When God is near but not Honored

Have you ever been caught off guard by someone you never expected to come through? Let me explain. You’re working on something, and it isn’t going the way you hoped. Frustration slowly turns into misuse. You start forcing things and blaming the product itself. Then someone else comes along, someone who doesn’t know much about it but they follow the basic instructions, respect how it’s meant to work, and suddenly… it works.

I remember this happening in my own life. It was back in 2012, the first time I ever used an iPhone. I wasn’t familiar with the system at all. I was trying to get something to work, I don’t even remember what it was but the more I tried, the worse it got. I kept clicking around, forcing things, but nothing worked. While I was at it, my wife watched for a moment and asked me to hand the phone over. She wasn’t an expert with iPhones either, but she said there are a few basic principles that apply to any phone. She tapped a few things calmly, followed those basics, and to my surprise it worked.

I noticed a similar pattern when I read 1 Samuel chapters 4 through 6.

Israel went to battle against the Philistines and was defeated. When they reflected on what went wrong, they concluded that the missing piece was the ark of the Lord. They sent men to bring the ark and the Bible quietly gives us an important detail here: the two sons of Eli were with the ark. That alone hints that something was already off. Still, when the ark was brought into the camp, Israel erupted in celebration. They shouted so loudly that the ground shook. To them, the presence of the ark meant God was obligated to act.

But nothing else changed. There was no repentance, no turning back, no correction of corrupt leadership. God’s presence was assumed, not honored. When Israel went into battle again, they were defeated once more. The ark was captured. Eli’s two sons were killed. What they treated casually was not casual at all.

Then the story takes an unexpected turn.

When the Philistines captured the ark, they didn’t celebrate for long. They placed it beside their god Dagon, but by morning, Dagon had fallen face down before it. The next day, his head and hands were broken. Tumors broke out among the people. City after city was struck with fear. The Philistines didn’t know the God of Israel personally, but they understood something Israel had forgotten, this God is not to be taken lightly.

They didn’t say, “This ark is powerless.”

They said, “The hand of the God of Israel is heavy upon us.”

What happens next is even more striking. The Philistines gather their priests and diviners. They discuss tresspass offerings. They recall Egypt and Pharaoh. They reason carefully about how to return the ark. They don’t treat what’s happening as coincidence or superstition. They treat it as divine. They even test whether this truly is the hand of God by placing the ark in a cart with two unmilked cows to take it to Beth Shamesh and He confirms it.

The irony is hard to miss.

Those who lived closest to God abused His presence.

Those who barely knew Him trembled at His holiness.

Israel had proximity with God but the Philistines had something much more which is the reverence to God.

As I sat with this passage, I couldn’t help but think back to that moment with my phone. I was forcing something I didn’t fully understand, assuming familiarity gave me control. My wife didn’t know more than I did but she operated on the basic principles, and that made all the difference.

Sometimes the issue isn’t that God isn’t present.

It’s that we’ve stopped honoring how He works.

We can live close to holy things of God such as Scripture, prayer, church and yet treat God like a tool to fix our problems rather than a Lord to be obeyed. Familiarity can quietly turn into entitlement. Confidence can replace repentance.

The question this passage leaves us with isn’t about where God is.

It’s about how we respond to Him.

Do we force Him into our plans, or do we fear Him enough to align with His ways?

Sometimes, those who know God least recognize His divinity most clearly. And sometimes, the greatest danger isn’t distance from God but getting so used to Him that we forget who He is.