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Hespeler, February 4, 2024 © Scott McAndless – Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany
Isaiah 40:21-31, Psalm 147:1-11, 20c, 1 Corinthians 9:16-23, Mark 1:29-39

Hey, do you want to hear what is wrong with the Christian church these days? I can tell you, you know. Or maybe let me rephrase that a little bit. I have people tell me all the time what they think the problem with the church is today. And they are always so sure that they are right that it must be so, right?

Sunday Mornings

For example, I have been confidently assured that the problem with the church today is Sunday shopping. Yes, the real problem that the church has is that people have the possibility of going out and buying their groceries or picking up a nice new outfit to wear at some point in time between 9 am and noon on the first day of the week.

Oh, but there is more than just the hours of business at the local shopping mall. It is also sports leagues. Yes, the other problem with the church is that sports organizations schedule their games and practices and rent out their ice and fields at any hour on Sunday mornings. Can you imagine that?

People Not Joining in

Oh, but there is more to it than that. No, I can give you a whole litany of the problems with the church. It is also that people don’t want to sit on committees, and they don’t want to join the various groups in the church.

And, if I can be frank here – and remember that this is all assured data that has been fed to me consistently so I guess it must be true – it is particularly the fault of the younger generation. Yes, whereas previous generations were only too happy to come out and attend these long meetings and participate in women’s groups and bake pies and cookies and all kinds of other things to support the work of the church, apparently these younger folks today just say they don’t have the time.

Oh, and there’s more. Shall I go on? Another big problem with the church today is that people don’t like the right kinds of music. And they don’t like big wordy long prayers and they’re not even appreciative enough of hardwood benches that might be a little hard to sit on but are beautiful to look at.

That, I have been confidently told again and again, is precisely the problem with the church today. And, no, I am not saying that those are the things that people at St. Andrews are always telling me. I get it from various places and even from people who never go to church themselves.

How We Deal with Our Challenges

And, yes, I probably did exaggerate what I often take to be the subtext underneath many of the comments that people make. But I am pretty sure that many of those kinds of sentiments sound somewhat familiar to you. They are part of our litany of lament as we think about some of the problems that are facing the church today.

But I wanted to reflect them back to you for a moment because I think those kinds of comments are emblematic of the way that we do think about the problems that face the church. And I want you to notice how I phrased them.

Absolutely nothing in what I just said to you was about what the church does or fails to do. Everything I said was just a complaint about what everyone else does or doesn’t do. And I suggest that that is how we tend to think of the problems that face the church today. We are usually only too happy to focus on what we see as the deficiencies of the society or the changes that we don’t like.

Will Things Go Back to How They Were?

Now, it is not as if there is nothing to any of these laments that we raise. There is no question that society has changed in some very dramatic ways over the last few decades and that those changes have created challenges for the centuries-old institution which is the Protestant church – an institution that has not proved itself to be very good at dealing with change.

But I’m sure you can see the problem with this mode of thinking. If the root problem facing the church is that the world has changed, then the only possible cure for the church is for the world to just spontaneously decide that everything should go back to exactly how things used to be. And, even if there were some good things about how things used to be, what do you suppose is the likelihood of that happening?

Paul’s Approach

That is why I find the approach of the Apostle Paul to be so refreshing. Paul dedicated his life, once he had met the risen Jesus, to building up the Christian church and to tearing down the barriers that kept people away from Jesus and his message. He pushed to include all sorts of people – people that others objected to – into the life of the church. And he seems to have been extremely successful in all of this, founding several churches all over Asia Minor and the Greek peninsula. He did this despite a great deal of opposition from fellow Christians, Jews and even many local officials.

So, I can’t help but think that we might be able to learn a few things from Paul and how he approached his work. He explains his approach in our reading from First Corinthians this morning. And do you want to know what I noticed first when I read it? I noticed that Paul spent no time at all talking about what the society around him needed to change in order to help his work.

He didn’t call on the emperor to shut down the local market or the chariot races on Sunday mornings. He also didn’t complain about people not being available to sit on committees or about how they didn’t want to listen to his sermons the way he liked to preach them.

Meeting People Where They Are

Instead, Paul describes his strategy to us. “To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to gain Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though I myself am not under the law) so that I might gain those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (though I am not outside God’s law but am within Christ’s law) so that I might gain those outside the law.”

