As a pastor for many years, I’ve had the opportunity to interacted with people in spiritual panics, some funny, some sad, some tragic. People come to me as their pastor, or I’ve found out about their situation, and they just don’t know what to do. They feel that God’s not answering them. They’re praying. They’re asking God to help them to know what to do, but God’s not answering. And they panic.
Maybe you’ve been in a situation like this, where you’ve been in a difficult situation. You’re praying. You feel like God’s not hearing you, not answering your prayers, and you’re at the point where you need to make a decision. You don’t want to do the wrong thing. You want to do what God wants you to do, and you feel like you’re not getting any direction. Sometimes, when people are in that situation, they will panic. They will resort to strange things to get an answer from God.
In 1st Samuel chapter 28, Saul is with the Israelite army getting ready to fight the Philistines, and he sees that he’s overwhelmed, and he panics. The Philistines have thousands of soldiers, and Saul see that Israel will not be able to prevail. Israel will be invaded, Saul might be overthrown, terrible things might happen.
Saul tries to inquire of the Lord, but the Lord did not speak to him through dreams nor through the Urim, as David had used, nor through the prophets. God did not respond to Saul in any way because we know Samuel had already told Saul before he died, “God has cut you off. You’ve made God your enemy, so God’s become your enemy and he isn’t going to be speaking to you anymore.” So Saul decides to take desperate measures, and the story takes a really weird turn.
We’re told in this passage that early in his reign, Saul had, in accordance with the Old Testament law that God had given them, driven out, illegalized all spiritualism, all fortune telling, and any kind of witchcraft. Saul had made that all illegal; the only kind of supernatural practices that were going to be followed is the temple worship and the things that the Lord has told us to do and that’s it. The Old Testament law is really clear about worshiping God only.
Now Saul turns the table and he says, “We need to find some kind of spiritualist to help me get an answer out of God,” and somehow, some of Saul’s men know that there’s one left. There’s a woman who is a witch, a spiritualist, a diviner of spirits. She lives in a town called Endor, and Saul thinks, “This is how I’m going to get an answer from God.”
He disguises himself and he goes to this woman at Endor and he asks her, “Can you divine spirits for me?” And she says to him, “Oh no, no, no, we can’t do that. Saul’s made that illegal.” Saul responds, “Don’t you worry, we’ll keep this all a secret. I really need you to do this for me.” So she says, “All right, maybe I can. What spirit do you want me to call up from the nether world?” Saul replies, “I want Samuel to be brought back.”
The witch at this point realizes who Saul is and what’s going on. She says, “You’re Saul, you’re doing this to trap me. I’m going to be in all kinds of trouble.”
Saul says, “No, no, no, I really need you to do this. Can you bring Samuel back from the dead? Can you bring his spirit back to us?” Somehow, though don’t know what in the world God’s doing in all of this, he lets this happen, and a spirit appears.
The witch says to Saul, “I see a spirit coming up out of the ground.” Saul asks, “What does he look like?” She answers, “He’s an old man with a beard and old clothes.” And Saul exclaims, “It’s Samuel, he’s come back.”
Now I have an opinion about this story at this point that you can take or leave. But I think ancient people reading this story would have found some humor in what happens next.
Think about it. Here’s the ghost of Samuel come back from the dead. Samuel says to Saul, “What are you doing? Why are you bothering me? Why have you brought me here? I was very happy resting in the netherworld. I’m done with this world. What are you doing bothering me?”
Saul says, “We’re going to war with the Philistines. I need to hear from God. I need to know what’s going to happen.” And Samuel says, “Why, Saul, why would you consult me? Do you really think I’m going to have any good news for you? You know what the message is, Saul? God’s not speaking to you because you’ve made God your enemy. He’s turned against you. He’s turned against Israel. He’s with the Philistines. You’re going to lose this war. And tomorrow, you and your sons will be with me in the netherworld because you’re going to be dead because this is not going to go a good way.”
With that Samuel disappears, and Saul falls down in a dead faint. He’s paralyzed by fear; so paralyzed that they can’t even get him out of the house. His servants who came with him say, “Come on, Saul. You’ve got to get up.”
He says, “I’m not moving. I’m going to lay here and just die. I’m just going to not move again.”
His servants beg him, “You can’t do that. At least eat some food.”
Saul is adamant, “No, I’m not going to eat anything. I’m going to lay here.”
So the witch herself says to him, “Well, you know, not only can I call up spirits, I’m a pretty good cook, too. Let me make you some food and eat it. Maybe you’ll feel good enough to get up and get out of my house.”
She makes the food. He smells it, and it smells good. He digs it. He tastes it. It is good. He regains his strength. He gets up, and he leaves. And that’s where this weird story ends. Saul goes back to this ill-fated war, knowing the end is going to come.
What a weird story. The ghost of a dead prophet comes back to say, “What are you doing bothering me? I only have bad news for you, and here it is.” Weird. The whole thing’s weird.
