As we headed out to our first ever dove hunt in the Peoria area. The CTO Sportsmen were excited to stay at anew facility that will also hold one of our Summer Camps next year. The compound is called Wild at Heart and is run by our Friends of CTO Members Peter and Wanda. We were excited to stay in this facility and see all it had to offer.

The boys were doubly excited to get to harvest their first doves too. We were able to get a couple. The dove hunting was extremely difficult and we had to travel from site to site to finally find one where the doves were flying regularly. Luckily we have had a few good deer hunts over the years or I think we would have starved from the results of this hunt.

The Lord gave us an extremely hard campfire discussion too. If I had to guess it was because most of the boys who participated in this discussion were from our older high school age Sportsmen. We delved into 1 Samuel 15:22 and began to look at what God was trying to teach us though this scripture and campfire question.

These men are getting older and beginning to start their path into their own identities of whom they want to become after high school. I hope we have discipled well. I hope we have given them enough good life examples that they will be able to hold onto Jesus and not forsake Him as life becomes challenging.

When we read the whole of 1 Samuel 15 we see that Saul, Israel’s King, decided to not listen to God, but rather listened to his subjects. God had given him a clear command. Saul decided to keep all the best livestock instead of destroying them as God had commanded. When God's prophet Samuel confronted Saul about what he had done, Saul told Samuel that he kept the animals to use as sacrifices to the Lord. Then Samuel interrupted Saul, and told him that he could no longer be king because Saul’s self doubt allowed his followers to lead him away from the command of God. Instead of taking on the responsibility of his choices, he blamed the people he was called to lead.

It was here that Samuel said, although burnt offerings and sacrifices are good, obeying God’s voice is better than any sacrifice that you can make. Listening to God’s voice is more pleasing to God than the fat of the ram. (The burnt offering of the fat of the ram is described in other places in scripture to be a pleasing aroma to God.)

After we had discussed the background and the original meaning of this scripture, I asked the Sportsmen what does that mean for us today. Often this scripture is used out of context to get people to behave themselves, but is that really what the scripture is trying to teach us here, or is there something more significant being shared?

As I explained to the boys, through this passage, God teaches what He expects from those He puts in leadership. God expects His leaders to come to Him for direction. God looks for us to find our self worth in His opinion rather than in the opinion of others, and to be secure as His leader because God has placed us in the position. God wants us to be confident in whom He is, because God gives instruction to the leader He put in place, not necessarily to everyone else. This is why it is extremely important that as God puts us in leadership positions we need to consistently look to him for guidance, and why God holds those in leadership more accountable.  

The young men who were around this campfire continue to grow and are fulfilling the roles God has planned for them.