The “Kernel of Truth” – a commentary article by Linda Letkemann

Have you ever wandered away from God in your heart but still wanted him handy in case you got into a jam? It’s like a husband/wife relationship that starts out full of joy and intimacy doing things for each other out of devotion, but for one reason or another the relationship greatly cools down and they become cold and distant, but because they’re still married, they continue to do things for each other, but merely out of obligation thinking that will keep all bases covered. The only thing is, those bases really aren’t being covered, and eventually there will be a breakdown of sorts.

The same can be said about our relationship with God. We are never going to please God with pretence. Ritual will never replace relationship. We are only fooling ourselves if we think that God will move on our behalf as a result of an outward show of Christianity when inside we’re far away.

In 1 Samuel 4, we see a good Old Testament example of this: The Israelites had grown cold towards God. Their moral condition had deteriorated and they had quit honouring God in their midst; they worshipped idols but still wanted God handy when they needed him. They had fallen away from the devotion of their first love and were simply going through the motions mechanically. They now faced war and the army went out to fight the Philistines whereby 4,000 Israelites died. (1 Samuel 4:2) If God would allow 4,000 of them to die, he’d have to be extremely serious over why he didn’t save them, wouldn’t you agree?

Okay. You would think they’d have become very solemn about asking God where they missed him. But they didn’t. They asked themselves why they lost: “Why did the Lord bring defeat upon us today before the Philistines?” They didn’t get it. They blamed God and decided it was because the ark of God hadn’t gone with them. They said: “Let us bring the ark….so that it may go with us and save us from the hand of our enemies.” (v3) Notice they were relying on the ark itself, not the God whose presence went with it. You can just see where their hearts were at. They thought going through the motions would obligate God to help them. The ark had gone out in the past and given them huge victory, so that must have been the problem. So out they went again but this time with the ark, and 30,000 more died and the ark was captured. This was a big deal. God clearly was not acting on their behalf, and was using a megaphone to speak loudly to them. No amount of procedure could replace devotion, honour, surrender and obedience. Their idolatry dishonoured and disobeyed him; they made their own plans and didn’t bother to consult him in order to obey him. I think this is a really good example of people putting their reliance in a formula, instead of in God himself. They figured they were covered and 34,000 slain soldiers later, they realized they weren’t.

So often when our circumstances begin to negatively change, God allows events to occur that he didn’t want to happen in the first place, but will use them to get our attention.

Isn’t this what we do sometimes? We drift away from God and put our devotion on other things instead of him, but still expect God to bless our plans without asking him what and even if we should be doing them. In everything we do he needs to be first in our hearts. In the past when my relationship with my Lord had grown cold, the first evidence was that He was no longer in control – I was, and as a result I began to fall off the path of his best for my life. Israel losing all those men was a result of their moral decay and was supposed to be a wake-up call. They finally understood that God was using this trial to draw his people back into total devotion. This shows just how important our love for him, is to him. God is jealous for our love because he loves us way more! The Israelites remained under the oppression of the Philistines for 20 whole years before they smartened up. (1 Samuel 7:2-4) They mourned and came to Samuel and he basically told them: “if you’re returning to God, prove it”. Again, we see that God doesn’t buy ‘appearances’. They could wail and weep until the cows came home, but being sorry needed to result in action: repentance meant doing a 180 and going the opposite direction. They repented, tossed out their idols and “served the Lord only”. And you want to know how God delivered them? With a mere show of his power: “…the Philistines drew near to engage Israel in battle. But that day the Lord thundered with loud thunder against (them) and threw them into such a panic that they were routed before the Israelites.” When God shows up, the enemy leaves.

It’s important to note that God never desired for them to die. We can be very certain he tried to get their attention many other ways before this. If you feel you are successfully ‘doing’ Christianity, that is, performing the outside evidences well, but your heart is far away, I implore you to ponder this: The Lord is very interested in what’s going on inside our hearts, and it won’t take long before we’re faced with a situation that will show both us and God, where we’re at. He allows this because he loves us too much to leave us deceiving ourselves. A good flag to show ourselves where we’re at is this question: In our trials, do we seek God’s hand, or his face? Are we simply looking to have our situations fixed, or are we also interested in finding God on a deeper more intimate level?