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Preconceived Resentments

In my opinion the number 1 reason why people leave church, never come to church, judge church or reject church is unfulfilled expectations. In this process of evaluation often the last thing they examine are their expectations. I find this all completely reasonable and nothing I’ve ever read in the Bible causes me to doubt it.

The church surrounds itself with talk and ideas that raise enormous expectations. We declare that God is in this place. We believe that the church is the first fruits of the kingdom of heaven, on earth as it is in heaven. We say that we are a “new creation” but then when you look around at how we are we look pretty much like “the same old same old”.

The Human Factor

So we often just attribute the messiness of church to the human factor. People are like this, but today we are reading a text from 1 Samuel 9 about God’s pick for Israel’s brand new political idea for how to be free and make their dreams come true.

It seems at the beginning of 1 Samuel 9 that Samuel was hoping that after the call for a king that maybe Israel would forget about it. God, it seems, wouldn’t leave it alone. Samuel made zero effort to go find one after dismissing the elders.

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