God blesses the children of obedience

King Saul was rejected by God because of his disobedience. The Lord gave him important missions and tasks as commander of the army of Israel, but carnal criteria in the fulfillment of God's plans led him to undermine the authority of the Holy One of Israel and to disobey his instructions. The Amalekites had denied their help to the Israelites when they left Egypt by the power and wonders of God. The Lord did not forget the affront to his people and Saul being his anointed one, he instructed him to wage war against the kingdom of Amalek until everything was exterminated. Saul defeated them and contrary to what God commissioned him, he spared Amalek's life and reserved for himself some parts of the booty (sheep and cattle) under the pretext of offering them to the Lord as burnt offerings and sacrifices after the victory (1Samuel 15:15) . Saul had been forbidden to lay hold of the spoil.

Many times we believe that we have fulfilled a mission of God in all its scope, although deep down in our hearts we know that in fulfilling it we violate some of its precepts. And there are mandates of God that do not require a special call or invent a garden of Gethsemane "to measure" to clearly hear the voice of God. The Lord is in control and we are out of control; Jesus has already called you to the service and you are still waiting for a leader of flesh and blood to be the one who proposes you to assume a ministerial responsibility in the church or to carry out some task that requires your participation. We look for thousands of excuses before crossing the Jordan. We set our sights on the spoil and not on the glory of God, because we believe that with the spoil we can bless a brother, or help repair the courts of the church because that must be God's will. But we were wrong.

God does not offer spoils behind the victories of the battles that he sends us to fight. In general, if we have been obedient, the most normal thing is that he will assign us a new mission, a new battle for his glory. When you keep your eyes on the spoils, you lose sight of war, your thoughts get diluted God's strategies to achieve victory, and you lose sight of who is our only hope, our only goal: Jesus Christ. The Word says: "I rejoice in your promise as one who finds great spoil" (Ps 119.162 NIV)

We are not to justify disobedience to God even when the end seems to justify the means. In our Christian life "the means" to reach the end must be aligned with his will and the end will always be the glory of God. The Lord does not want useless sacrifices or burnt offerings of the heart, but obedience. God blesses the children of obedience. Although the tasks he entrusts to us seem crazy, only he knows the end of the story and knows the consequences –always good- in our walk with him.

There are so many Saúles on the Christian grounds! Let us pray for those figureheads of the evangelical context who only look at the loot and, to achieve it, justify the means in blatant disobedience to the Lord, even knowing that these do not come from the resources and benefits of the one who paid the price of our ransom with his redemptive blood. It is sad, but it is a reality that we must know and combat.

Let's live for the Lord of glory; the one who humbled himself to death a death on the cross for obedience, the one who lives so that we honor him in subjection and true agape, even though we cannot see with total clarity his divine purposes for our lives.

God bless your Word!