It is safe to say that all of us have been discouraged at one time or another. Usually over a situation that is outside or control or at least we think it is. We make up our minds that this is where we always will be and God has forgotten or overlooked us. We begin to think that we weren’t made to be anything or amount to anything. Why does it matter if I tithe I can’t change anything? What does God need me for I’m not worth anything I can’t speak well or I’m not a social butterfly. Nothing I have will ever be of use. I read of a nation in need of a King. In 1 Samuel 16 God sent Samuel to the house of sheep rancher named Jesse who had 8 sons. God told Samuel that one of Jesse’s boys would be the next king. As status quo of the time would have it Samuel assumed that naturally it would be the oldest Eliab. But after passing the first seven and never hearing God say anything seven times Samuel was beside himself. Is there another, He ask Jesse? Jesse answered him yes there is another but he is just a young ruddy blue-eyed lad surely, he’s not what God has in mind. You see David tells us in the psalms that in sin he was created in his mother’s womb and in iniquity his mother bore him. David was different. Possibly born out of wedlock and having a different mother than the rest of his brothers he was set aside by his own as different. He was artistic and musically inclined. Talents other than just the normal ranch hand and military solder like his brothers. There is some significance in the numbers. When Samuel looked upon the 7th brother, seven is significant for the number of completion but then Jesse called for number Eight. The one had had been left out in the field to tend to the sheep. Hidden away in the pasture land out of sight and mind so as not to interfere. But as number eight He was the number of new beginnings and when his Daddy called him from the pasture it was the last time he answered as a shepherd boy the illegitimate youngest son of Jesse the sheep rancher. Now he would be anointed King, not just King but Gods appointed King. He had been hidden away in plain sight. Probably thinking he would never do anything except tend to his father’s sheep but God had a plan and a destiny he had not yet stepped into. There was another man from Bethlehem who walked the earth 30 years before He was even baptized. Jesus, God in the flesh out of sight for 30 years. God’s own Son. He just had not been announced yet. You can be called and anointed and not yet announced. Tend to your sheep with all you have for your announcement is inevitable.
M.U.S.C.L.E. 