Saul – Physical Stature

In 1 Samuel 9, we are introduced to king Saul before he was king. What is interesting to note is that the first thing mentioned about him is his physical stature.

There was a man of Benjamin whose name was Kish the son of Abiel, the son of Zeror, the son of Bechorath, the son of Aphiah, a Benjamite, a mighty man of [a]power. 2 And he had a choice and handsome son whose name was Saul. There was not a more handsome person than he among the children of Israel. From his shoulders upward he was taller than any of the people.

1 Samuel 9:1-2

The Bible does not note elements of his character, but rather his physical stature. What a thing to focus on!

It makes one think, what would be recorded about you in the Bible? Would we have elements of good character that would be worth recording? Or would only what we looked like to be passed down in the annals of history?

The Bible does not talk about Saul’s nobility, humility, his good spirit, or willingness to learn. It does not talk about his religiosity or focus on the spiritual. All that one could say about him was that he looked like a king. He had the stature to be king.

physical stature

But is there not more to leadership than what someone looks like? But we as people concentrate on the physical aspects of others to the exclusion of all else.

Perhaps this is why God specifically saw fit to teach Samuel that physical stature was not what was important in a king.

6 So it was, when they came, that he looked at Eliab and said, “Surely the Lord’s anointed is before Him!”7 But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look at his appearance or at his physical stature, because I have [c]refused him. For[d] the Lord does not see as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”

1 Samuel 16:6-7

People were in the habit of looking at the physical first. Perhaps even Samuel believed that the next king would look like the first king physically. but this was not the case. When God sought out David, He was looking for a man after His own heart. And he found that in Davis, despite his stature.

Lesson: Pursue character and do not rely too heavily on your looks or strength. Those will decay with age, but good character will last for a lifetime. Do not rely on things that fade away. Character will be the bedrock upon which you build the rest of your life.

Be Still – Psalm 46:10

Be still, and know that I am God;
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth!

Psalm 46:10

“Be still and know that I am God”.

This is literally an exercise in sitting down and meditating. Be still and think about God.

It is reported in this book that most people report having to sit alone with their thoughts as an uncomfortable experience. I could certainly relate to that at different points in my life. But imagine being so uncomfortable with yourself and your own thoughts that you cannot be still.

Most people prove this hypothesis based on simple observation. What do people do the second they have a moment of downtime? They whip out their phone and start scrolling. Most people cannot sit with their own thoughts for more than fifteen seconds. It is just too much for them to deal with.

But the biblical model is one of stillness. There are moments in time when we need to be able to sit down, be still and recognize the power of God in this universe. This form of meditation is a biblical exercise. 

So what we must do is figure out how to sit down, learn to be comfortable with our thoughts, and remember God. We also must not get discouraged when we find it extraordinarily hard to just sit down and be still. This stillness is a new skill for many of us. And it is understandable that we would have difficulty for us. Learning to be still is similar to learning to walk for the first time again. And all kinds of thoughts and fears are going to bubble up when we try to sit there and be still.

still
In fact, that is what we are trying to avoid, aren’t we? We are uncomfortable with our own thoughts so we treat them with the toxic medication of distraction.

We have to slowly build up a tolerance to the uncomfortable nature of our thoughts until they become more comfortable. 

What are we trying to avoid? Usually, it is the difficult questions of life. And it is easier to place our thoughts somewhere else. Instead of thinking about death and mortality, the nature of God, and the nature of the impending judgment, we choose to watch the lives of others or sedate ourselves with entertainment. We cannot blame ourselves for that, it is simply natural as pain-avoidant beings. But that is no excuse to remain in that state.

We have to exercise and learn to increase our ability to endure sitting alone with our own thoughts. Perhaps that is with traditional meditation, perhaps that is with a mindfulness meditation on the power of God. There is no limit on the number of exercises that can be done. But the fact remains that some exercise must be done.

Start by sitting still for just one minute.

If you cannot sit still for 60 seconds, just reduce the amount of time spent. Try to spend more than 15 seconds though. Spend at least that much time daily concentrating on the power of God while being still. Then try to build it up on a regular basis.

Once you consistently reach 7 days in a row of meditation, add 5 seconds. That might not seem like much to add, but you need to develop consistency with the practice, do not try to overdo it. Once you complete another 7 days with 20 seconds of meditation, add another 5 seconds. Slow progress is infinitely better than no progress. 

