This is my fifth go around of the Bible. God stopped me short in I Samuel and said, “Listen, don’t you think you’ve done enough surveying? It’s time to dig deep.” So…I dug–right into the coronation of Saul.

Now, the challenge was: to be able to recite/retell the whole story of 1 Samuel up to the coronation of King David. I’ve been working on this for the past couple of days and getting as far as Jonathan and his armor bearer’s defeat of the Philistine garrison.

Then today, when preparing for my morning devotional, I decided to go aside from the Lord’s plan for my devotions and branch out of 1 Samuel.

The result: after using a random number generator to produce a random Biblical page location, punch in the numbers in my Kindle and go to the page, I end up in 1 Samuel. Guess where? The passage with Jonathan and the armor bearer.

The moral: just do what God says the first time and save yourself the trouble.