00:

How do I go about perceiving things?

SPEAKER_01:

For some of us in the Western Hemisphere, that's a real challenge because we want to be able to see things with our naked eye or feel things with our fingers, taste things with our taste buds, smell things with our nostrils, hear things with our ears. We want to have things that are in front of us that are important to us physically. But we live in a dual reality, and so it's important for us to be able to have spiritual perception because actually the spiritual world is more real than the physical world. This physical world is going to be changing significantly over the course of the next few years, and the spiritual world is going to be unveiled even more and more. And so it behooves us to learn how to function in the eternal now, because the temporal is going to be changing, and learning how to perceive things from our spiritual eyes is something that God wants us to mature in, and for us to grow in, because it affects our relationship with Him and with each other. And so we're going to be looking at those aspects so that we can kind of unfold what that means in ways that can be applied. And regardless of the level that you are at, there's capacity for each one of us to grow. So whether you're a beginner or you're somewhere intermediate along these lines, or you're advanced, there's always room for growth. And so we encourage you to stay tuned because there's a few things that you're going to be able to pick up from and draw from and apply to your life that are going to impact you in your spiritual journey as you look to comply with the very will of God, not only for your life, but for the lifestyle of the group that you're in.

SPEAKER_00:

Let's pray. Father, I thank you, God, that you are supreme in all that you do.

SPEAKER_01:

And your wisdom is a supreme acquisition. So we look to acquire wisdom from you in order to be able to see things, perceive things, to grow and develop and to move through transitions effectively, in trusting you, in relying on you, and obeying you, like Jesus did, using him as the example. So as we look to see how he went about doing things and how he grew in his ability to fulfill the things that you'd call him to as a man. So we ask for that ability to do so, just like Jesus did, and we pray these things in his name and we say, Amen. Amen, amen, amen. Alright, folks, we love you. And if you have any thoughts, questions, concerns, please feel free to drop us a line at Life We're on the Fire. We would love to hear from you. Or if you just type your Life Ron the Fire and look us up on the web. We look forward to your responses. In the meantime, God bless you. Adios, amigos.