I Samuel 4:1b-7:2--Kings and Kingdoms Week 4

Have you ever had a good luck charm? Maybe you don’t have something exactly you carry to give you good luck, some people do. When I was a kid, it was common to have a lucky rabbits food on a key chain—something that you carried around which was thought to give good luck. Maybe you don’t have a luck charm exactly, but you do something that is kind of a ritual or tradition thought to make things go well for you. I don’t know what it is for you, but we see this a lot of times with professional athletes. They have their rhythms or routines that they do every single time to make things work. The baseball player, rubs his cleats in the dirt the same number of times every single time, and does the same number of practice swings. The golfer, who shakes his legs the same way before each swing. The boxer who touches his gloves together the same way each time before a fight. This rhythm or routine is thought to give them some sort of luck or help them in practicing their craft. Sometimes we have other forms of good luck charms—a cross or pendant worn around the neck thought maybe to give some sort of protection. The picture or bracelet from your dead loved one to remind you of their presence. A piece of clothing or tattoo that points you to some memory that you never want to forget. We can all have something like that—a routine or a practice, or an item that puts us in a certain state of mind or reminds us of something, or even might give us good look. A fisherman might have his “lucky lure”, a hunter his “lucky spot”, or a runner can have their favorite pair of running gear that always helps them have a good workout. Maybe it’s just tradition, or lore, but it is there. The same types of things can happen spiritually. Maybe it is a crucifix that someone wears around their neck that they think will ward off evil spirits. This type of thing led emperor Constantine in 320 A.D. into battle—as he had a vision where he heard “under this sign, conquer”, and he committed all sorts of brutality in the name of Christ and while carrying versions of the cross. Now I’m not saying it’s wrong necessarily to have things that remind you of things, or to even have a sort of superstition—my favorite fishing lure. But we do need to be very careful how we treat God. Because though it is important to have God with us, and to live in constant connection with the presence of God, we need to make sure we maintain a healthy reverence for God and who he is. If we’re not careful, we might begin to treat God as a sort of good luck charm. We take him with us and he’s always there for when we need him, but only use him when we need him. And it can be easy to think that we can do things to buy the favor of God in our lives, and use God as a sort of totem, or we carry around a cross as if it has mystical powers, or we even use the name of Jesus in a way that treats him like a magic potion to get what we want. But God will not be used by his children. He is not there for us, as much as we are there for him. But sometimes we like to use God for our purposes. And when we use God for our purposes, we find that God cannot use us for his. That’s our big idea for today. Big Idea: When we try to use God for our purposes, he will not use us for his purposes