Daily Devotions
Overcoming Hypocrisy
Reading for March 30th: 1 Samuel 28-31
And Saul had put the mediums and the necromancers out of the land... Then Saul said to his servants, "Seek out for me a woman who is a medium, that I may go to her and inquire of her."
1 Samuel 28:3, 7
The story of Saul in this chapter is loaded with irony. Not the least of the examples of this is when Saul expels all of the mediums and then goes to seek counsel from a medium!
It's pathetically obvious when we see this in Saul, but I wonder why it is that we fail to see similar contradictions in our own lives.
Do you ever do things that you preach against? I'm not just speaking to the "preachers" who read my devotions. We all have soapboxes and often times we are pointing the finger in the wrong direction.
For example, we just hate it when people drive like maniacs in traffic and we preach at all the maniacs who zip past us, but do we do the same thing to others in traffic. It's easy to see in others what we fail to see in ourselves. Somehow the rules apply to everyone else but ourselves.
I've noticed this contradiction many times in myself, especially since I am one of those men who preach from a pulpit. In fact, when I find myself doing things that are wrong (especially those things that I preach the hardest against), I can almost hear my own voice as I'm preaching against the very thing I'm doing or the bad attitude I'm displaying.
What should we do when we find ourselves living in contradiction to our own standards?
1. Repent. That's the first thing we should do.
2. Pray. We should plead for God to be merciful toward us.
3. Be thankful. God shouldn't have to put up with our hypocrisy, but aren't we thankful he is patient and forgiving?
Father God, be merciful to us!
