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The One thing every Crisis Reveals
Are you in a perpetual crisis or maybe you are not in enough crises?
From breaking a fingernail to facing death, you want to be seen as having a sound mind in a crisis.
Our Biblical Ground Work: 1 Samuel 25
There was a man from Maon who had a rich business. His name was Nabal (meaning: fool) and he was married to Abigail (meaning: my father’s joy) who was of good understanding/intelligent/wise/street smart/of sound mind, she just so happened to be beautiful as well. Nabal was hard and evil with his dealings.
David and his men were living in the area so became a wall around them. Nabal benefited from that wall of protection. David sent some men to ask for food supplies, for a feast, from Nabal. He revealed how hard and evil he is to the men who came from the future king. David is about to do David (man of war 1 Chronicles 28:3) when Abigail steps in.
Abigail, after being told about the incident, jumped right into action to make sure her family business would not be destroyed by David. She filled bushels full of food and strapped them to her donkeys. She herself rode a donkey and met up with David. Knowing it would take her some time to prepare, and knowing that David would not take any time to seek revenge, she sent her servant ahead of her to tell David she was coming. She went as quickly as she could and staying out of sight of her husband as well.
She confronts David with the most courageous speech in 1 Samuel 25:24-31. As a result of her intelligent actions her house was saved but she still had to tell her husband what she did. She waited for him to be sober then she told him what she had done. When she was finished talking, the Lord struck Nabal with a seizure, which paralyzed him and then killed him 10 days later.
David sent his servants to retrieve Abigail as his wife. Her reply was, “Here is your maidservant, a servant to wash the feet of the servants of my lord.” As his wife she would be taken captive by the Amalekites (1 Samuel 30). She spend many years with David in hiding and travelled all over the middle east to avoid Saul. She gave birth to David’s second eldest son named Chileab or Daniel (meaning: God is my judge) (1 Chronicles 3:1). As we read about David’s sons causing him grief, we never hear of this one being involved in any of it. I wonder why?
Our Biblical Life Lesson: A Crisis Reveals Character
Life is filled with the minor events that change our lives to the larger events that shape our existence and our direction in life. Each of these are defining moments. They are born out of some kind of crisis, from some event that some one has lost control over.
COVID-19 is a great example of a life event out of control. A pandemic is something no one can control except our Lord. He is controlling it at this moment and will keep controlling it until He is ready to put it to an end.
Abigail, as David’s wife, has seen many things happen from the threat of death to being held hostage by the Amalekites, famine to pandemics, peace and war, running from Saul to running from Absalom. In which of these do you think she lost her head? None I suppose, what about you?
Meet with us in The Bible Gals as we discuss the nature of crisis and how it is meant to reveal our character.
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A Brilliant Idea to make Your Promises more Honourable
I raised my kids without making promises to them because I didn’t trust myself to honour them. I knew that there would be times when I would not follow through, for one reason or another, on that promise. The lack of follow through would then be what I was known for rather than all of my other good characteristics.
This idea was not wise because I did not even honour the promises I made to myself. My excuse was that I didn’t know if I would be able to follow through but it was more because I didn’t want to be “expected” to honour them. I learned through this that no one has to say, “I promise,” for people to take it as a promise. When you tell someone you will do something for them, they take that as a promise and expect you to honour it. By the way, so does the Lord, as you will discover with Jephthah and his daughter.
Our Biblical 📖 Ground Work Judges 11:1-12:7
Jephthah was a great warrior who was driven out by his family because he was a product of his father Gilead’s sexual sin. He hung out with lawless men and went about raiding. His great warrior status was remembered by the Israelite elders when the Ammonites wanted to go to war over the land.
They made Jephthah their commander and went to war with the Ammonites. They were successful because the Lord gave them over to them. For Jephthah this victory was going to cost. And He will pay the price out of honour to the Lord. For his daughter though the cost was dearer but she too would honour the Lord by paying the price.
Jephthah made a vow to the Lord that if He would give the Ammonites into his hands, and Jephthah comes back in peace, whatever comes out of his house first, he would give to the Lord as a burnt sacrifice (a tribute to honour God for what He has done). This a vow that would cost him his daughter and both of them would honour it with tremendous hurt. One because he doubted and the other because she wanted to honour it.
Our Biblical 📖 Life Lesson
You can learn how to honour your promises by learning how to make better promises.
The result of me never making promises to people is that I never learned how to take responsibility for following through on my promises. Jephthah’s daughter obviously learned how to do that from her parents. Honour is a great thing to have but honour hurts sometimes. We are avoiding the hurt by never making any promises or we can learn how to make promises that lead us into God vision for us.
Jephthah’s daughter fully understands your dilemma. She was put in an impossible situation by someone else’s vow. Then she answered that vow with a vow of her own. She promised she would return after two months of morning her virginity with her friends. She could have stayed in the mountains, never to be seen again, but she came back to honour God and her father. But mostly she honoured herself and is remembered still today.
Her father did not have to make that vow. As Jephthah was on his way to war the Spirit of the Lord came upon Him and He knew it. You cannot have something like that happen and not feel it. BUT he is still human and doubted his ability to take on the Ammonites. He bargained with the Lord because of his doubt and lost.
If you want a promise that you can honour, make if from a positive mindset, not a negative one. The difference between Jephthah and his daughter was the mindset. He vowed because he didn’t believe and she vowed because she was grateful to the Lord. Which one of them, do you think is easier to follow through with? If you learn how to make your promises from a positive state of mind, your follow through will cause you to be honoured by those around you.
Join us in The Bible Gals as we continue this discussion with The 3 Ways to Follow through on Every Promise Study and 🎥 LIVE.
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Cry out to Him and See!
There is nothing like a death in the family to make us evaluate (or me anyway) the things we are doing. We watch as people walk through the room and how they react. We react with curiosity about how they have impacted the lives of those they knew. We evaluate how they have impacted our life. The only real way we can know what they have done for others is to listen to stories and listen intently to how people felt about that person. This is a skill that we must learn to utilize as we get older because we learn much about ourselves and about others. We can know someone all of our life and still not know the impact that person has had on others outside of our own relationship with them.
This begs me to ask of myself, “How have I had an impact on those in my life?” Have I created an atmosphere of love or contention? Have I taught my loved ones that I am determined or lazy? BUT the biggest question is, “Have I shown (not told) them that I love Jesus?” Will that be the first thing people say or will they have to find out from the pastor during my service. I have no other desire for you to know anything other than my love for Jesus and how I work that out in my life. What I want you to see is I love Jesus, I love my family, I love my friends and anyone whom I can touch through my teaching of Jesus Christ and my writings about how we can learn from Him.I want you to see my passion for the Word when I teach you what Jesus has been teaching me. I want you to see my determined devotion to Him while I help you learn what I have learned. I want you to see my steadfastness in doing what Jesus has asked me to do. In this you will find out that I have dedicated my life to knowing Jesus by studying His word so I can be of use to the women in the area in which Jesus has placed me. I cry out to God daily for them and I ask Him to position me to be of the most use to them.
How can we go forward when we feel like we are not doing enough? Jeremiah 33:3 says “Call to Me, and I will answer you, and show you great and mighty things, which you do not know.’” Cry out to Jesus and ask Him daily what He has planned for you. He will reveal in you just as He will reveal in me just exactly what He wants us to learn and how He wants us to use that knowledge. Then we must do it!
