Who's King

“Give us a king to judge us like all the other nations have.” 1 Samuel 8:5b Why does Israel want to be like all the other nations? The other nations loose to the Israelites in battle, so long as they follow God’s commands. Why by like the guys that loose in battle? Why request that a king, a man, judge them? Isn’t God supposed to be our judge? God is constant and will judge by the same rules every time. A man changes his focus, had mood swings, and spurts of anger. Why have a man judge you? Do we still live like that today? I would say we do.

The Popes and priests of the Catholic religion, as I see it, function as the kings of the Old Testament. At confession the priest tells the confessor what they must do to make things right with God. You must do… who are they to judge what the person must do to be right with God.

Even a pastor, at times, can act as kings. Have you ever had a pastor tell you your going to hell? Who are they to judge? Some people only communicate with God through their pastor, that’s not what he is there for.

Why do I say all this, because God wants to be our King. God is to be the judge, not a man. Pastors bring us together, and encourage us to keep progressing in our relationship with God. But we so often choose the easier, defiantly not the best, way of letting God into our lives.

If you only let a pastor or priest teach you everything you need or should know about God, at the most that is an hour a week. That’s 52 hours a year. The rest of the week we hear what everyone else says about God. We spend approximately two hours a day, fourteen hours a wee, 730 hours a year. That is a conservative estimate, not accounting for the hours of TV we watch with their views. So which view is influencing us more?

I spend at least 730 hours a year hearing others views about God. A thousand might be a more realistic estimate. How easy it might be to let others sway my view? But I spend a minimum of two hours a day focused on God. Also I talk to fellow Christians about what they are learning and going through a minimum of one hour a day. I spend ten hours on Sunday in the presence of some amazing fellow Christians. That’s a minimum of 730 hours of personal time a year. 365 talking with Christians, and 520 on Sundays communing with them. That’s a total of 1615 hours a year focusing on God. This is one way how I stay constant in my view of God. 1615 outweighs the time I spend around people that would try to down play my view of God. But this time means nothing if God is not my King.

Israel went through many kings, some followed God, and some did not. No king followed God like David did. Many times David is called, “A man after God’s own heart.” David’s will was that of the father. There was a relationship there between God and David. Solomon let his desire for women get in-between him and God. There were many kings like Omri, who made idols to worship gods.

Why do so many people want a physical representation of what God looks like? Why do so many images of God or gods look like us? Zeus looks like he could be my Grandpa. Why did they desire a golden cow, or a statue of a fat man, an elephant with human hands and other stuff, or a god for everything like the Egyptians had? Why do we elevate a pastor to the level of a king?

So many of us want God to be like us, so we feel like we could be His equal. We see ourselves as the masters of everything we see. We study, study, and study more so that nothing would be impossible for us to do. Cancer is a big problem now-a-days, and we want to cure every kind of cancer. Space we see no boundaries. We are currently trying to get ready to send a group to Mars, because space has no boundaries except our own thinking. In our view there is nothing we cannot do; we just have to figure out how to do it. And we get this thought that God is just farther down the line of intellectual development then us, but this is not true.

God is not just more intellectual then us, He is more then we could ever be. We are not His equals we are His creation, and yet He desires to be our king. God gets jealous every time we let things come in-between us and Him. In Deuteronomy it says that God is jealous about His relationship with us.

Through out 1 Kings, 2 Kings, 1 Chronicles, and 2 Chronicles we see this common phrase when a king chooses to not follow God, “…did what was evil in the Lord’s sight.” Those same kings “provoked” God’s anger. Why did God get angry when these things happened, because they let something come in-between them and Him.

Pastors and Priest, sometimes, are held to the level of the O.T. Kings. Just like the O.T. kings these pastors and priest will mess up. I am studying to be a minister, and even though I don’t want to admit it, I will mess up at some point. The Catholic Church has had to face the problem of priest doing things they shouldn’t. Pastor’s let things come in and damage their personal relationships with God, and the church acts as if they are surprised that the pastor or priest cannot live a sinless life.

What one person will not mess up, God. That is why He wants to be our king. Another man should not be the one telling you what God has to say to you all the time. We get this perception that God is so big and amazing that our mind could never fathom Him or commune with Him, but we let another person do it of the perception that they will tell us all we need to know.
You can talk with God. You can understand some things about God. You can rely on Him to guide you through life. He is not so big and distant that only our priests and pastors can communicate with Him. Ultimately there can only be one king, one that permeates through your life, to provide you with guidance. The choice is friends, parents, siblings, a grandparent, a pastor, a priest, the pope, or a perfect all knowing and all loving God, the choice is yours.