The message could not be more clear. Far from blaming other people for being where they are, Paul makes a point of meeting them there. And he does this in spite of his own sense of identity. He is willing to suspend his Jewishness and his sense of what law he is responsible to in order to meet the people exactly where they are.

Other People’s Weakness

But he goes even further than that. You see, the church has often fallen into the temptation of thinking that its failures are the result of other people’s weaknesses. We like to say that it is because other people lack in commitment or faith or faithfulness or just because they don’t want to do the work that the church has failed. The church, in a classic display of projection, is unwilling to see its own weakness and so it projects that weakness onto others.

Complaining about other people’s weakness can often feel satisfying and it is certainly habit forming, but Paul offers the perfect antidote: “To the weak I became weak, so that I might gain the weak. I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some.”

Walking in their Moccasins

Paul is telling us that whenever we are tempted to perceive someone else as weak, what we need to do is put ourselves in their position. It is like the Indigenous North American proverb that says that you must never judge another until you have walked a mile in their moccasins.

And the truth of the matter is that, once you do that, what you usually discover is that what you perceived as weakness was something very different.

When, for example, people are struggling with economic difficulties, it is often very easy just to write them off and accuse them of being lazy. “People just don’t want to work these days,” has become a common refrain. But I honestly believe that there are few who are truly lazy in that sense.

People often have some pretty good reasons for why they are not working or not working enough to cover their bills. Sometimes, wages have been set so low that people can’t actually afford to live in a place and do the work because they cannot afford the rent and cost of living. Therefore, for them to take that job would be to choose to fall even more behind economically speaking.

I think this is certainly true when it comes to the work of the church. I really do think that people are motivated to contribute to the important and meaningful work that the church is doing. They would love to be a part of spreading good news and helping people out as they face the struggles of life. What more meaningful work is there than that?

Barriers in the Way

So, if people are not doing that, I don’t really think it’s because there’s something wrong with them. It’s because other barriers are in the way. It is because the church has conceived itself and its activities in a way that does not fit into people’s lives and sense of priorities.

And so if, for example, younger women aren’t interested in joining missionary groups or other similar organizations in the church, it has little to do with them not agreeing with the goals of those organizations.

It certainly has a lot to do with an economic situation that forces almost all adults to take on full-time careers in addition to taking care of substantial family needs just in order to break even. And it probably also has a great deal to do with how they order and organize their social world. But it certainly doesn’t have anything to do with a deficiency or weakness.

Becoming Partners

That is why what Paul writes to the Corinthian church ought to be emblazoned on the door of every one of our churches. “I do it all for the sake of the gospel, so that I might become a partner in it.” The job of the church is not to simply continue to be what it is always been and expect everyone else to conform to its way of doing things. The job of the church is to become a partner with anyone who is able to share in the good news.

For that reason, the church needs to be adapting itself to the needs of its partners rather than demanding that those partners adapt to the needs of the church. The simple recognition, for example, that families these days are often stretched to the limit could go a long way. They are on the run earning what they need to survive five or six days a week. They are on the run providing for the needs and the development of their children. They are doing the right thing.

Moving in the Right Direction

That doesn’t mean that they don’t recognize that the church is a part of doing the right thing for their family. But it does mean that the church may not fit into their lives in the way that has worked for other generations. As the church finds ways to partner with such families where they are in their lives, we will discover new strength.

And I will confess that that is something that this church is still working on, but I do think that how we have been finding ways to allow kids to be kids in our worship service, to be a part of our worshiping life, has been a really good step in a good direction.

There are many challenges facing the church today. But whenever you are tempted to explain away all of those challenges by laying blame on the society outside of the church, you are not going to get anywhere. That is a non-committed conversation, and, as we learned last week, those will get us nowhere. It is in our commitment to meet people where they are, to love them as they are, and partner with them in a way that values them and the challenges they are dealing with, that we will find the greatest strength for the church.

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Hespeler, 21 January, 2024 © Scott McAndless – Third Sunday after Epiphany
Matthew 7:7-11, Matthew 13:44-46

As many of you know, last week I was given the privilege and honour of preaching at the funeral of my father: William L. McAndless. And I know that a few of you came out to that funeral all the way over in Scarborough and some more of you watched the service online. That meant a lot to me.

