Through His Word

1 Samuel 3:21

“The Lord continued to appear at Shiloh, and there he revealed himself to Samuel through his Word.”

I love to build things. IKEA dressers, model planes, shelves in the garage, you name it. To watch all that stuff in a box or on the floor get fashioned into something usable is cool to watch. One thing I have learned over the years is that you must read the directions. Without reading the directions the model plane or the IKEA pieces would never be built right. In fact, I spend more time reading the directions than it takes to do one step just to make sure I am proceeding correctly. In a step by step set on instructions, every step depends upon the previous one, so you need to get every step right. The finished product is always fun to see and use.

Samuel is growing up in the temple of God and verse 19 of chapter 3 tells us that the Lord was with Samuel as he grew up and he let none of Samuel’s words fall to the ground. Samuel was becoming a man of God and all of Israel from Dan to Beersheba recognized Samuel as a prophet of the Lord. The Lord was raising up Samuel to be the person who brought the word of the Lord to the people. As his popularity grew, Samuel dove into the word of the Lord even more. Our verse tells us that the Lord continued to appear at Shiloh, and there he revealed himself to Samuel through his Word. There were no astrology lessons for Samuel to learn, no idols he relied upon, no other person, no other crafted object, only the word of the Lord. The more Samuel was recognized by the people as God’s mouthpiece, the more Samuel got to know God by his Word. The Bible goes on to tell us that Samuel’s word came to all Israel.

You might be struggling to live this Christian life. You go to church on Sunday and you are good person, you even know some of the major Bible stories. After all, you went to Sunday School and all of the felt board stories are still stuck in your head. Just knowing some of it is good, but just like knowing some of the instructions for building that IKEA dresser, you need to understand all of the directions in order for the dresser to turn out like the picture. Too often we want to look like a healthy Christian without following the instructions. Samuel chose to follow the instruction, reading the word of the Lord, and the Lord revealed himself to Samuel through his Word.

Today get into the Word of God. The Bible is your set of instructions for life inspired by the master creator Himself. Read it every day and not like some novel or course assignment, read it to study it verse by verse. Just like our verse, it tells us that the Lord will reveal himself to us through his Word. Just like studying another language, the more you read the Bible, the more of the Lord’s heavenly language you will understand. The more you understand, the more of God’s character is revealed to you over time.