Family Chapel

God desires obedience from His people for the advancement of His Kingdom. Unlike disobedience, which is rooted in fear and foolishly acts on one's own preferences, obedience is rooted in faith and faithfully acts on God's promises. While disobedience disqualifies us from service in God's Kingdom, God uses our simple obedience for His Kingdom purposes.

Israel has rejected God as King and they have requested a king just like the other nations. How will God respond? While the people may reject God, God will not reject His people. By God’s sovereign grace, He transforms our rejection into our redemption.

As we continue through the narrative of Samuel, we will see Israel’s rebellion in demanding a king for themselves. By doing so, they are rejecting God as their king. In the same way, we too find ourselves rejecting God as King when we place our trust in earthly “kings” (powers, people, promises of the world, etc.). From our passage, we will see the futility of placing our trust in these earthly kings, and will be challenged to turn our hearts and eyes to Christ, our eternal King.

Because of our sin, God's presence is a problem. No one can stand before the holy God in their sinfulness. However, we cannot deal with the problem of God’s presence by just pushing it off. Rather, we can safely enter God's presence by repenting and turning to Him.

God seeks to raise up leaders for His Kingdom purposes. Thus, God removes leaders who abuse their power, refuse to repent, and forget their purpose. In their place, God calls leaders who faithfully abide in His presence and humbly accept His call.

When we are given the life we never wanted, we are to hold on to our bitter faith because bitter faith is still genuine faith. Bitter faith turns to God in honest prayer and bitter faith turns to God in surrendered trust. And under God's sovereignty, we have hope because bitter faith will one day give way to joyful praise.

(1 Samuel 1:1-2:11)

The faith of Rahab serves as an unexpected reminder of our faithful God who is always doing the extraordinary in the ordinary. As such, we should take time to pause and remind ourselves that it is God who conquers and keeps His promises. And we should put our faith into action as we trust that God does the extraordinary even in our ordinary.

The local church displays the good news of the Kingdom through being a collective witness. As citizens of God's Kingdom, who have received the Gospel, we also have the awesome privilege to share the Gospel together. The local church serves as a collective witness through our love for one another and through our love for our neighbors.

Another important role that the local church plays in helping us live the Kingdom Life is through being a covenant community. As Christians are in covenant relationship with Christ, we are also in covenant relationship with one another. Life together in the covenant community helps us to grow as Kingdom people.

The local church plays an important role in helping us live the Kingdom Life, and one of the major roles it plays is through corporate worship. Corporate worship forms us into Kingdom people because the more we look at Jesus, the more we will look like Jesus. Some of the major elements of corporate worship in the local church are preaching, communion, and praise.