Anointing the Future

Now the LORD said to Samuel, “How long will you mourn for Saul, seeing I have rejected him from reigning over Israel? Fill your horn with oil, and go; I am sending you to Jesse the Bethlehemite. For I have provided Myself a king among his sons.”
(1 Samuel 16:1 HCSB )

The people of Israel had once again rejected God’s perfect will for their future. Wanting to be just like all the other nations around them, they asked Samuel to anoint a king over them. As prophesied, what started out well ended miserably. Because of Saul’s disobedience, God rejected him as king

This grieved Samuel, because he knew that every human being is a mixed bag. None of us is all good, or all evil. Samuel grieved the loss of that which was good in Saul. Also, Samuel felt a certain degree of responsibility for Saul’s failure, since he had been the one to anoint Saul as king. So God asked him, “How long will you mourn for Saul, seeing I have rejected him from reigning over Israel?”

Often, we find ourselves mourning the passing of the past. Either we regret doing things we shouldn’t have done, or we regret not doing what we should have done. Or, we grieve the past by looking nostalgically back to “the good old days” rather than embracing what God is doing in the present. Those good old days can keep us from pressing on to the future that God has planned for us. How often the past holds us bound—unable to be effective in God’s kingdom! God asks us the same thing He asked Samuel: “How long will you mourn for (you fill in the blank)?”

“Fill your horn with oil and go,” God says. In the Bible, anointing oil always represents the presence of the Holy Spirit. God was sending Samuel to anoint a new king. God tells you, “Fill your life with the presence of My Holy Spirit. Go, and anoint the future.”

You anoint the future by getting past the past. You anoint the future by embracing healing, restoration, and peace. You embrace the future by refusing to wallow in either past glory or sins that are forgiven and gone.

In Isaiah 43:18-19 (HCSB) God says, “Do not remember the past events, pay no attention to things of old. Look, I am about to do something new; even now it is coming. Do you not see it? Indeed, I will make a way in the wilderness, rivers in the desert.”

Jeremiah 29:11 (NIV) says, “’For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’”
As it was with Samuel, the choice is up to you. Will you wallow, or will you arise? Will you fill your life with the presence of the Holy Spirit, and go to anoint the future?