1 Sam. 7-9
When Saul met Samuel for the first time, Samuel said to him, “And for whom is all that is desirable in Israel? Is it not for you and for all your father’s house?” (1 Sam 9:20) Saul’s response sounded familiar to me, and I remembered that Gideon responded the same way when the Angel of the Lord told him to go and rescue Israel from Midian. Both basically said, “I am a nobody from a long line of nobodies – why pick me?” I don’t know if their clans were really as insignificant as they said they were or if they merely felt insignificant and were using that as an excuse to back out of something that seemed too big for them. In reality, we are all insignificant and all incapable of the tasks to which God calls us.
But that is precisely where and how God likes to work. He chooses to work through “the least of these” and He chooses to be strong in our weakness. So what I know is that our insignificance does not define us or determine our worth to God and that we should never use our inadequacy as an excuse to not follow Him in obedience wherever He asks us to go. Remember that God goes with us, and in our weakness, His strength is made perfect. (2 Cor 12)
Luke 18:24-43
Why did Jesus say that it is difficult for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God? Because wealth is such an easy thing to depend on and such a difficult thing to let go of! This is why Jesus used money so often to tell us that we cannot serve two masters. He goes on to mention those who leave house, wife, brother, parents, and children for the sake of the Kingdom. All of these ‘things’, like wealth, are good things – gifts from God. But God must be FIRST, above all in our lives. There is nothing that should come before Him, not even (especially not?) ourselves. On the surface, it seems unloving or irresponsible to ‘abandon’ our loved ones for God (and I’m quite certain that “God’s work” is often used as an excuse to shirk responsibilities to loved ones), but the reality is that if you do not love and serve God first and foremost, you cannot truly love others the way that you should. God loves our loved ones more than we do or can, and we can trust Him to take care of them, too.