December 23, 2019

RETURN TO THE LORD

1 Kingdoms 7:3 (1 Samuel 7:3)

Then Samuel spoke to all the house of Israel, saying, “If you return to the Lord with all your hearts, if you put away the foreign gods and the sacred groves from among you, and if you prepare your hearts for the Lord and serve Him alone, He will deliver you from the hand of the Philistines.”

Personal Challenge

In our modern-day, it may sound strange to tell people to put away their foreign gods and the sacred groves from among us. We may not have these in the same manner as the Jews did in the day of Samuel, but we do have things in our lives that we treat as gods and put before our Lord. It may be the stuff that we have poured our wealth and our hearts into. It may be those sports or other events that we put before participating in our church activities. We must be careful to look into our lives to identify those things that we put above our God and put them away from us so that we can serve our God unencumbered. Only then will we see His hand of deliverance. Lord, have mercy! Lord, have mercy! Lord, have mercy!