Who controls your centre?
1 Samuel 4:1 And Samuel’s word came to all Israel(national prophet).
The fourth chapter of 1 Samuel seemingly has a lot of bad things, things going wrong for Israel. But the chapter begins with, or chapter 3 ends with, Samuel in position as the nation’s prophet. Sometimes heaven’s perspective may be very different from our earthly one. God had His man at the centre of the nation’s worship.
In the game of chess the player who controls the central squares on the board usually wins the game. There can be a lot of movement around the board with pieces being won and lost but the central squares are dominant. God controlled the centre in Israel, the spiritual heart was now right. Though there was chaos around caused by their Philistine enemies He used even them to remove Eli’s family from the priesthood and strengthen Samuel’s position as leader.
Another principle of chess is that a player may sacrifice(religious implications) a piece for position. In order to get a winning position a player may choose to surrender a good piece. Jesus was heaven’s grand sacrifice for us! He surrendered Himself in order to secure the victory and God will eventually place everything under His feet. Remember this Christmas that God’s position and hence our position is the winning one. There may be tough things for us to go through but we are on the winning side.
Today ask God again to be in control, to govern, to reign and to rule at the centre of our lives. With Him at the centre we cannot loose.
God bless you this Christmas.