Welcome to the InTouch podcast with Charles Stanley for Tuesday, July 29th.

How do you handle the opinions of others or the weight of overwhelming pressure?

Today we are taking a moment to look at the life of King Saul and discover why precise obedience to God matters, especially when the pressure is on.

I want to talk about the priority of obedience.

And what I'd like to do is to take you through the scriptures to demonstrate to show you

why. I do believe this is the key to the heart of God.

And as you follow through the scriptures with me, what I want you to do is to listen carefully

and to look at these scriptures and then relate them to your own heart.

Because sometimes it's difficult to be obedient.

Sometimes it's painful to be obedient.

But obedience is always the right thing to do with no exception.

So I want you to turn, first of all,

if you will. Let's look in the 10th chapter of 1st Samuel. Just going over Joshua, judges,

Ruth, 1st Samuel. Look if you were in the 10th chapter. And this is probably one of the best examples of why so many people are so dissatisfied and unhappy in their

Christian life. This is the way they reasoned obedience. I'm going to give you a little background.

Samuel is the prophet. And they don't have any kings in those days at that time. And so Samuel is the

prophet through whom God speaks. And the people keep saying, we want a king, we want a king like the rest of the earth.

And so finally, God says, all right, you want a king?

I'm going to give you one.

In other words, instead of you honoring me as your king, you want a king, I'm going to give you a king.

And so he tells Samuel what he used to do.

So look, if you will, chapter 10, verse one. Then Samuel took the flask of oil, poured it on his head,

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