But I’m hoping you will indulge me in something. I’d like to preach what I preached there for you again today. I don’t want to do that merely to honour my dad, though of course I do that, but also because I think it would be a good way to give you all an insight into my own faith journey and how I came to be the kind of Christian I am today. So, with some apologies to those who have heard it before, I am going to share what I said.

An Honour

I have been given the privilege and honour of speaking at many services like this for many different people over the years. And I can assure you that every single one has been special; every one has been unique. But this one, I confess, seems particularly special and particularly unique.

But in all those years of preaching at funerals, I have come to an understanding of what it is that I am here to do.

You see, I don’t believe that it is my job to proclaim the Christian gospel on these occasions. I don’t even think that is up to me to promise you anything in particular about the afterlife. That’s because there is somebody else – somebody other than me – who is in a much better position to preach to us about those things.

I believe that every individual, every single life, has important things to teach us about the kingdom of God. My job is simply to find that lesson in the life of the person we are celebrating and share it so that we can all grow a little closer to the kingdom. And in all the funerals and memorials I have ever preached, I have never failed to find that lesson in someone’s life.

I have certainly not failed when it comes to reflecting on this life.

Jesus’ Way of Talking about God

When Jesus came among us and taught us about God, he was in the habit of referring to God in a very particular way. He liked to call God, Father. He even taught people to pray and to say, “Our Father who art in heaven…”

And while Jesus was hardly the first person to speak of God as Father, he seems to have brought a special intimacy and familiarity to how he said it. He called God Abba, an Aramaic word for father. But it wasn’t the common everyday word for the patriarchal figure recognized by society. It was the word that was only used inside the family by children of all ages to speak about their father – sort of like we use the word “Dad” in my family.

But what did Jesus mean when he called God, “Abba?” Did he mean it literally? Was he saying that God is male, or that God is a biological progenitor of all people? Of course, not. It was a metaphor, sort of a one-word parable. He was saying that, in some very important ways, God was like a very good Dad.

Reflections on our Experience

One day, when Jesus was trying to get people to understand God’s relationship with them, he invited his listeners to think of it in terms of their own experience of fatherhood. “Is there anyone among you who, if your child asked for bread, would give a stone?” he wanted to know. “Or if the child asked for a fish, would give a snake?” What he was saying was that God, in some sense, is like a good father who knows how to give good things to his children.

Now, I am very aware that this kind of father imagery for God doesn’t work for everyone. The sad truth is that not all fathers do know how to give good things to their children. Not all fathers are present for their children, some are too caught up in their own woundedness. Some can also be so much worse than neglectful. And so there are definitely some people who, when you call God father, can only imagine a God who is mean, vindictive or abusive. Such language does not help them and often hurts their image of God.

But what Jesus is also saying is that we, who have not seen God and have not the human language to describe God in any literal sense, are kind of stuck. We can only understand God – can only even speak of God – as extensions of what we have seen and experienced. And, yes, if calling God father does not help you to have a healthy image of God, you need to find a different metaphor.

My Image of God

But I just want to tell you today that I have a very good image of God. Deep down in my soul, I believe in a God who is kind, gracious, forgiving and generous. I am even able to believe in that God despite all of the problems, failures and downright evil I encounter in this world. I can see it all and still believe that God will find a way through it – that (as Martin Luther King Jr. paraphrased) “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

Now, why do I believe in that God? I could give you the correct theological answer and say that it is because of what I have seen and experienced in Jesus Christ. That is true enough. But the real answer goes much deeper. I believe that because I experienced a father who knew how to give good things to his children.

He was not perfect; no human father is. But he never acted in any way that made me doubt the essential truth that there was goodness in the universe. I came to believe that God knows how to give good things to God’s people because I had a good Dad. What I came to know about God through Jesus certainly confirmed that, but I don’t mind saying that my image of God started with my Dad.

Problems that Come with that

 Are there some problems and issues and shortcomings that come with that? Sure. For some inexplicable reason, when I imagine God, the God that I picture, might usually be found sitting in the armchair in the living room exhaustively reading the Toronto Daily Star, because that was where I usually found my Dad when I was growing up. There probably are times when my view of God is imperfectly tainted by my experience of my Dad, but overall, I think I am very fortunate for the view of God that I grew up with.