Incorporate this into your daily routine and learn to be still.

Learn Rapidly with a peaceful mind

Church Numbers Don’t Matter

Many churches today are hyper-focused on increasing their church numbers. Attendance is their only focus. While the goal of spreading the gospel is noble, we need to understand that many are not interested at all in the spreading of the gospel. Instead, they are focused only on the numbers. The primary goal of many churches is a simple increase in the number of members. I want to tell you not to worry about church numbers. In fact, church numbers do not matter.

When recruitment becomes the focus, by definition, God becomes removed from focus. When we try to simply inflate church numbers, we miss the point of religion.

church numbers

Reverence is decreased when recruitment is increased. In fact, many churches learn the hard way that tight rigidity does not always lead to rapid growth. Even though more traditional churches are growing today, they are still growing at a mild to moderate rate.

What happens in large churches is that they grow quickly and then burst. Similar to the way an inflated economy grows and then bursts. People become disenchacted with what large mega churches have to offer. Very few people are content with the way a large church is. They typically go one of two main directions. They either search for more entertaining church and progress more and more towards liberalism, or they revert to conservatism.

Mild liberalism is never enough. We will almost always gravitate towards more extreme forms of whatever we are already participating in.

So by making church numbers the focus, the word of God is diluted. Churches reduce their standards and try to make church fun. The church was never meant to be fun, it was meant to be reverent. It was meant to be a place where people worshipped the almighty God.

Focusing on mere numbers misses the point of the church altogether. The focus of bible study and worship is first and foremost about worshipping God. Secondly, it is about developing the individual faith. This development of faith does not come about by easiness and fun church events. Rather it comes through wrestling with the difficult questions of the bible and enduring difficulty with a positive mental attitude.

“How can we appeal to outsiders”. That is not the question we should be asking.

The worship assembly of God is not designed for the non-Christian individual. this is why inviting people to church is not a great evangelistic tool. If you invite someone to church and they come, they will have no idea what is going on. they will have no idea about the significance of any of the events or practices. And they will not have any of the background knowledge that would cause the worship assembly to make any sense.

No, the church should not be used as our primary evangelistic tool. We spread the gospel through individual relationship and study, not through mass church attendance. In fact, inviting people to church is another one of those passive modalities like influence that people recommended, but in reality, is a poor excuse to avoid active action.

“How can we spread the gospel of Christ?” This should be the question.

Then we are focused on growing the church the correct way. Not by chasing mere numbers, but by spreading the truth.

Worship is not about visitors, it is about God. It has always been that way and it must remain that way if worship is to be appropriate.

If you find yourself in a congregation that puts too much focus on merely “getting the numbers up”, call attention to this in a diplomatic way. Try to help people understand that the number isn’t the goal, but rather the true growth of the church is the goal. And though the two sound similar, they are not the same.

Overcome Worry with This Tool

There is a recipe in the scriptures that will teach you how to begin to overcome your worry, fears, and anxieties. It is found in the book of Phillipains.

6 Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; 7 and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

Philipians 4:6-7
Worry
We have read this verse many times before, but I think that we tend to overlook one important component. We will discuss this component in a moment.

When we read these passages we focus on the line “be anxious for nothing”. Then what most of us tend to do is say “well that simply is not possible. There is no way to be anxious for nothing“. What we fail to realize is that we did not read half of the recipe for removing worry from our lives. The vital component of treating our worry problem is found in the use of a thankful attitude.

The Bible does not say that we will magically be anxious for nothing. But instead, we must combine “casting care on Him” through prayer with an attitude of thanksgiving, and this is what begins to reduce our worry.

The attitude of gratitude is the vital ingredient that we often forget when we seek the help of God. We forget to be thankful for all the many things we already have and instead begin to focus on our current problems. Then we ask God to fix it without first remembering all the times before when He has fixed problem scenarios in our life.

The way we can be free from worry is to combine prayer and supplication with thanksgiving.

What you must do in your prayers is to first be thankful for what God has done, then ask for His help. Then by being grateful, your worry diminishes automatically. This is one of the overlooked truths in the Bible.

If you find yourself worried, first take time to be thankful. Gain some additional perspective about your situation. It is likely not nearly as bad as you think.

Combine this thankfulness with the stoic exercise of negative visualization. That is where you imagine what it would be like if you were in a terrible situation. When you think about what it would be like to be in a worse situation than you are in now, your worry reduces. And not only does your worry reduce, but your thankfulness increases as a result.

