The Priest You're Drawing Near To

Most of us will never steal from a church offering plate. Most of us will never commit the kinds of sins Hophni and Phinehas committed in plain sight at the tabernacle. So it's easy to read a passage like 1 Samuel 2 and feel like we're watching someone else's story.

But the passage's most pointed warning isn't aimed at people who've wandered far from God. It's aimed at people who are close to him every single day. People who know the vocabulary, the calendar, the procedures. People who show up. The warning is that it's entirely possible to be that person and still not know God at all.

So here's the question worth sitting with this week: when you engage with the things of God, what are you actually doing?

When you open your Bible, are you genuinely coming to hear from God, or are you checking a box? When you show up on Sunday, are you there to encounter the living God, or to maintain your standing? When you serve, lead, give, or teach, who is that actually for? These aren't trick questions designed to produce guilt. They're diagnostic questions, the same kind the narrator of 1 Samuel is pressing throughout the passage. The issue isn't your activity. It's the posture of your heart behind it.

Here's something worth practicing this week. Before you engage in any act of worship or service, take sixty seconds and ask God one question: is my heart actually here? Not your body. Not your schedule. Your heart. That single habit, practiced consistently, is the difference between the linen ephod Samuel wore as a child and the priestly vestments Hophni and Phinehas wore as corrupt men. The garments looked the same from the outside. God saw straight through to what was underneath.

The good news this passage keeps insisting on is that you have a faithful priest who intercedes for you permanently. On the days when your heart isn't where it should be, on the days when you recognize a little too much of Eli in yourself, on the days when the familiarity has crowded out the fear, you have someone standing before God on your behalf who never has that problem. He always did what was in the Father's heart. He always will.
Draw near to him today. Not to the procedures. Not to the vocabulary. To him.