So, my Dad gave me an amazing starting image of God. And here is what he has to teach all of us today about the kingdom of God.

Jesus Speaks about the Kingdom

Jesus seems to have spent almost all of his time talking about this thing that he called the kingdom of God. But, curiously, he never quite said what it was. It’s kind of the same thing when it comes to describing Godself. We really don’t have the human words to describe what the kingdom of God is, and so all Jesus could do was say what it was like. And he did that, mostly, by telling stories and parables.

Bill’s Discovery

And one of the stories that he told went like this. The kingdom of God, he said, is like what happens when this guy, let’s call him Bill, is walking along one day. He is crossing a strange field, a field that belongs to somebody else, when he stumbles across an amazing discovery. There, hidden in the field where nobody has ever seen it before, he discovers buried treasure of immense value.

What an amazing thing! But no sooner does he discover this treasure than he realizes the problem that comes with it. He doesn’t own the field, so how can he claim the treasure?

The obvious solution, of course, is to just buy the field, but he hasn’t got the money. And so, Bill comes up with a plan. He sells everything that he owns, divests himself of absolutely every possession until he has nothing left. And he goes out and pays an absolutely ridiculous price to buy that field from the poor sod who owns it and has no idea what is buried in it.

And Jesus said that that is what the kingdom of God is like. What on earth is that supposed to mean? How is that supposed to illustrate to us what God’s kingdom is like?

What Could that Possibly Mean?

We could struggle to answer that question for a long time, but we don’t need to. We don’t need to because this man that we celebrate today has demonstrated so clearly what Jesus was trying to say.

Bill McAndless was a man who recognized real treasure. He knew what was really valuable. And, despite being a banker for so very long, he knew that the truly valuable treasure of this world was not to be found in bank vaults.

My Mom and my Dad

He recognized the treasure that was hidden, and that other people might have walked by a thousand times and never even noticed. When he met a young woman named Doris May Heron, my Mom, he knew that here he had found a pearl of great price – a treasure of unsurpassed value.

But, even more important than that, he knew what to do when he discovered such treasure. He decided to give up everything he had and everything that he was in order to share his life with that incredible woman of great value. He would not let anything stand in his way – not even the odd beetle hiding under the meringue.

Okay, that’s a bit of a story from family lore. The first time my Dad came over to my maternal grandparents house, my mother’s little sisters told him that my mother had created the entire supper. It wasn’t true, but they were trying to fix him up with her. The dessert was lemon meringue pie. My father’s favourite! But, in my father’s piece of pie, there was a giant dead beetle hiding underneath the meringue. My father, ever the wise man, simply put the beetle aside and kept on eating. That’s what I mean when I say that he understood what was more important.

And fortunately, of course, Doris made the same discovery of hidden treasure in him – hidden even in things like his silence on their first date – and made the same decision to give up everything she had and everything she was to share her life with him.

A Pattern

But, more than that, this was not just a one-time thing in my Dad’s life. It was a pattern that he continued to repeat over and over again. When his children came along – when we came along – he absolutely saw the unique value and treasure that was in each one of us. We all know deep down inside that we matter, that we have value because he recognized that value in us and gave everything that he had and everything that he was for our sake.

 And, of course, he did that with his grandchildren as well and his great grandchildren when they came. And I’m willing to bet that every single one of us can say that we know we have worth and value because we learned that from this incredible man.

And of course, that was not limited to his family (though we always came first). He did the same thing with his mother, his sisters and brother, with friends. And he knew the great value that was in his church community and joyfully gave his all to support that as well.

Understanding the Kingdom

And Jesus said that, if you can do that, if you can recognize what is truly valuable and give your all for the sake of that, you have understood the kingdom of God. That is why I can boldly declare that my father understood the kingdom of God and may have understood at least some aspects of it better than many a theologian or preacher.

He lived that kingdom and it showed in every aspect of his life. And if he knew God’s kingdom here and now, as we all can, we can certainly take great comfort today in the knowledge that he has entered into the fullness of that kingdom and that he is with his Lord in an existence that we can scarce imagine or dream of.

This, for me is the sermon that my father’s life has preached to us, and I am honoured to be the one who gets to reflect that back to you today.

