Prayer: Father, may I be remembered in my dealings with people, as a compassionate, generous person. Amen.
Reading: 1 Samuel 25 key: vs. 2-3 “Now there was a man in Maon, whose business was in Carmel, and the man was so wealthy, he had 3,000 sheep and 1,000 goats. At that time he was shearing his sheep in Carmel. The man’s name was Nabal and his wife’s name was Abigail. The woman was intelligent and beautiful, but the man, a Calebite, was harsh and evil in his dealings.” TLV
Attention: We become known by our dealings with people of all ages. I recall as a youngster, a neighbor who lived down the road being labeled by the other youngsters in the neighborhood, as being mean and harsh. He was constantly at odds with the kids in the neighborhood, complaining about something the kids did.
We had a community water shed from an underground spring which served about 15 homes on our road. This man was the treasurer of the association and one day my father and a neighbor man began to wonder if there had ever been an audit to the association books. When they performed an audit, guess what they discovered? The man along with a crooked attorney, had illegally sold and resold the property on the hill above his property, which contained the underground spring.
The audit findings were taken to court and the crooked attorney took his own life and the treasurer took ill and died sometime later.
Nabal was such a man and ended up as these men. He was harsh and evil. Generosity was not in his vocabulary. David and his men approached Nabal because they had lived amongst him while on the run. David’s appeal was based on the past, “When your shepherds were with us, we did them no harm and nothing of theirs was missing all the time they were in Carmel.” David required nothing of Nabal then and he never created a hardship on Nabal. But now, he needed to feed his troops. Could Nabal find it within him to be generous. He could not.
His attitude came back to haunt him as God immediately struck him; “It came to pass in the morning, when the wine had gone out of Nabal, and his wife told him these things, that his heart died within him, and he was paralyzed like a stone. About ten days later, Adonai struck Nabal and he died.”
May our character be one of generosity and kindness. May we learn from the story of Nabal that God intervenes on behalf of His own.
Action: I choose today to walk with the Spirit if God as a kind and generous man.
Yield: I choose today to submit to the Holy Spirit in building my character.
Engage: I choose today to engage with the Holy Spirt in transforming my heart, mind, and soul.
Relationship: I choose today to live in close intimate relationship with God.
Prayer: Father, I choose to be like You. Please transform my heart, mind, and soul, to be like You. Amen.
Memory Verse: Psalm 51:19 “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit. A broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.” TLV
Music Video: Casting Crowns—God Of All My Days https://youtu.be/nVN070kSruE
Remember, “Abide in Yeshua, today!”