But I do think we can learn some valuable things, maybe as a cautionary tale from the mistakes that Saul makes here. We’ve seen Saul make a number of mistakes. Saul’s really been spiritually confused and messed up and just evil a couple of times. And here he is again, making a poor decision, trying to get an answer from God in this way. Saul, in his fear about the military situation, goes into what I would call a spiritual panic. A spiritual panic is when you’re just so overwhelmed by emotion, you make really bad decisions.
In a spiritual panic, like Saul, we often resort to trying to force God to do something, to answer our prayers no matter what. But forcing God just never works. That’s witchcraft. That’s idolatry. That’s religion at its worst, trying to force the gods to do something for you, even force God to answer you. God doesn’t work that way. C.S. Lewis said, “He’s not a tame lion.” God acts as he will, and we can’t force him or make him do things.
In a panic people can treat the Bible like their witch of Endor, that the Bible will answer their question. Or they come to their pastor asking, “Where in the Bible can I find an answer? I need to know. Should I take this job? Should I break up with my boyfriend? Should I do the marriage? Should I make this decision? Where in the Bible can I find that?” A woman in one of my congregations once asked, “Pastor, can you give me a Bible verse that’s going to solve my problem?” I had to say, “No, it doesn’t work that way.” The Bible doesn’t work that way. It’s not a magic answer book to the problems we have.
What, then, do we do when we really feel we need an answer from God, we’re not getting one. How do we not spiritually panic? I’d like to make three suggestions in that regard.
First of all, what I’ve already been saying, don’t panic. Don’t do what Saul did. Don’t resort to the weird. Don’t resort to thinking I’m going to open the Bible to a page, and whatever I read there, that’s going to answer my question. Don’t resort to horoscopes, or spiritualism, or other sources claiming to tell you what to do. Those paths are not going to bring any good things, as Saul’s story shows us so very clearly.
Secondly, in times of God’s silence, when we feel like God’s not answering us, practice demonstrating the Fruit of the Spirit. That fruit of the spirit of love, joy, peace, patience. Patience is a good one.
Sometimes we’re very impatient, and sometimes all we need to do is wait, and the Lord will give us an answer and some guidance and direction. It might be further down the road than we would like, but it’s going to come, and we need patience.
In your waiting, practice love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness. Remember, too, don’t resort to immorality. That’s the mistake that Saul had made. Some people, because they’re so frightened by not hearing from God, start thinking that maybe stealing the money they need from my employer is a good idea. They think “Just to get me out of this mess,” and God’s not answering, so maybe it’s okay. Avoid all kinds of wrong choices like that.
But goodness and kindness, keep those things in play. Faithfulness. Remember that God is there with you. He’s going to answer, so practice faithfulness, and the thing that Saul did not do, self-control. The Holy Spirit is still with us, working with us, even in times when it seems like God is silent and not responding. He is there, he is at work, just not in the ways that we expect and we can see.
So thirdly, I’d like to suggest an idea from one of my theological heroes, Soren Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard was a Dane, and he wrote in Dutch, and his writings were very difficult to translate into English, so some scholars suggest that he never said these exact words, but he’s very famous for this understanding of what we sometimes have to do as Christians, and that is take a leap of faith.
Sometimes as Christians we need to take a leap of faith. What I mean by that is this. You may have been in a situation where you must make a decision. You’re praying about it, you want to do the right thing, you’re asking God to give you an answer, no direct answer seems to come, and now the moment’s come.
You must decide, it’s the deadline. Are you going to take the job or not? Are you going to sell your house or not? Are you going to get married or not? You have to do it, the moment’s there. But you don’t have an answer from God, you don’t know what to do.
Sometimes we have to take a leap of faith when all of the options before us seem perfectly moral, perfectly right, there’s no good or bad kind of choices. We think, “This is important, though, my future could be riding on this.” Do the best you can in that situation, and leap into the arms of your Heavenly Father who is there for you the whole time, and regardless of what happens, he’s going to be there with you and see you through it. Take that leap of faith, trusting into the arms of God.
I think that was the point that Saul was at. Rather than going to the witch at Endor and doing these crazy things, Saul should have thrown himself on God’s mercy to see what would have happened. That would have been a much better choice than the weird stuff that he did get into. We can trust our Heavenly Father.
Jesus once taught “Fathers, if your son asks you for a loaf of bread, would you give him a stone? If he asked you for a fish, would you give him a snake? No, you wouldn’t do that. If you, as a fallen human being, know how to give good gifts to your children, will not your Heavenly Father, who knows all good and all righteousness, not give you good things in his time as well? He will.”
Times of God’s silence do come to us, and then we need to trust in the Lord and lean into the things that we know that we can trust in him, that fruit of the Spirit, trusting in him no matter what, clinging to him, and seeing how he will bring us through and meet us in those times.
Photo by Anastasiia Chepinska on Unsplash
Engaging Scripture 