Daily Devotional for Monday, June 26

The Repentance and the Routing

“And they gathered together to Mizpeh, and drew water, and poured it out before the LORD, and fasted on that day, and said there, We have sinned against the LORD. And Samuel judged the children of Israel in Mizpeh,” I Samuel 7:6

Repentance is a concept in which every child of God can quickly relate. It begins at the point of salvation when we first trusted in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, but it doesn’t stop there. Throughout our lives, we continue to wrestle with our flesh and repentance is vital to our ongoing relationship with the Lord and His church. Repentance is important to the individual but is also needful for God’s people as a whole. We see an example of this when Jesus told His church in Laodicea, “As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent” (Revelation 3:19).

The Israelites were longing for the Lord. Samuel took this opportunity to admonish the people to put away their false gods once and for all and give their hearts completely to the Lord. He gathered them together to Mizpeh and there they fasted, repented and confessed their sin. It was only after their hearts were broken and contrite before God that He then began to bless His people and give them victory over the Philistines. Their hearts were truly repentant before God and their relationship with Him was restored.

You may be in a place where you are lamenting for the Lord. You desire that closeness with Him, but something is hindering the relationship. It is all too easy to allow things of this life to come before the Lord and interfere with the fellowship He longs to have with you. Rid your life of anything that would come between you and your Savior and then the joy and sweet fellowship will be restored once again.

REFLECTION: “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise” (Psalm 51:17).

Darla Goodrum