SV Identity 2026: Love God | Matt Beasley

1 Samuel 1–3 — What does it actually look like to love God this week — not on Sunday, but in the middle of an ordinary, hurried life? Lead Pastor Matt Beasley opens SV Identity at Severns Valley.

Jesus named it plainly in Matthew 22: love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind. But for many of us that truth becomes background noise — words on a hallway wall we've stopped hearing. First Samuel gives us a family where that love gets tested for real: Hannah, wounded year after year by a rival wife's cruelty, who pours out her grief to God and stays faithful without ever being guaranteed the outcome she wanted. Meanwhile Eli's sons treat ministry like a racket, and Eli himself offers rebuke without correction — until a boy named Samuel, raised in the middle of that failure, becomes the one whose ear is open enough to hear God's voice.

A few things to carry into your week:

Loving God isn't attendance, politeness, or an offering — it's a whole-life surrender that reshapes everything.

Hannah shows us love for God that doesn't depend on getting what we asked for.

Love of God won't pass to our kids automatically — they inherit our example, for better or worse, far more than our convictions.

Samuel didn't yet know the Lord, but he was sensitive enough to answer when God called — and that's the posture available to any of us today.

"What would it look like this week for you to actually listen?"

August 2, 2026

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