Shownotes
In this episode of the Mirror Series, we take a deep look at the life of Saul, Israel’s first king. At first glance, Saul seems like the perfect leader—tall, strong, chosen by God, and celebrated by the people. But beneath the surface, his story reveals a struggle many of us know too well: the tension between being called and feeling unqualified, between obedience and control, and between God’s approval and the crowd’s applause. Saul started humble and ended haunted, and in the space between, we find powerful lessons about faith, fear, and the choices we make.
Top Topics Covered:
1. The Mirror Framework:
We explore how biblical figures like Saul serve as reflective mirrors for our own spiritual journey. Each character is examined through the lens of Moment, Identity, Right Choices, Risks & Wrongs, Ongoing Message, and Small Steps.
2. Saul’s Humble Beginning:
Saul never chased a crown—he was simply looking for lost donkeys when God chose him. His anointing wasn't political; it was divine. Early on, Saul shows promise, leadership, and even moments of spiritual power. But these early victories mask deeper insecurities that slowly unravel his life.
3. The Shift from Trust to Control:
Saul’s fear of losing influence led him to take matters into his own hands, stepping into roles God never asked him to fill. His downward spiral wasn’t dramatic at first—it started with small compromises, delayed obedience, and a need to please the people. Each decision chipped away at his trust in God.
4. The Tragic Pattern of Half-Obedience:
From offering sacrifices without Samuel to sparing the Amalekite king against God’s command, Saul’s actions reveal a dangerous trend: obeying only when convenient. His spiritual downfall teaches us that delayed or partial obedience still counts as disobedience.
5. The Jealousy Toward David:
Once David enters the scene, Saul’s insecurity becomes toxic. What could have been a mentorship turns into paranoia, obsession, and violence. Instead of shepherding Israel, Saul spends his final years chasing shadows and losing himself in fear.
Takeaways:
Saul’s story reminds us that being chosen isn’t the same as being faithful. His life warns us that fear and insecurity can hollow out even the most promising beginnings. God gave Saul every opportunity to trust, repent, and lead with humility. But Saul chose control over surrender, image over obedience, and fear over faith.
So what do we do when we’re tempted to obey halfway? When waiting feels unsafe and we try to “fix” things ourselves? Saul shows us that trusting God fully, even when it’s uncomfortable, leads to lasting peace and purpose. His life is a sobering but necessary reminder: you can start strong and still miss the mark if you let fear drive your choices.
We’re invited to choose differently. To obey completely. To surrender control. And to trust that God is enough—even when the crowd is loud, the wait is long, or the outcome feels uncertain.
Let Saul’s mirror reflect what needs to change in us—and give us the courage to follow through.
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Transcripts
Is Saul, the king, a good mirror for us or a bad mirror for us? That's what we're going to be talking about today. Hi, this is Jill from the Northwoods talking about Bible topics one small step at a time. We're going to continue on on our Mirrors series. And just to give you an idea about what the Mirror series is, just because we're going to do this sporadically, it's a way of engaging the scriptures in a way that helps us learn biblical stories. but also see ourselves or maybe our personality types reflected in them in the end we're supposed to reflect Christ and you know gain towards perfection but sometimes these people in the Bible are a lot like us I remember talking to a friend of mine and she says one thing about the Bible that's hard for her is these people are so different from us they lived in a different time they had different you know locations and cultures and I just don't relate to any of them and so my goal was to help her in that sense of better being able to relate to them. Because I think in the end, people are people. Whether they're Adam and Eve and far away from us in time as possible, you could get or our neighbors, people are people. And so the mirrors stands for M for the moment. When did they live? What was going on in their lives in the Bible story? Identity. Who was this person beyond the title? What were their fears and their temperament? Those kinds of things. How did God respond to them? And how did they respond back to God? R stands for the right choices. What things did they do that aligned with God's heart? You know, but then again, nobody's perfect. And so the other R are the risks and the wrongs, if I could spell wrong with an R. It's where, you know, pride and fear, insecurity, desire led them off course and made them have choices that we'll talk about. O is the ongoing message. What does their life teach us today about faith and leadership and obedience and grace from God? And S stands for small steps. None of us are, you know, goods or bad. Some of us are Davids and some of us are Sauls. We are all a mixed bag of people. And so we're going to talk a little bit about that today. So that's exactly how it