“Therefore Eli said unto Samuel, Go, lie down: and it shall be, if he call thee, that thou shalt say, Speak, LORD; for thy servant heareth. So Samuel went and lay down in his place” (1 Samuel 3:9).
TEXT — 1 Samuel 3:1-10
Message
An African proverb states that what an elder can see lying down, a young man may not see even if he climbs a very tall tree. Experience is a lesson that comes with age. The older one gets in life, the more one realises there are better ways of handling issues.
Eli the high priest was a man who knew God in the past. Although things had deteriorated to the point that God was no longer communicating with him, he was still able to recognise when God speaks and ministers to His own children. Samuel, on the other hand, was a young inexperienced lad who did not recognise the voice of God. When God called him, he continued to run to Eli in response, until the old priest pointed him to God. As they say, experience matters. It cannot be bought.
Young people sometimes look down on older people and think their time has gone. Many young ministers may look at the elderly and aging people like Eli and think that since “the word of the LORD was precious in those days; there was no open vision”. They can do away with the counsel of the elders. King Rehoboam made such a mistake when he ignored the counsel of the elders and heeded his peers’ advice. The event proved very costly for him and the nation.
While we must be watchful against old ‘priests’ who seek to mislead young people, we must equally obey the Scripture’s injunction that “Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head, and honour the face of the old man, and fear thy God: I am the LORD” (Leviticus 19:32). Seeking proper counsel from elderly Christians is good and necessary for the young to keep their vision of God fresh and continuous.
Listed among “500 most powerful people on the planet” by the Foreign Policy magazine in 2013, Pastor (Dr.) William F. Kumuyi is the founder and General Superintendent of the Deeper Christian Life Ministry (DCLM) headquartered in Lagos, Nigeria. DCLM started in 1973 as a 15-member Bible study group right in Kumuyi’s apartment at University of Lagos where he was a lecturer. His revolutionary Bible teaching on personal holiness and commitment to evangelism soon gained so much traction and resulted in a widespread revival.
