Saul waited there seven days for Samuel, as Samuel had instructed him earlier, but Samuel still didn’t come. Saul realized that his troops were rapidly slipping away. So he demanded, “Bring me the burnt offering and the peace offerings!” And Saul sacrificed the burnt offering himself.
1 Samuel 13:8-9 NLT
Saul showed a number of things here:
- Lack of trust in Samuel
- Impatience
- Conceit, by believing that he could do someone else’s job
- Underlying fear
So many of our actions are influenced by our emotions. In a lot of cases, this is no bad thing. Emotions like love can change an ordinary action into something truly special, but the negative emotions like distrust, impatience, conceit, fear, anger can turn an ordinary action into something destructive or even disastrous. We were made to have emotions but we were also made to have control over them.
I need to exercise control over my emotions. They influence my thoughts, but my thought process should be using them and controlling them, rather than the other way about.