We need to learn from the pattern of Samuel to be faithful to God in what He has given to us and have a proper attitude in listening to the Lord’s word so that we may have His speaking and serve Him according to His divine revelation.
May we learn the holy warnings we see in the life of Eli and be open to the Lord to receive His speaking.
As believers in Christ, we have been given the all-inclusive Christ as our portion to enjoy, partake of, labor on, and experience for the building up of the church as the Body of Christ.
The entire Bible is filled with bequests, the promises in the will given to us by God, and we need to “cash in” the riches by contacting the Lord in His word and praying over the word of God.
The Bible is our will, our testament, and it is our right and responsibility to pray and read, enjoy and muse over the word of God so that we may enjoy the bequests of God’s New Testament economy.
If we were to inherit a trillion dollars and we don’t even access it or use it, that would be a pity.
We have been given the riches of Christ for our enjoyment and experience, and it is a pity for us not to enjoy them.
The way to access and appropriate the riches of Christ is to exercise our spirit over the word of God to take in all the riches of Christ.
And then, day by day, as the Lord speaks to us and respeaks to us the things we enjoy and read, we need to continue to say Amen to His word so that He would continue to infuse us with Himself.
Praise the Lord for this wonderful secret, praying over the word of God with the exercise of our spirit! May we spend much private and personal time with the Lord to enjoy Him in His word with the exercise of our spirit.
May we take the word of God by means of all prayers and petitions, thanking Him and praising Him, and making His word personal to us.
The more we spend time with the Lord in His Word, the more we become one with Him.
May we eat the Lord, partake of the riches of Christ, and grow in life for the building up of the Body of Christ.
May we daily come to the Lord to receive the growth in life for that day from Him so that He would increase in us and cause us to function in the Body for the building up of the Body.
Being those Consecrated Ones who are Faithful to God and Work Together with God for the Carrying out of His Economy
Samuel was a very good pattern to us of one who was faithful to God in all His God-given statuses and offices.
As a Levite, Samuel served God his whole life, and as a Nazarite, he kept his consecration to God without failure.
As a priest and a prophet, Samuel spoke for God honestly and initiated the prophethood to replace the fading priesthood in the divine revelation.
As a judge, Samuel was faithful to God and just to the people, terminating the judgeship and bringing in the kingship to change the age for the fulfillment of God’s economy.
We need to learn from Samuel to keep our consecration up-to-date before the Lord; we have consecrated ourselves in the past, but our consecration may not be fresh today.
Day by day we need to lay our hands on the Lord’s head to be identified with Him as our consecration so that we may keep our consecration fresh every day.
Every day that is without consecration is a wasted day; may we not spend a day without consecrating ourselves to the Lord.
Today the Lord needs a corporate dispensational instrument to end this age and bring back the king of glory (Psa. 24) to set up His kingdom on this earth.
He is coming as a stone cut without hands to smash the great human image, the totality of human government on this earth.
For Him to return, however, He needs His counterpart, His overcomers. He needs those who are the age-turners, the Samuels of today, who are faithful to God and consecrated to Him.
May we be those who work together with God for the carrying out of His economy (John 5:17; 2 Cor. 6:1) and those faithful to God in what He has given to us.
Samuel cooperated with God and was established as a prophet of Jehovah to speak for Him by listening to His word (1 Sam. 3:9-10, 20-21).
He listened to God’s word and did according to God’s revelation; he never did anything of himself or by himself but according to what the Lord spoke to him.
Samuel enjoyed his portion of the good land to the fullest for his whole life; thus, in a New Testament sense, we can say that there was no defect in his enjoyment of Christ.
The only defect in Samuel’s history was that he appointed his two sons as judges among the children of Israel (1 Sam. 8:1-3); however, even in this case God came in and fixed the situation.
The sons of Samuel were not as bad as the sons of Eli, but they did not follow in his footsteps; therefore, this gave the ground to the children of Israel to come to Samuel and ask for a king, so that the king would rule over them even as the nations around them had a king.
There is no one perfect in the Bible except Christ Himself; with every pattern that we see, there are some mistakes or faults.
The unjust ways of Samuel’s sons were contrary to their father’s pure and just way in his whole life (12:3-5, 23) and gave the people of Israel cause to ask Samuel to appoint a king to judge them like all the nations (8:1-7); hence, the sons of Samuel should not be reckoned judges among the people of Israel (Acts 13:20), and their father Samuel should be considered the last judge.
We can say that humanly speaking, Samuel made a mistake in this matter, but this mistake helped God to manage the situation among His people by bringing in the kingship for the fulfilment of His economy.
God turned that mistake into something for His glory; though the children of Israel rejected God by asking for a king, yet God turned this into an opportunity to bring in the kingdom of God with David, the king.
May we learn from the pattern of Samuel to be those who are faithful to God, consecrated to Him, and cooperate with Him for the fulfilment of His economy.
Lord Jesus, we want to be those who are faithful to God in what He has shown us and given to us. We give ourselves to You, Lord, to be one with You in our living and in our service. We want to keep our consecration fresh every day so that You may have a way to live and move through us. Amen, Lord, make us those who work together with God for the carrying out of His economy. Grant us to hear Your word and have the divine revelation so that we may live and work according to what You speak to us and reveal to us. Make us the age-turners of today, those who are one with You, know Your heart, and cooperate with You to end this age and bring in the age of the kingdom!
Having a Proper Attitude in Listening to the Lord’s Word to Serve Him according to His Speaking
Before Samuel, in the times of Eli, the Lord’s speaking was rare among the people of Israel. But Samuel had the Lord’s speaking; the Lord called him and spoke to him even from his youth.