What we are beginning to learn is that gratitude actually rewires the mind. And how beneficial it would be for us to cultivate this attitude. If you become a grateful person, people want to help you and do more for you. But no one wants to help a person who is ungrateful. This is why you must learn to have a thankful attitude.

If all you do is develop an attitude of thankfulness, your worry will reduce significantly.

Here is your exercise:

  1. Think about what is worrying you.
  2. Think about a few items you are grateful for in your life.
  3. Finally, think about what it would be like if your situation was far worse than it is. This will also increase your thankfulness naturally.

With this exercise, you can drastically begin to reduce your worry. It is not an emasculated way to approach life. No, everyone loves the person who is thankful and grateful. Incorporate this tool into your daily life and watch your worry decrease.

Your goal should be to make an attitude of thankfulness your constant attitude. Never find yourself without thankfulness and your worry will disintegrate.

Read about how to control anxiety.

Motivation Overrides Suffering

Imagine this, the sensation of motivation actually overrides the individual desire to avoid pain. Consider what you are willing to do when you are motivated. You are willing to train your body and subject it to pain and resistance all for some higher goal. You are willing to sit down and study or work even though you would rather be enjoying yourself doing something else. Motivation overrides suffering. 

On the more negative side, imagine a person who is highly motivated to take drugs. You might think that it is obvious that a person is motivated to take drugs because they are simply chasing the high or trying to get away from the pain of the craving. But also consider the following: the drug addict knows that his/her behavior is the source of an incredible amount of suffering in their life. Many also report that they no longer even enjoy the process of taking drugs. So why do they keep doing such thing that is damaging their life so much?

Obviously, there is never one answer to anything, but it is likely a combination of the desire to be free from the pain of craving and a high degree of motivation. A person needs to be highly motivated to do something they do not enjoy and that is bringing negative consequences into their lives.

All of that to say, our motivation can enable us to do things we do not enjoy, and that we do not like. 

motivation overrides suffering

Motivation overrides suffering.

So when finding out how to be more motivated, you may find that you yourself are actually already highly motivated. But you simply are not motivated in the direction that you want to be motivated in. 

For instance, many people try to get motivated to train. It is not that they are unmotivated to work out, it is that they are highly motivated to sit on the couch and do nothing.

It is not that you are not motivated to study, but instead, you are highly motivated to watch youtube videos. 

Today’s simple exercise is the following: stop thinking of yourself as a person who lacks motivation. You are not lacking in motivation, you are simply motivated towards the things you would rather not be motivated towards. Once you have identified this, you can start working to become more motivated toward those things you actually want.

Learn to hold one thought in your head at a time. When we procrastinate, it is because we can put the task that needs to be done out of our minds and think about something else. We can only do this for so long until the impending deadline and pain become so intolerable that we actually sit down and get to work. So once that thought of the work that must be done becomes the dominant thought in the mind, that is when we begin to take action towards it. 

So if you can bypass the part of your brain that wants you to distract yourself and instead engage in a meditative practice by concentrating on the tasks that must be done, you can become motivated. Hold the task in your mind, and it will become painful. But that pain will actually, turn out to be the motivating factor that allows you to start working. And once you start working, it is much easier to finish working. 

The ability to be motivated comes down to being able to concentrate on one thing at a time.

Though what we often associate with motivation is a “fired up sensation”, that is only one part of the story (though in all truth, it is the best part of the story). But how many times have we felt that motivated sensation and then done nothing about it?

“In the morning I’m going to wake up early and go to the gym and eat chicken and broccoli and get eight hours of sleep each night and get fit.”

You, the night you decide to make a big change in your life

Those are all the things we feel as we are going to bed. We are highly motivated in that situation, yet we do nothing. And then what happens when morning rolls around? Apparently, someone broke into your house that night and stole all of your motivation. It is gone never to be seen again.

That is an example we all know probably too well about feeling the sensation of motivation but failing to take purposeful action in the direction of our goals. And hopefully, that allows you to see in your mind the difference between motivation that leads to action and motivation that is just simply enjoyable. 

So practice today holding one thought in your mind, concentrating on the work you need to do, and do not worry about chasing the sensation of motivation. If you will just get started on your work, many times you will find that your motivation rises later on to meet you and that your motivation overrides suffering.

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