last night we officially began our journey of entering in to the story of david.
we looked at the fact that david, as the underdog, is anointed by God. this gives me great comfort and excitement...because i often feel like the underdog. what a great realization it is that God can and will call and anoint us even when we are the underdog.
we also looked at david's preparation. that david was prepared to be king through the everyday and ordinary. through being a shepherd. while shepherding, david was putting in his 10,000 hours of practice.
10,000 hours of practice is what it takes to make us elite at something...to make us an outlier.
so, out of the life of david, we asked the question: what are the everyday, ordinary things that God is placing in front of you to give you the chance to practice for 10,000 hours? are you aware of those things? are you simply allowing those things to pass by you? what are you practicing right now?
to listen to the entire teaching, click here.
there is also an interesting and potentially confusing detail that we read in the words of 1 Samuel 16. it comes in verse 14 where it says:
"Now the Spirit of the Lord had departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord tormented him."
for many, it seems confusing that the Lord would send an evil spirit to torment someone. how can God send an "evil" spirit?
the word "evil" may mislead us a bit here. here is what the commentator john goldingay says about it:
"the Hebrew word in this story is more like the English word bad than the English word wicked. While it can suggest something morally bad, it can also suggest that the thing we experience is bad, something that brings trouble or suffering to us."
this may still seem challenging to some who struggle with the thought that God could be the initiator of anything bad. however, i believe that if God is sovereign (and i believe that He absolutely is), then we must be accepting of the fact that for some people the most loving thing God can do for them is to send them a "bad" thing in an attempt to get their attention and bring them back to Him.
i believe that God is in the business of helping people find their way back to Him...no matter what it takes.
what are your thoughts? how do you process 1 Samuel 16:14?
1 comment:
At first, I wasn't sure how to process this verse because of the confusion of the word "evil" associated with God. The definition you provided in this post clarified the word a bit more, but what brought the most light were actually the following verses that we read during the study.
God had taken away the "kingship" from Saul and replaced it with the disturbing spirit. That disturbing spirit helped usher in God's newly chosen king (David) by using his "ordinary" harp-playing skills to soothe Saul. The spirit only relented when David was playing.
I thought it was neat how God used that as the link to get David in and to keep him in.
That's what stood out to me and I know there's a lot more than can be discussed, but I'll stop there. :) I certainly want to dig more into the meaning of it. It's constantly reminding me of the incomprehensibility of God's ways. But then again, if we could understand Him, He wouldn't be God. ;)
Post a Comment