One thing that Eli did in a good way was to teach Samuel to have a proper attitude in listening to the Lord’s word; he told him to simply say, Speak, Lord, for Your servant is listening.
We need to be such ones. In the New Testament, we see Mary who sat at the Lord’s feet and was listening to His word; though Marta, her sister, was busy with so many things, Mary simply absorbed the Lord’s word while sitting at His feet (Luke 10:39).
We need to learn to have a proper attitude in listening to the Lord’s word so that we may serve Him according to His speaking, His way, and His revelation.
First, we need to have an attitude of sitting at the Lord’s feet, not at the feet of anyone else. We need to draw near to the Lord Jesus and contact Him in a personal and intimate way.
The shortest and quickest way for us to grow in life is not to get second-hand teachings about the Lord but to contact Him personally.
There’s no method that is better than coming to the Lord moment-by-moment to love Him, worship Him and fellowship with Him without ceasing.
We need to learn to spend time with the Lord and remain in His presence. This is what Paul exhorted us in 1 Thes. 5:17, that we pray unceasingly.
May we sit at the Lord’s feet by coming to Him day by day, and may we unceasingly fellowship with the indwelling Christ with an unveiled face so that we may be changed into His likeness (2 Cor. 3:18).
We need to sit at the Lord’s feet; we need to humble ourselves before Him in order to receive His speaking. For us to receive the Lord’s revelation and His blessing, we need to be humble.
God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble (1 Pet. 5:5), and humility is not something we do to belittle ourselves rather, it is ignoring ourselves, negating ourselves, and considering ourselves as nothing.
Our attitude in listening to the Lord’s word should be one of humility; if we draw near to God with deep humility, He will give grace to us, and we will see what is in His heart.
For us to receive the divine revelation, we need to sit down, that is, we need to be quiet and not busy. Martha was busy with so many things but missed the Lord’s speaking and did not receive a revelation of His heart.
In this modern world with so many distractions, it is easy to have our eyes set on the word of God but our mind may be wondering, and there are many things that take our focus away from the Lord.
We may be in a meeting where we hear the Lord’s speaking, but we may be on our phones, browsing or checking our email. We need to learn to quiet ourselves.
This is the greatest challenge we face before the Lord, for our eyes and thoughts are often distracted by what’s going on around us.
Our eyes are busy looking here and there and our mind is busy thinking about this and that. If we are busy, we can’t receive revelation easily.
If we want to have the Lord’s image imprinted into us and be transformed into His image, we need to quiet ourselves down and listen to His speaking.
Finally, we need to listen to the Lord’s word, for His words are spirit and life. We shouldn’t first focus on others’ speaking or on messages, sermons, and doctrines, but on the words of the Lord Himself.
We need to come to the Bible day by day with our hearts turned to the Lord and our spirit exercised to receive His speaking.
Just like Mary, we need to come to the Lord Himself to hear His word, for it is through His word that He dispenses Himself into us.
If we quiet our being down, humble ourselves, and sit at the Lord’s feet to hear His word, we will give Him the opportunity to communicate Himself to us and infuse us with what He is.
This will cause us to be inwardly transformed into His image.
May we come to the Lord Himself and not merely to a man or a preacher; may we come to the Lord in His word and not focus primarily on sermons or teachings.
His words are spirit and are life (John 6;63), and when He speaks to us, we are infused with the very essence of what He is.
It is only by having a proper attitude in listening to the Lord’s word that we can receive a revelation of what and who He is, and we can be joined to Him to serve Him and cooperate with Him for His purpose on earth today.
May we be people who serve God according to His divine revelation infused into us as we come to Him day by day and remain in fellowship with Him throughout the day.
Lord Jesus, we want to have a proper attitude in listening to the Lord’s word so that we may be infused with Him and serve Him according to the divine revelation. We humble ourselves, Lord, and sit at Your feet; we come to You and want to remain in Your presence moment-by-moment to love You and fellowship with You. Keep us in an attitude of unceasing prayer as we contact You. We put ourselves aside, Lord, and we even ignore ourselves, for we want to hear Your voice and be infused with Your word. We are nothing but You are everything. Strengthen us into our inner man so that we may quiet down our inner being and focus only on You. Amen, Lord, infuse us with Yourself through Your word. Infuse us with spirit and life! Communicate Yourself to us and dispense Yourself into us so that we may gain You and serve You according to the revelation of Your heart!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Sources of inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, a sharing by brother Ed Marks, and portions from, Collected Works of Watchman Nee, vol. 38, ch. 39, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Crystallization Study of 1 and 2 Samuel (2021 winter training), week 12, entitled, Spiritual Principles, Life Lessons, and Holy Warnings concerning the Enjoyment of the Good Land Seen with Five Major Figures in 1 and 2 Samuel.
- Hymns on this topic:
– Take time to behold Him, / Speak oft with Thy Lord, / Abide in Him always, / And feed on His Word. / Wait thou in His presence, / Submissive and meek, / Forgetting in nothing / His blessing to seek. (Hymns #643)
– I’m dwelling with Jesus my King; / I’ve found where He dwells with His own; / I’ve opened the door of my heart; / He’s made it His temple and throne. / Like Mary I sit at His feet, / Like John I recline on His breast; / His presence is fulness of joy, / His bosom is infinite rest. (Hymns #904)
– We in prayer behold Him face to face, / In the Word and meetings know His grace; / But in daily life, in every place, / What is He to us? / Hallelujah! By His light we see / Oh, how real, how full our Lord will be / If we’ll only turn to Him at every time, / in every day, / Every thing, in every way and— / Be specific for reality! / And be done with generality! / If we’ll just apply Him, we will see / He’s everything to us. (Hymns #1178)
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