To Encourage You

1 Samuel 9:18-20 “Then Saul approached Samuel in the gate and said, ‘Tell me where is the house of the seer?’ Samuel answered Saul, ‘I am the seer. Go up before me to the high place, for today you shall eat with me, and in the morning I will let you go and will tell you all that is on your mind. As for your donkeys that were lost three days ago, do not set your mind on them, for they have been found. And for whom is all that is desirable in Israel? Is it not for you and for all your father’s house?’”

The Bible tells us that God knows our needs before we ask Him (Matthew 6:8).  This raises the question, “Why, then, do we pray?”  Perhaps there are some instructions for us regarding this as we look at the verses above.  This is the account of Saul searching for his father’s lost donkeys.  Eventually, after three days of looking, he is advised to seek counsel from the prophet Samuel.  As Saul begins this conversation, I’m sure he is shocked to hear Samuel tell him all about the donkeys before he even mentions anything about them.  Samuel tells Saul that his donkeys had been lost three days earlier and that they had already been found.  He also tells Saul not to worry about them. 

But Samuel’s not done.  You see, there was much more to this story. We are told that on “the day before Saul came, the Lord had revealed to Samuel: ‘Tomorrow about this time I will send to you a man from the land of Benjamin, and you shall anoint him to be prince over my people Israel. He shall save my people from the hand of the Philistines. For I have seen my people, because their cry has come to me’” (1 Samuel 9:15-16).  Here we find that it was by way of Saul’s problem that God was leading him to Samuel, not because God was concerned about some lost donkeys, but because God had something He wanted to say to Saul and to do in and through his life. 

You see, it wasn’t Saul’s immediate need that was the fundamental issue. It wasn’t what Saul wanted to ask the prophet Samuel that was the most important thing. No, the main thing was what God wanted to say to Saul.  Saul’s problem with donkeys, of all things, was what put him in a position to hear what Samuel said. 

So what about us?  Could it be that the issues we go to God about in prayer, the things that we think are so important, are often not the primary reason God has told us to pray.  Of course, He has told us to pray about everything – if not a lost donkey in our case, perhaps it’s a lost set of keys. But when we go to Him, we should realize that God already knows everything about us.  The writer of Psalm 139 put it this way: “You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know it altogether.”  You see, when we go to God about any need, we are never telling Him something He doesn’t already know, for He already knows more about it, by far, than we do.  Yet, He tells us to go to Him anyway, not because of what He needs to learn from us, but because of what He wants us to learn from Him.  So often, it is in prayer, at those times when we pour out our hearts to Him, that He opens our hearts to His message, and He helps us to see and understand things like we never have before. 

May God help us to listen as much as we talk when we pray to Him. And may He help us to realize that that problem that we face, whether it be something we’ve lost, or any other trial of any kind, may, primarily, be the means by which God is sending us to Himself to hear His message, just as He used some lost donkeys to lead Saul to hear His message through His prophet Samuel.  May we realize that our problems may be leading us to hear a message from the God Who created the universe, a message that we might otherwise not have had the opportunity to hear.