You Can Pray and Never Seek God

Saul stood on a ridge at Gilboa looking down at more Philistines than he had ever seen, and he did the thing you would want him to do. He asked God. Dreams, Urim, prophets, three ways God had spoken to the kings of Israel, and all three went quiet inside a single verse (1 Samuel 28:6). Then watch what happens next.

One verse later he tells his servants to go find him a medium (28:7). That is the whole gap. One verse between asking God and looking somewhere else.

Now remember what Scripture says about the very same night. "He did not seek guidance from the LORD" (1 Chronicles 10:14). Both are true. Saul asked. And God says he never sought Him.

That is a diagnosis, and it is not aimed at the person who never darkens a church door. Saul knew the vocabulary. He had enforced God's law on other people. He swore an oath by the name of the LORD in the middle of breaking the law of the LORD, and it never once occurred to him that there was a problem.

Every religious instinct was intact. There was just nobody home.

Here is the uncomfortable part. A man can want an answer without wanting the One who gives it, and you find out which one you have been doing by how quickly a second option shows up when the first one goes quiet. You prayed about it on Sunday. By Tuesday you had called the person you already knew would agree with you. You kept gathering opinions until somebody finally said the thing you were hoping to hear. You had the plan drafted before you ever bowed your head.

So ask a harder question this week than the one you have been asking. Do I want God in this, or do I just want out of this? Then go after Him instead of the answer. Open the Book with nothing to gain from it. Pray past the request and stay a while.

And if that exposes something in you, it is meant to. There was One who never asked God for an outcome instead of God, who never prayed a prayer that was not perfect, and in the dark on a cross He asked and God did not answer Him. He took the silence Saul had earned. He took it so that you will never have to hear it.