Daily Devotional for Thursday, July 6

The Crisis of Saul

“And the Spirit of God came upon Saul when he heard those tidings, and his anger was kindled greatly,” 1 Samuel 11:6.

“He's just a big bully!” Micah said, describing to his mom how his friend Kelly had been treated on the playground.  Micah was practically shaking; he was so mad.  “Well, what did you do about it?” Mom asked.  Micah hung his head.  “Nothin’,” he muttered, “Nothing at all.”  Mom stooped to take Micah’s face in her hand.  “I think Jesus would want you to help, Kelly.”

To be Christian does not mean to be passivist or weak.  A Christian is one called such because they follow the Way of Christ.  When Paul stated that the fruit of the Spirit is, love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness and temperance, he certainly did not exclude from the spirit of God the full spectrum of emotions (Galatians 5:22).

In John chapter 2, we find Jesus aggressively removing the money changers from the house of prayer. In Jude, we find righteous Lot vexed by the culture of Sodom. In Numbers 25, we find Phineas personally executing the adulterous in what God described as zeal.  These were led of the Spirit of God; aligned to the purpose of God, and when reconciled properly you will find the results were an outpouring of the fruits of His Spirit.

Ammon bullied the men of Jabesh as part of a longstanding rivalry with Israel.  Israel was divided and weak but when the newly anointed King heard of this intended atrocity, his anger, kindled by the Spirit of God, boiled within him and he responded.  King Saul showed his love for God in this great crisis Jabesh faced when he put all of his heart, all of his soul and all of His strength into doing God’s will (Deuteronomy 6:5).

THOUGHT: Are you zealously doing all you can for Jesus in someone else’s crisis today?

David Thompson