You have to imagine how he felt in that moment.
Saul's entire army is being chased by the Philistines across a large hill. They're running for their lives. Saul's gripped by terror, sprinting so fast he's struggling to keep his feet as he attempts to navigate the rocky terrain. He glances backward only to see all three of his sons cut down by the enemy. His heart sinks, but he has no time to grieve. He must keep running. And suddenly, he feels a slight sting in the small of his back. At first, it just feels like a bite, but quickly that sting spreads like wildfire throughout his body. The metallic taste of blood touches his lips. His body turns limp as he crashes to the turf. His heart is pounding. He knows he has to keep moving, but his body won't listen. He reaches a trembling arm around his side to feel the long shaft of an arrow protruding from his back. "That's it," he thinks. "I'm finished."
The pain intensifies as he takes one more glance behind him. The Philistines are getting closer and closer and closer, and his heart is beating faster. Saul knows what it means to be the king in the hands of an enemy. He's seen former kings tortured until they begged to be killed. So Saul grabs the wrist of his armor bearer and says, "Draw your sword and run me through or these [Philistines] will come and run me through and abuse me" (1 Sam. 31:4)
He couldn't blame his armor bearer for refusing. Who'd want to be the Israelite who had to explain why he killed the king. Saul knew what he had to do. He could hear the screams of the Philistines bellowing closer and closer. His time was running out. He drew his own sword, and then he wedged the handle between two rocks on the hill, and pointed the tip toward his abdomen. Saul gently leaned forward just to test how it might feel. He felt the sharp pain, but knew he had to apply more pressure. And as the cold steel entered his body, the final thought that went through his head was: "How did I let my life end up like this?"
This is the final chapter in this study on Saul. We've seen Saul as a celebrated king. He had the support of the whole country. Samuel, the prophet, counseled him. The Lord had chosen him. God gave him his spirit and transformed him to be who he wanted him to be. But what we have repeatedly seen throughout Saul's life is a perpetual unwillingness to simply believe that he was who God said he was. For Saul, those deeply imbedded insecurities that kept telling him he was no good, that he was too small, that he was nothing, that he was incapable of leading, that nobody would follow him, eventualy won. He believed the lies and became what he feared most. And as Samuel warned and predicted (1 Sam. 13:14), Saul lost his throne and lost his life to his own undoing.
I think the reason I was drawn to writing this series on Saul was because I understand Saul on alot of levels. I know what it's like to know in my head what is true about me but believe in my heart something completely different. I think Saul was the kind of guy who, like me, often thought to himself, "If they knew the things about me that I know about me, nobody would want to follow my lead or see me succeed or love me or care about me." That's why I see Saul's story as a cautionary tale about what can happen to the person who lets his or her insecurities dictate their life. Saul's life is a tragedy . . . somebody with so much potential, a man with all the right cards in his hand, and he blew it. The thing is: WE OFTEN DON'T REALIZE THE POWER OF OUR OWN INSECURITIES!!! And for all of us, I think God wants us to know that he has alot more confidence in us than we often have in ourselves.
Here's one of my favorite verses of Scripture: "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!" (2 Cor. 5:17)
If I am a new creation, and if I can trust in God's goodness, and his love, and what he believes to be true about me, then there is nothing that can stop me from doing what he has enabled me and empowered me to do. It doesn't mean that I can just do anything I put my mind to. It simply means that God's got a purpose for me here. He's equipped me for some corner of his Kingdom to make some sort of difference. And if I trust him, and believe in him . . . God's made me a creature that is BUILT TO DO what he wants me to do. And THAT is the ONLY thing I must live up to.
There's no one I know who has done a better treatment of this concept than Rob Bell in Velvet Elvis. So let me give you just a bit of context. Bell is talking about the fact that for many years he believed that he had to be a "super-pastor." And of course he realized that he was no super-pastor, because nobody's a super-pastor, and he started feeling alot of guilt over that before he finally did something about it. . . Bell says:
"I meet so many people who have superwhatever rattling around in their head. They have this person they are convinced they are supposed to be, and their superwhatever is killing them. They have this image they picked up over the years of how they are supposed to look and act and work and play and talk, and it's like a voice that never stops shouting in their ear.
And the only way to not be killed by it is to shoot first.
Yes that is what I meant to write.
You have to kill your superwhatever.
And you have to do it right now.
Because your superwhatever will rob you of today and tomorrow and the next day until you take it out back and end it's life" (116).
I think if Saul had decided early in life that he would take his "superking" out back and kill it, he wouldn't have ended up on the short end of his own sword. And I think if more moms would shoot first and kill their "supermoms" many of them would do a better job raising their kids, because they themselves would be healthier and happier. And I think if more young women killed the supermodels in their head, we might see fewer eating disorders among teenagers. We often underestimate the power of our own insecurities. I underestimate them everyday. Throughout this series I've had a chance to talk about some of my own, and as a result I've taken the opportunity to kill a few of them too. I hope you do too. I believe God does his best work when we get our own junk out of the way.
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