God had plans for Saul and He has plans for you. It was not Samuel's fault that Saul acted disobediently and it will not be God's fault when we do. We need to trust God and take responsibility for our own actions.
"...and that the Philistines were assembling at Micmash. I thought, "Now the Philistines will come down against me at Gilgal and I have not sought the Lord's favor. Verses 11 & 12 - The third mistake we can make is to start seeing perceived threats in our mind and act upon them instead of God. Here we see Saul creating scenarios in his head for how things will go wrong. He shows no faith in God, who has delivered him in the past from his enemies. We too have seen God work mightily in our lives, delivering us from strongholds and enemies time and again only to then doubt God. Saul's panic is starting to set in. He is allowing his fear to dictate to him instead of his faith. But remember the spirit of fear is not from God:
For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline. 2Timothy 1:7
Saul was not showing any power nor attributing any to God. He gave all of the power to his circumstances. He showed no patience or self-discipline either. We too can find ourselves in similar situations in life. Forgetting all that God has done and instead allowing our circumstances to dictate fear into our hearts, driving our faith out.
Notice the pattern here. Saul starts by allowing the fear to exist when he sees the men scattering. He then starts to blame others and when he sees Samuel is merely late; his fear begins to germinate into panic. He then creates perceived threats in his mind and trumps them up to be bigger than they really are and also, bigger than God. We too can allow our circumstances to instill fear in our hearts and weaken our faith. We too can then seek to blame anyone but ourselves, furthering our panic giving our circumstances more power than they deserve. Finally we too can start to trump up scenarios in our head to further our fear into panic. We can create scenarios in our heads to drive us further away from the faith we know we should have after watching God do so much in our lives.
Then Saul tries to wrap it all up in God. After displaying a lack of trust in God, blaming others, and allowing his fear to dictate to his faith, he then concludes that it was because he had not sought the Lord's favor. As if all of his actions up until now had been seeking God. This can be a pattern we fall into as well as Christians. We can over-spiritualize that which is not spiritual. You see this when people use the need to pray for someone as a means to spread gossip. Or when we reach a conclusion in our mind about a decision and then seek "confirmation" from God. As opposed to seeking the will of God to make the decision. What is the result then beloved? After trusting our eyes over God, blaming others or God Himself, allowing our fear to dictate to our faith, and then somehow pretending that God was in the process with us the whole time? We act impetuously and feel compelled to do something.
"So I felt compelled to offer the burnt offering." Verse 12 So Saul starts to fall away. He starts to think that God is more concerned with sacrifice than obedience. So he offers a sacrifice to God with the wrong motives and the wrong heart. A heart that lacked faith, gave into fear, and blamed others for it. The Bible speaks directly to this, not surprisingly involving Saul and Samuel. After the incident with the Amalekites, Saul tries to make excuses for why he spared the best of the flocks, claiming he wanted to make sacrifices unto the Lord. Here is the sobering response from Samuel for all of us today:
But Samuel replied: "Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the voice of the Lord? To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams. - 1Samuel 15: 22
