I Samuel 8:7 And the LORD said unto Samuel, Hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee: for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them.

The other day I bought a new pair of dress shoes at a local store here in Murfreesboro. Some previous dress shoes had met with unexpected disaster, so I was looking for some new shoes. I knew exactly the shoes I wanted. That is sometimes a problem for me because I know exactly what I want and no one is making it. Well, I got some shoes that will definitely work, but sometimes it is easy for us to be discontent. We know what we have and we know what we want, but the two do not match up.
We are living in the most ad-saturated, comparison-saturated time that has ever been. Every day in ways known and unknown to you, you are seeing comparisons of what you have to what other people want you to think you need. There are ads on your phone, billboards, and screens of various kinds. A lot of our shopping today is comparison shopping. I don’t mean comparing one price against another, but buying things so we can compare favorably to other people. We want to be like everyone else even though we don’t know if everyone else likes what they have.
Is everything you have perfect? Do you have the perfect body, the perfect health, the perfect job, the perfect wardrobe, and the perfect education? The answer is, “No!” But this idea that you will find happiness if you have any of those things to perfection is an illusion.
In I Samuel 8, the people of God came to Samuel, whose sons had disappointed him. Samuel was very much like Eli before him in that his sons did not honor God. The people said, “Give us a king. You are old and your sons walk not in your ways.” Talk about adding insult to injury! Samuel prayed and the Lord told Samuel, “They have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should reign over them.” God said, “Now therefore hearken unto their voice: howbeit yet protest solemnly unto them.”
That is exactly what Samuel did. He told them that the man who would become their king would take their ground and their children. It would not be an improvement, though they thought it would be an improvement from their perspective. Verses 18-19 say, “And ye shall cry out in that day because of your king which ye shall have chosen you; and the LORD will not hear you in that day. Nevertheless the people refused.”
God would not hear them because they would not heed and hear God. The lesson to learn here is that a person who will not find contentment in God will not find it anywhere. The truth is that you can save yourself a lot of gas money, shopping, hurt, toil, and trouble if you would realize that any contentment you are going to find is found in God first of all and last of all.
Think about contentment with who you are. God’s people said, “That we may also be like all the nations.” What nations did they want to be like? Did they want to be like Egypt whom God had judged? Did they want to be like the Philistines who had gods of stone that could not save or hear? Is that what they wanted? That is what they thought they wanted.
So many times we wish we had the gift, abilities, or appearance of other people, but we do not know what it is like to be them and what they portray to us is a glamor shot of what really is. If you look at anyone’s social media account, what picture do you see there? You see the best picture that person could find! If you find a man with an ugly profile photo on Twitter, he is twice is ugly as you think he is! That is the best picture he has. Are you content with who you are?
How about contentment with what you have? Israel wanted a king. God gave them a judge. God was their king. God told the people, “You haven’t rejected Samuel, you have rejected me.” We need to trust God to get what we want, but we need to trust God to want what we have and what we get. It is not wrong to ask. If you shouldn’t ask for it, then you shouldn’t want it. If I am asking for something I shouldn’t have, God will make that very clear to me. Most of us are not asking. We have not because we ask not. I am not talking about greed, but about being honest and transparent with God.
Trust God with what you think you want, but trust God to want what you have. God knows better what you need and what will actually make you happy. It is not so much the things that God gives us that will make us happy as it is God Himself that will provide contentment. A person who will not find contentment in God will not find it anywhere, but a person who will find it in God will find it everywhere.

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