I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Samuel 14-15.

This passage makes me feel bad that Jonathan never becomes king over Israel.  Jonathan displays both a strong faith in God and a knowledge of military tactics.  Of course, he also displays a sort of “better to ask for forgiveness than beg for permission” attitude which might be a problem in a king.  In yesterday’s passage, Jonathan attacked a Philistine garrison, precipitating the war between the Philistines and Israel.  In today’s passage, he sneaks out of the Israelite camp and attacks an outpost of the Philistine army.  Jonathan justifies his plan to satisfy his Adrenalin craving, correctly, by stating that if God is with them nothing can hinder them.  However, he does not assume that God is with him.  He lays out a test for a sign from God.  Instead of trying to sneak up on the Philistines, he lets them see him and his armor bearer.  He stated in advance that if they threatened to kill the two of them if they came closer, that would be a sign that God did not approve his endeavor and he would return to camp.  But if the Philistines invited them up to fight that would be the sign that God was with them.  When the latter happened, Jonathan and his armor bearer went up and killed twenty of the Philistines.  This sowed confusion among the Philistines which Saul took advantage of to win a great victory.

When I started writing the previous paragraph I was going to go in a different direction, but this morning I read an article about the movie “Unplanned”. “Unplanned” is the story of a former employee of Planned Parenthood who has become an anto-abortion activist. This led me to focus on Jonathan’s statement that nothing can hinder the Lord. The producers of the movie “Unplanned” ran into many obstacles to releasing this movie: music companies refused them a license to use songs, the movie rating board gave the movie an R rating, Fox was the only network which accepted advertisements for the movie, etc.. Despite all of this, “Unplanned” had a per screen revenue higher than “Captain Marvel” (“Unplanned” only played on a little over 1,000 screens). The producers of “Unplanned” did not let the opposition to their movie deter them because they believed that God was with them. When the movie rating board gave them an R rating (which was given for the depiction of an abortion in the movie), they expressed that even the movie rating board was recognizing how horrific abortion really is. If we are doing God’s will, we should let nothing deter us because God will turn every obstacle into a blessing.