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Hespeler, January 14, 2024 © Scott McAndless – Second Sunday after the Epiphany
1 Samuel 3:1-20, Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18, 1 Corinthians 6:12-20, John 1:43-51

Could you possibly find a more alarming outlook on the status of religion than the one that opens our reading this morning from First Samuel? “The word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread.” Yes, I know, people come to religious sanctuaries for a variety of reasons. Some are looking for a brief escape from the troubles of life. Some are happy to be seen there by others so that they will be well-regarded. Some may just enjoy the nostalgic feeling of being there.

That is all well and good. But if there is not a moment, at least from time to time, when the voice of God just breaks through and people receive a vision or hear a word and they know that it has come from God, then what is the point? But we are told that “The word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread.”

Irrelevance

Is that not an indication that faith in the God of Israel had become irrelevant? Sure, there were still some people who came out to the sanctuary and went through all the proper motions of the worship of Yahweh, but it had become just a matter of tradition and habit. People are not having an encounter with God. So, what was the point?

That description of the problem particularly struck me when I read it because it seemed familiar. Is that not precisely the complaint that many raise about the state of the Christian church in our society today? It is irrelevant! People are just going through the motions! People just don’t get from it what they really need.

I don’t necessarily agree that all of that is true, but the complaints are raised often enough that we cannot just brush them off. So, let us take a look at what had gone wrong at the sanctuary at Shiloh in the days when Samuel was a child there. Maybe there will be some other points of connection that speak to our situation.

Eli’s Blindness

So, why was “the word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread.” We have an indication almost immediately after the problem is stated. It says of Eli, the priest in charge of the sanctuary at Shiloh, that his “eyesight had begun to grow dim so that he could not see.” And I know that you could just understand that as a description of a common age-related disability back when things like cataract surgery and eyeglasses were undreamt of. But I think that a careful reading of the story makes it clear that this is not just about a visual impairment.

For one thing, the note about Eli’s eyesight comes so quickly after the statement about visions not being widespread that you can’t help but make the connection. Eli’s problem is not that he has a physical disability. The state of his eyesight is symbolic of a deeper, much more spiritual problem that he has.

And this is borne out as you continue into the story and if you read the larger context. There are clearly many things at the sanctuary at Shiloh that Eli isn’t seeing, but the reason has nothing to do with his eyesight. Above all, he chooses not to see what his sons are doing.

Eli’s Children’s Abuse

Hophni and Phinehas, his adult children, have taken over priestly duties from their father. But they have made it a habit to abuse their power. They are using their authority as priests over the sacrifice to extort the best cuts of meat from the worshippers for themselves. And, much worse, but distressingly familiar, they are using their positions to rape and abuse the young women who participate in the life of the sanctuary.

I know that you sometimes get the impression that the whole phenomenon of religious leaders using their power and authority to abuse the people who are placed in their spiritual care is a modern problem. It never used to be discussed; it never even came up. Whereas in more recent years, we’ve seen it happening everywhere. So much so, that I’m probably safe to say that every major denomination and religious group has had its own share of scandals in this regard over the last few decades.

But, as the case of Hophni and Phinehas should make clear, this is not because abuse of spiritual authority is a modern invention. It has always happened. Whenever a certain group of people are given an extraordinary amount of power over others, there will be a certain proportion who will be tempted to abuse that power.

As we’ve seen, it can happen in almost any organization. There have been lots of scandals in hockey and other sports, in the business world and in various youth organizations. We might like to think that churches should be exempt, but they’re clearly not. In some ways, the spiritual dimension of religious authority does have a way of amplifying the potential.

Eli’s Inaction

 So, what the sons of Eli have been doing with their priestly authority is horrific. But they are not the biggest problem, at least not as far as this story posits. The problem is the blindness of Eli. Not his physical blindness, but his refusal to see what his sons are doing and to put a stop to it.

God says that explicitly to Samuel: “For I have told [Eli] that I am about to punish his house forever for the iniquity that he knew, because his sons were blaspheming God, and he did not restrain them.”

That is the real sign of a sick institution. It is not the evil that some individuals do, it is the failure of the institution itself, which is what Eli represents, to safeguard everyone the institution touches. When we prefer blindness, when we refuse to see or to challenge what some powerful people are doing in any organization, that is the root of the problem.

