Be Careful What You Ask For | 1 Samuel

SPEAKER_1 (0:07)

Thank you for tuning in to the New Vision Podcast. Our prayer is that this message builds your faith, brings clarity, and gives you hope. Enjoy the message.

Kevin (0:18)

We're going to say neighbor. Next week, let's sit closer.

Yeah.

I thought one week, and I'm just going to put this out of here just so that you'll never know. When I was a youth pastor, every now and then, I would just set my podium at the back and preach from the back. So maybe the overflow section next week will be where I preach from. We'll just change it up for everyone. So now when you come in, you'll be like, I'm not sure where to sit, where do I go? But I thought about what if we curtained it off, the amount of people that would be mad, this is my spot. But I decided against that today and I should have kept all those thoughts in my head. All right. If we haven't got to meet, my name is Kevin, this is my wife Mel, and we are honored to get to lead this house. We are honored and grateful that you're here this morning, that you've joined us and you're spending time with us, whether you're in the building or you're online. We are very grateful that you are here with us. We hope that your time with us is good for you. Shout out to my brother, who's in the back. Good to see you this morning, sir. Yep, I saw him come in late. That's what you get sometimes, when you come in late. Sit down. You get called out. All right. Man, I love you. So when the kids were little, they asked us for a pet. And not a regular pet. They wanted a lizard. I'm out. Like, there's a lot of begging, a lot of dad, please. I promise, you know, all these different things, right? We're going to take care of them. We're going to do all the things. And so Mel and I did what some of us, most of us as parents do every now and then. You believe them. You believe, even though they can't keep their own room clean, you believe that somehow they're going to keep another living animal taken care of, right? Another living thing. And so, you know, eventually after we brought Elliott home, we got him a little situated, you know, all this stuff is there. We discovered that our kids were not ready to do what they said that they were going to do, right? They weren't ready to handle all that they had asked for. Mel was doing 98% of keeping Elliott alive. She was feeding him and cleaning his little area, all that stuff, right? And so Mel and I went out of town for a week, and when we came back home, there was no more Elliott. Yep, he didn't make it. I don't know when he decided to leave us, but he did not make it the whole week. And maybe for you, like, maybe you didn't have a lizard. Maybe you're thinking about that puppy that you begged for, that kitten that you begged for, you know, you promised all the things so you could get what you wanted because you just had to have it in the moment. And what's wild when we start thinking about it, eventually, we graduate from asking for pets to asking for things that maybe mean a little bit more. We start asking for relationships, that job, that car, that thing that we just have to have or that thing that we just have to do. Like, we begin to beg God and ask God for it. We sell ourselves on how this is a great thing for us. It's the right thing for us. But then as it plays out, we discover that it was not the right thing or a great thing. Sometimes we want things and we ask for things, and we justify these things and we are not ready for them. And then there are other times where we're doing the same things, but what we're asking for is not at all good for us.

We're not alone in either of those things. And that's why I'm grateful as we walk through the book of 1 Samuel, we're gonna see some of that today and know that we are in the same boat. There have been people that have made decisions like this, that have asked for things they weren't ready for. We're gonna find out how we navigate that, and this morning my message title is something we've probably all heard before when it comes to asking for things that we're not ready for, asking and begging and justifying all of these things. The title this morning is Be Careful What You Ask For. Let's pray together. Jesus, thank you so much for your presence that is in this place.