If You Knew What God Knows

Have you ever regretted getting what you wanted or what you asked for? I’m sure you have. I know I have. It could be something like a cake or something like a cat. Maybe you ate too much. Maybe you got something you really, really wanted, but once you got it you realized it was not what you wanted.

In I Samuel 8 you find God’s people desperately wanting a king. There are a number of perfectly understandable reasons for this, but God’s response is very telling. God told Samuel, His prophet, to tell His people, “Now therefore hearken unto their voice: howbeit yet protest solemnly unto them, and shew them the manner of the king that shall reign over them.” So, God allowed them to get a king, but God told Samuel to protest because it was not the best thing. How did God know it wasn’t the best thing? It is because God knows the future. How did God know the manner of the king who would reign over them? God knows everything.

In the following verses you find a king who would take their sons and daughters to appoint them for himself. Everything would be his, his harvest, his instruments of war. You find a king who would be self-centered. Selfish people end up being with selfish people. The fact is that God said to give them what they want but to tell them they didn’t really want it.

What amount of enthusiasm are you getting from God for the decisions you are making today? Israel had two kinds of counsel. One was the counsel from God through Samuel, and the other was kind of implicit from Canaan by just looking at them and seeing what they had. The irony was that what they were about to get was totally inferior to God being their king.

In chapter 7 we find that God gave them an amazing victory over the Philistines, yet they wanted a king so they could be like the other nations. They said, “That our king may judge us, and go out before us, and judge our battles.” Wasn’t God fighting their battles enough? Somehow, they were muddled in their thinking.

The takeaway is that you would want what God wants if you knew what He knew. What does God know? Everything. What does God want? What He wants is based on a God who is perfect, loving, just, and knows the future. If I knew enough to know what God knows, I would know enough to want what God wants. What Israel wanted was inferior to what they had.

This morning I saw a picture on my phone from eight years ago. I was drawn in and went to see all the photos around that photo. For about five minutes, I remember my life from eight years ago. When I do that, I think, “I would never wear that now” or “I looked younger then.” It may be with a mixture of regret and wistfulness. I might wish I was back there again and think I would do things differently. I want to live my life with no regrets. I want to be able to pillow my head with the confidence that I have done what God wanted me to do in His grace. That requires thinking at the beginning of the day about how I want to feel at the end of the day. No regret means living in God’s enthusiasm. Are you doing that?

As to what we want, we don’t even want what we want sometimes. We want something secondary, happiness or something else, and we think the thing we are seeking will give us that happiness. Someone has famously said that everyone needs something to believe, someone to love, and something to do. We need purpose and connection, and we need the truth. So, the question to ask yourself today in the decisions you are making is not, “What is wrong with this?” That is passive, the wrong mindset. The question is, “What is right with this?”

It is like when you used to ask you mom for permission for something and the difference between her responding, “Wellll…, ok” or “Yes, that is a great idea.” The first answer was your pressure which was responding to your friend’s pressure which was responding to pressures you couldn’t even see. Now your mom is not infallible, but God is. So, you would want what God wants if you knew what God knew. God had told Israel they would have a king. He was not against that. It was the how and the when that was involved in this, God’s timing and way.

As to His timing, a good thing at a bad time is not a good thing. As to His way, they were taking initiative over the God who knows everything. That is not smart. Why would I take initiative over God? Sometimes the easiest decisions to make are the hardest to live with and the hardest decisions to make are the easiest to live with. Think about your diet, your habits, your long-term trajectory over the decision you make. Sometimes I want more cake and that is an easy decision, but it is not easy to live with when my stomach doesn’t feel or look so good.

The question to ask is not, “Is it God’s will that I take this job?” He may have an opinion about that, but the fundamental question is, “Where are you with God?” When Israel wanted a king out of God’s timing and out of God’s way, God responded by saying, “They have not rejected you, Samuel, they have rejected Me and forsaken Me by serving other gods.”

Are my attitudes, priorities, thoughts, and desires in tune with the character and knowledge of God? I don’t know the future and I don’t know God’s exact plan for what I should do, but I do know what is right and wrong if I am in the Word of God and looking at God’s ethic and mindset. I can live today, whether hard or easy, so in the long run I will be in a place I want to be in. I don’t know everything, but God does. You would want what God wants if you knew what God knows. If I’ll trust Him with what He knows and His heart toward me, I’ll be in a place I can live with tomorrow.