Shifting our Focus

And if it is at all true of the church today that the word of the Lord is rare in these days and visions are not widespread, that has to be part of the reason. The church has wanted to pursue power and authority and has enabled its most influential leaders to that end. Some of those leaders have used that power and authority to serve themselves. Thus, the church is brought into disrepute, and it can no longer speak the word of God.

But if we can learn some humility, and if we can learn to shift from protecting our own privilege and authority to protecting vulnerable people, I do believe that, as we make ourselves vulnerable to God, God’s voice will break through to us. When we stop looking after ourselves first, we will be set free to look for the visions that God will send us. That is where the healing begins both for Shiloh and for us.

Samuel and the Ark

But that is not the only reason why the word of the Lord was rare in those days and visions were not widespread. We see another big indication of what had gone wrong in the story itself. Samuel, this young boy who has been devoted to service in the sanctuary by his mother, is apparently sleeping somewhere in the temple complex and he is in the same room as the Ark of the Covenant.

Now, I don’t know if that set off alarm bells for you when you read it, but it certainly did for me. If you are at all familiar with the Ark of the Covenant, you know that it was the primary symbol of the presence of God with the people of Israel. According to what it says elsewhere, the Ark was to be kept in a special chamber in the temple (or at this point in time in the Tabernacle) called the holy of holies. God was said to be more present there than anyplace else on earth.

The Day of Atonement

How holy was it? It was so holy that no one ever entered the place except one day a year, the Day of Atonement. On this day and only this day, the High Priest was to enter into the presence of the ark only after carrying out an atoning sacrifice.

But even then, they took special precautions. Before the High Priest entered, the temple servants would tie a rope around his ankle just in case God decided to strike him down. That way they wouldn’t have to wait an entire year for the next High Priest to go in and remove the body. Now, we don’t actually know if that rope story was true or just a legend that spread. It’s not actually in the Bible. But, true or not, it is certainly an indication of the kind of respect that they had for the Ark and the care they took when in its presence.

But there seems to be none of that reverence or expectation in this story. The Ark seems to simply be in some random room in the temple complex – a room that also appears to be a dormitory for acolytes like Samuel who serve there. There seems to be no indication whatsoever of any expectation that this cultic object could allow someone to have an encounter with God. They have either forgotten or they never knew that such a thing was possible.

Why it Takes so Long

Which is why, when it actually happens, it takes so long for anyone to even recognize it for what it is. Samuel just assumes that it is Eli, the revered elder priest, who is calling out for assistance in the night.

You can’t really blame Samuel for that, of course. He’s just a child and has never had any reason to even dream of such things. No, the real person to blame is once again poor blind Eli. If only he could have seen – and I am not talking about the physical sight that had failed him but the more important inner sight that had failed – if only he could have seen, perhaps the voice of God would have broken through sooner. But, no, it takes three tries – three times when God calls out to the sleeping Samuel – before Eli finally figures out that something else might be going on here.

Our Inner Blindness

Now what does any of this have to do with the crisis we face in the church where we seem to be living in days when the word of the Lord is rare; visions are not widespread? I am a firm believer that God has never ceased to speak to God’s people. Visions have never ceased to be sent. But if we do not expect them, will we receive them? And if, like Eli, we suffer from inner blindness, it will be all that much harder.

And what does that inner blindness look like for us? What might be preventing us from detecting the words and actions and power of God at work among us? Often, I suspect, it is because the eyes of our hearts are diverted and looking for meaning elsewhere. For the church as an institution, our focus may be fixed on our own standing within society as we mourn a loss of power and influence.

As individual believers, we become distracted by the temptations of our consumer society. We get caught up in the endless scramble to build wealth or flee from poverty which has become the only concern of our capitalist society. Above all the voice of God gets drowned out by the incessant noise of our social media-driven perpetual misinformation machine and confirmation bias.

The Right Response

All of these things mean that we do not expect God to speak to us or send us any visions that might contradict what we have already decided to believe. That is why the word of the Lord is rare in our days; visions are not widespread. It is not because God does not speak but because we will not listen.

But there is still hope for us. Eli, as blind as he was, figured it out eventually. And when he taught Samuel to respond and say, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening,” I don’t think he was just trying to teach the boy. He was trying to teach himself as well. He had finally gotten to the place where he was willing to hear what God had to say no matter what it cost him – and it did cost him a great deal. That is what finally allowed the voice of God would break through. That is what will allow it to break through for us as well.

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