{"id":7416,"date":"2016-02-27T00:05:32","date_gmt":"2016-02-27T08:05:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/?p=7416"},"modified":"2016-02-26T10:18:35","modified_gmt":"2016-02-26T18:18:35","slug":"night-whispers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/2016\/02\/27\/night-whispers\/","title":{"rendered":"Night Whispers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Meanwhile, the boy Samuel served the LORD by assisting Eli. Now in those days messages from the LORD were very rare, and visions were quite uncommon.<\/p>\n

One night Eli, who was almost blind by now, had gone to bed. The lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was sleeping in the Tabernacle near the Ark of God. Suddenly the LORD called out, \u201cSamuel!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes?\u201d Samuel replied. \u201cWhat is it?\u201d He got up and ran to Eli. \u201cHere I am. Did you call me?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t call you,\u201d Eli replied. \u201cGo back to bed.\u201d So he did.<\/p>\n

Then the LORD called out again, \u201cSamuel!\u201d<\/p>\n

Again Samuel got up and went to Eli. \u201cHere I am. Did you call me?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t call you, my son,\u201d Eli said. \u201cGo back to bed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Samuel did not yet know the LORD because he had never had a message from the LORD before. (1 Samuel 3:1-7)<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

God\u2019s people hear his voice, but they don\u2019t always recognize it. Samuel heard a voice in the night and responded, but he didn\u2019t know who was calling him. Oddly, God did not identify himself. He let Samuel repeatedly run to Eli to wake him up.
\nEli did not hear God\u2019s voice, but he recognized it. This, despite the fact that he was not in the habit of listening to God. <\/p>\n

Eli\u2019s children were disobedient and unfaithful to God, demanding extra meat from those who came to sacrifice. Worse, they were sleeping with the priestesses of Asherah in the Tabernacle. Many Israelites had started worshipping other gods and goddesses, and the goddess Asherah was one of the most popular. Men worshipped her by doing what Eli\u2019s sons did, thereby engaging in a form of sympathetic magic: Asherah was a fertility goddess and by so worshipping her she was supposed to grant fertility to crops, farm animals, and wives. Eli never did anything to stop his son\u2019s wickedness. <\/p>\n

God\u2019s people still recognize him, no matter how far they\u2019ve drifted or how long since the last time they talked to him. Like seeing an old friend after years of separation, Eli knew who Samuel had heard, even if he didn\u2019t care to hear from him himself.<\/p>\n

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Meanwhile, the boy Samuel served the LORD by assisting Eli. Now in those days messages from the LORD were very rare, and visions were quite uncommon. One night Eli, who was almost blind by now, had gone to bed. The … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"yes"},"categories":[18,17,16],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7416"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7416"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7416\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7418,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7416\/revisions\/7418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}