is. So let's take a look at who Saul was and see how that story slowly unravels to ourselves. You know, if you think about, have you ever been given something you prayed for your whole life? only to realize that you didn't know how to carry it out. And once you got it, it caused you nothing but pain and suffering. What if something that you got in life, maybe it was a promotion or influence, maybe you're an influencer or platform, was never meant to expose your strength like you thought it was. This is going to show, you know, I'm going to be on the YouTubes, I'm going to be awesome. But instead, it exposed your trust or maybe your lack of trust in God. What we're talking about today is a man who started out humble, even a bit small, and ended haunted, lived most of his life somewhere in between. He's a king that was chosen by God, a leader that was anointed by the Spirit and Samuel, and yet the man nearly lost everything, not at once, but piece by piece. And the story of Saul, if we're honest, is a story that mirrors us, and we might not like that. The moment in time was Israel wanted a king, and they were like, we want a king. And God was like, I don't think you want a king because he's just going to tax you. He's going to enslave your sons for soldiers and take your daughters. And they're like, no, all the other countries have kings. We want a king. And they demanded a king, and God's like, okay, you know, we're going to give you a king. You have to understand that that was the time, the moment that created a king. Israel asked for a king because they were tired of trusting God's invisibility. God hadn't failed them, but they were failing God. And they saw the other nations around them with crowns, invisible power, and Israel said to the prophet, give us a king like everyone else. It wasn't a political request. They weren't even thinking probably about the politics of it. They were having a spiritual shift. God wasn't enough. They wanted something they could see. And I think they wanted something because they saw these kings with these armies and they felt like they needed protection. With a king and God in his mercy, with his warning, gave them what they asked for. So now we have Saul. Saul didn't grow up chasing a throne. There wasn't a throne. He was a son of Kish, which was from the tribe of Benjamin, which is the smallest tribe in all of Israel. It's also the tribe of Jesus comes from. And when we first meet him, He's not campaigning, you know, for any sort of leadership. He's not looking like a leader at all. He's looking for his lost donkeys. And Saul became a king not through ambition. He became a king because God chose him. It was through a selection. He was tall, strong, impressive, everything people thought a king should look like outwardly. And Saul was the perfect person for that role. Inwardly, something else was forming inside of Saul. him. And we'll see. You know, that happens from time to time in people in the Bible. When Samuel anoints him, Saul later is found hiding among the baggage. That moment tells us everything. He was chosen. He's not secure. He doesn't feel like he belongs. He's called to this position, but he's not convinced. So that's kind of the backstory of how we got a king. His identity is really a man who's torn between his calling and insecurity his whole life. His struggle wasn't leadership. He was a really good leader, as it turned out. It was identity. He knew God chose him, and he never fully believed it. He knew God would sustain him, and he never trusted it. Early on, the Spirit of God comes on powerfully upon Saul. He prophesies. He leads. He wins battles. People celebrate him. But beneath the victory, you kind of wonder if this fear was growing inside of him, because we see the Bible pop up suddenly, but we know that's not really how people work. You know, usually when something pops up in them later in life, it was always kind of there rumbling around. I think he starts thinking, I might not be enough. I might not be able to do it. What if people stop following me? What if my good fortune in all of this doesn't last? And instead of letting God help him, help define him, show him the path, Saul let the crowd do it. And that's where everything began to fracture form. Saul's identity became reactive. He was only confident as long as people cheered him on. He's insecurity to sit on the throne started growing and growing and growing, and eventually it turned into control. I have to have control. I have to take charge, right? We talked in the Bible about, you know, all the people who say, I have to do what God's not doing for me. What his right choices were is that he initially, he trusted God really early on. He was not a bad king at the beginning. His best moments came early on. The city of Jabesh, Gilead, was threatened. Saul was filled with righteous anger and not ego, but godly resolve. And he rallied Israel, defeated the enemy, restored the dignity of the people and their freedom. And after that victory, Some of the people wanted Saul to punish the critics. And Saul refused. He chose mercy. He gave God glory. That's leadership. He didn't just go with the crowd. He knew what the right thing was to do. He showed courage in battle, the moment of humility in success of the