{"id":3313,"date":"2021-05-24T17:30:00","date_gmt":"2021-05-24T23:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/?p=3313"},"modified":"2021-05-22T16:13:05","modified_gmt":"2021-05-22T22:13:05","slug":"david-was-tough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/?p=3313","title":{"rendered":"David was tough!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I read the last part of 1 Samuel a few days ago, chapters 23 &#8211; 31, and I want to share some observations over the next few days. This is the period of David&#8217;s life when he is running from King Saul. David has been given the promise that he will be king, but getting there won&#8217;t be easy. In these chapters we&#8217;ll observe the following:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>David was tough! I&#8217;ll talk about that today &#8211; living in the wilderness couldn&#8217;t have been easy.<\/li><li>David demonstrates patience and trust in God&#8217;s sovereignty by sparing Saul&#8217;s life twice (chapters 24 and 26).<\/li><li>God used unlikely people to protect him from bad decisions: Abigail (a woman!) in chapter 25 and Philistine officers in chapter 29.<\/li><li>Sometimes one&#8217;s enemy sounds &#8220;Christian&#8221; &#8211; we see Saul invoking God&#8217;s blessing on those who were helping him find and kill David (1 Samuel 23)<\/li><li>There were &#8220;scoundrels&#8221; among David&#8217;s men (1 Samuel 22.2 and 30.22)<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Today, let&#8217;s just remind ourselves that David was tough! Not like me complaining about a few hours in a place with no water or electricity! (See <a href=\"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/?p=3301\">May 20 blog<\/a>.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><em>&#8220;David was in the wilderness of Ziph at Horesh.<\/em>&#8221; (1 Samuel 23.15, ESV)<\/li><li><em>&#8220;David is in the wilderness of Engedi.&#8221;<\/em> (1 Samuel 24.1, ESV)<\/li><li><em>&#8220;Then David went down to the wilderness of Paran.<\/em>&#8221; (1 Samuel 25.1, ESV)<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/drbobewell.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/image-5.png?ssl=1\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"474\" height=\"295\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/drbobewell.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/image-5.png?resize=474%2C295&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-3314\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/drbobewell.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/image-5.png?w=533&amp;ssl=1 533w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/drbobewell.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/image-5.png?resize=300%2C187&amp;ssl=1 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 474px) 100vw, 474px\" \/><\/a><figcaption>Wilderness of Ziph<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">John the Baptist spent a lot of time in the desert:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>And the child [John] grew and became strong in spirit, and he was in the wilderness until the day of his public appearance to Israel. (Luke 1.80, ESV)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And so did David. How would you like to spend years in the wilderness, running for your life, and managing a rag-tag &#8220;army&#8221; of 400 &#8211; 600 men? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>A psalm of David when he was in the wilderness of Judah. O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. (Psalm 63, introduction and verse 1, ESV)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I read the last part of 1 Samuel a few days ago, chapters 23 &#8211; 31, and I want to share some observations over the next few days. This is the period of David&#8217;s life when he is running from King Saul. David has been given the promise that he will be king, but getting &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/?p=3313\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">David was tough!<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8X9bo-Rr","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3313"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3313\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3319,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3313\/revisions\/3319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}