Day 1 of 5 — Built To Last. About 3 minutes.
And Samuel spake unto all the house of Israel, saying, If ye do return unto the LORD with all your hearts, then put away the strange gods and Ashtaroth from among you, and prepare your hearts unto the LORD, and serve him only: and he will deliver you out of the hand of the Philistines.
1 Samuel 7:3
The trash goes out Monday morning in most of Kailua. You drag the bin to the curb before the truck comes down the street. Nobody enjoys it. You do it because things that stay in the house too long start to smell. Israel had lived twenty years with something in the house, and Samuel finally said out loud what everybody already knew.
Samuel does not start with strategy. He starts with the heart and then with the hands. Return with all your hearts, he says, then put away the strange gods. Both halves matter. Israel wanted the LORD to deliver them while Ashtaroth still sat on the shelf. Samuel tells them that is not repentance. That is negotiation. Serve him only, he says. Only is the hard word.
Most of us do not carve images. We keep something else. A phone that gets the first minutes of every morning. A job that decides what kind of parent we are that week. A grudge we have fed so long it answers to its name. An idol is not always evil in itself. It is whatever you would protect if God asked you to hand it over.
Israel did put them away. Verse four says it plainly, and the deliverance came after, not before. So this is where the week starts. Not with a stone of remembrance. With a bin at the curb. Name the one thing you have been keeping beside God and let it go today, before the week gets loud and you forget you ever saw it clearly.
Growth principle: God does not share the shelf; what you will not surrender is what you actually worship.
Take it with you: Name one thing competing with God today and remove it, delete it, or give it away before dinner.
Pause and pray: Lord, I have kept things beside you and called it normal. Show me the one you mean today. Give me the will to put it away and to serve you only. Amen.
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