God Looks at the Heart!

1 Samuel 16:7 English Standard Version (ESV)

But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”

 

 

I wrote about this on Facebook a couple of weeks ago and, since it has a spiritual lesson, I thought it was worth posting on my blog as well.

I'm sure that most of you know the story from the verse above. King Saul had failed as ruler of the nation of Israel so God told Samuel that He had chosen a new king. The new king was to be from the house of Jessie. Samuel was to go to the house of Jessie and God would show him who the new king was to be. The first person that Samuel saw was the oldest son. He was tall and handsome and Samuel thought that he was the obvious choice. God, however, had other plans. That is where the above verse comes in. God does not look at the outward appearance, but at what is inside. The following story, although not completely, in some ways is an example of not looking at the outward appearance.

Our middle child, Joshua, bowled at the Tennessee State Youth Bowling Tournament a couple of weekends ago. One of his teammates from his four man team unexpectedly couldn't make it so we were given an alternate. We kept looking around for our alternate but, since he wasn't from our bowling club, we didn't know who he was or what he looked like. When our team was  announced out runs this little guy that didn't look over five years old. Sarah and I both thought "how cute, the little guy is going out with his older brother".

Oh no! How wrong we were! The "little guy" WAS our alternate! Let me introduce you to six year old bowling phenom Alex. Alex has been bowling since he could barely stand and won his first tournament when he was four! With six year old Alex and three teenage boys our team ended up in a tie for fifth place out of nearly forty teams!

This could also be an example of never judge a book by its cover or big things can come in small packages!

The little guy in the picture above is Alex. I didn't get a picture of him with our team so this is a picture of him with another team that I found.