As you read 1 Samuel 7 today take notice of the pattern of events in this chapter. What is described here is a process by which something of a revival of the faith came about. It began with a great sense of loss in the people, a sense of God’s absence and the resulting condition of oppression from foreign powers. In order for us to be revived in our faith the first thing we need is a deep sense of what we are missing. We must feel the emptiness and destitution of our condition of alienation from God. The answer to a sense of spiritual deadness is, first and foremost, the gaining of a deep sadness at what remains absent in our lives. If we are empty, the best thing is to feel that emptiness. I encourage you to cultivate a deep sense of emptiness for all that you lack of God in your life. Let this deep sadness drive you to God and disable you from living independently of God. Self-dependence and self-contentedness will rob you of the capacity to receive from God. To lack a genuine ongoing relationship with God and not to feel the absence is the worst of all conditions. I don’t want to be happy without God. If I have strayed from God I want my heart to ache with emptiness. For whatever drives me back to God and the joy of his presence is a great blessing.
Ask God to cause you never to be happy without him.
Read 1 Samuel 7