battle, and he trusted God's direction. And things went well. He listened, and his kingdom was stable. be genuinely used by God. You know, he's a really admirable character. By the way, if you haven't seen that David series, it's full of a lot of wars, but it's really intriguing, I think. And it kind of shows you a Saul, I guess I never quite imagined, but I could see that being the real Saul. The tragedy is not that Saul never obeyed. The tragedy comes along when he stopped trusting obedience would be enough. And that's where we look at the risks and the wrongs. His turning point comes slowly, but really decisively, somewhere in 1 Samuel 13. Saul faces pressure. Samuel hadn't arrived yet to offer the sacrifice. Saul panics, and instead of waiting for God's instruction, Saul takes actions into his own hands, performs the sacrifice himself, so acting as a priest when he's a king, which he was told specifically not to do. And even though it seems small, and maybe even a little bit practical, well, you know, Oh, Samuel hasn't shown up yet. It reveals something big, that Saul trusted his own fear more than God's word. When Samuel arrives, Saul explains himself. He blames the people, you know, he blames the situation. He justifies his decision, and Samuel says words that will echo through the entire scripture. Obedience is better than sacrifice. From there, that pattern deepens. God commands Saul to completely destroy the Amalekites. Saul wins the battle and keeps the best livestock and spares the king. Partial obedience, dressed up as worship. When confronted about it, Saul insists that he obeyed. He shifts the blame again. I was listening to the people and not listening to God. This is Saul's downfall. Rebellion in one moment, but it's resistance. That resistance to God's word is growing and growing and growing over time. Now David enters the story. When David is celebrated and has these victories, Saul feels threatened. What started as insecurity becomes jealousy, and jealousy turns into obsession, and obsession becomes violence. The Spirit of the Lord departs from Saul. And torment, you know, there's that one parable that Jesus talks about where a house is clean and emptied, and suddenly a bad spirit enters it and then goes out and finds seven other bad spirits to You know, whenever you have that vacant space, it gets occupied. And now he spends his final years chasing David instead of shepherding Israel. He loses his kingdom, not because God abandoned him, but because he himself stopped surrendering to God's will, trusting in God at all. The message that Saul teaches us is that Saul's life is sobering. It really is. It shows you that You can be chosen and still drift. That you can be anointed and still resist God's will. And you can start out really great and then finish poorly. It also teaches us that downfall rarely begins with outright acts of defiance. It kind of begins with fear of losing control, fear of waiting on God, that lack of trust in God. And Saul shows us what happens when in And even here, God's heart remains evident. Saul was warned. He was corrected. He was given space to repent. God didn't remove Saul lightly. It reminds us that God is really patient. He is also serious about the posture of our hearts. to mirror God's image in the Bible, what do we take away with Saul's story? I think we first reflect, am I tempted to obey halfway? Do I rush in ahead of God because I feel like waiting is unsafe? I don't trust God. Do I approve the voice of the people more than God's voice in my life? And when we respond, do we delay obedience? start mistrusting God? And when we have securities, do we start falling for those securities? So for us, I think we need to look at ourselves and find out what do we do when there's a delay in our obedience? What do we do when we're afraid of losing or losing something important or not getting what we wanted? Are we listening for someone else's call and not listening to God's call? And if we are, what do we need to do? to do so that we can relinquish that control god doesn't want our control he wants our trust and our love and our faith and that's what he's he's desiring for us saul's story is not meant to shame us it's meant to warn us in a loving way because we follow the same god that saul worshiped and god still invites us to choose him daily and full of humility and full of love by God, but he was affirmed by the people. They were excited about him, but he was unduncted by his own fear and his own lack of trust. His story doesn't have to be our story. We can choose obedience over optics. We can surrender our control. We can put trust where fear used to be. And if we do those things, we just don't lead better. We live more free lives. So that's the mirror that Saul holds up to us. And I hope it gives us the courage to really at the wisdom that we found in that particular chapter. All right, everyone, thanks so much. I appreciate you listening to this. I hope that inspires you to take a look at a person in the Bible who really can teach us quite a bit. Thanks so much for listening. If you want to email me, you can email me at jill at startwithsmallsteps.com. I'd love to hear from you. Put a comment right here, too. Thanks so much, and have a great day. ご視聴ありがとうございました