King Saul was actively trying to kill David and he had numerous chances.
David would not lay a hand on the LORD’s anointed.
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David is successful in whatever Saul sent him to do, then Saul got jealous and tried to kill David a number of times. In the process, David and Saul’s son Jonathan became best friends and looked out for each other.
This is the story of that friendship…
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I found this video fascinating for a couple of reasons:
@ msy YOUTH this past school year, we have been thinking through the statement:
“The Bible is about God continually working to fix this world through his kind of special people in order to make his kind of world.”
We’ve interacted with this statement by walking ourselves through Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth and 1 Samuel. We learned how humanity came about, fell into sin, and needed to be redeemed. God started his redemption plan through his covenant with Abraham, which initiated the “special people of God” or his representatives on earth to show the world what he was like. God was going to “fix” this world through his special representatives in order to re-make his world.
This has been somewhat heady for middle school students, though we have had fun in the process. Right before the Christmas break we talked about how the author of Samuel was comparing and contrasting the boy Samuel with Eli’s boys, Hophni & Phinehas. It was an either or kind of thing.
I thought about the simplicity of that, and, conversely, the complexity of what we’ve been doing so far. I felt like we needed to take a sort of time-out to talk through what “God’s kind of world” looked like.
I came across a series entitled “Two-Faced” from LifeChurch.tv for middle school students. This series perfectly fit the simplicity of explaining what “God’s kind of world” looked like. And to this point we have done the 3 out of the 4 lessons so far.
As you can see from the graphic at the beginning of this post, we have two posters hung at the front of our room. One is labeled “Flesh” while the other is labeled “Spirit”.
The first lesson brought the topic of gossiping vs. encouraging (flesh vs. spirit), the second talked about the issue of stealing vs. giving (selfishness vs. generosity), and the third relayed the two opposing notions of lying and truth-telling.
These last 3 Wednesday night conversations have really brought some concrete and clearly labeled adjectives to what “God’s kind of world” looks like.
Followers Skate City adventure outing, Sunday, January 16, 2011 from 12:30-5:00pm.
This past December, for the Followers Christmas Parties, we made gingerbread houses. It was a blast! We had done this activity before, but this time we gave the students a little more freedom with what they wanted to create. There was a simple example, which some students attempted, while others dreamed big and created stadiums!
We used graham crackers, spice drops, M&Ms, lots of sprinkles, marshmallows, wafer bars, licorice, and candy canes.
source YouTube
source YouTube
It’s not often that I get to hang out with Heath Davis on one of our children’s ministry events, but this past Sunday he came along with the Followers as we headed down to Skate City to do some roller skating. Some students handed us some mustaches and snapped a picture. My mustache didn’t stick on top of my REAL one!
I came across this incredibly encouraging article the other day about parenting. It’s been my experience as a parent that this job is equal parts overwhelming, daunting, frustrating, fulfilling, dramatic, enjoyable, and a plethora of other adjectives that fail me at the moment. Reading this article validated some of my feelings and gave me some much needed advice and perspective.
You can read the article here, or you can read it below.
Parenting: The Joyful Impossibility
It was eleven o’clock on a Sunday night, and I was pulling out of the grocery store parking lot exhausted and overwhelmed. After we had put our four children to bed, later than we had planned, Luella discovered that we had nothing in the house to pack for lunches the next day. With an attitude that couldn’t be described as joy, I got in the car and did the late-night food run. As I waited for the light to change so I could leave the parking lot and drive home, it all hit me. It seemed like I had been given an impossible job to do; I had been chosen to be the dad of four children.
It is humbling and a bit embarrassing to admit, but I sat in my car and dreamed of what it would be like to be single. No, I didn’t want to actually leave Luella and my children, but parenting seemed overwhelming at that point. I felt like I had nothing left to face the next day of a thousand sibling battles, a thousand authority encounters, a thousand reminders, a thousand warnings, a thousand corrections, a thousand discipline moments, a thousand explanations, a thousand times of talking about the presence and grace of Jesus, a thousand times of helping the children to look in the mirror of God’s Word and see themselves with accuracy, a thousands “please forgive me’s,” and a thousand “I love you’s.” It seemed impossible to be faithful to the task and have the time and energy to anything else.
Now, I’m about to write something here that may seem counter-intuitive and quasi-irrational, but here it is: That moment in the car was not dark and horrible. No, it was a precious moment of faithful grace. Rather than my burden growing heavier that evening, my burden lifted. Do I mean that suddenly parenting got simpler and easier? By no means! But something fundamental changed that evening for which I am eternally grateful.
There are two things I learned that evening that changed the experience of parenting for me.
1. I faced the fact that I had no ability whatsoever to change my children. In ways that I had been completely unaware of, I had loaded the burden of change unto my shoulders. I had fallen into believing that by the force of my logic, the threat of my discipline, the look on my face, or the tone of my voice, that I could change the hearts of my children, and in changing their hearts, change their behavior. Daily I would get up in the morning and try to be the self-appointed messiah of my children. And the more I tried to do what I have no power to do, the more it angered and disappointed me, and frustrated and discouraged them. It was a big mess. I was a pastor, yet I failed to see that in my parenting I denied the very gospel that I tried to faithfully preach Sunday after Sunday. In my home, as I tried to produce change and growth in my children, I acted as if there were no plan of redemption, no Jesus the Christ, no cross of sacrifice, no empty tomb, no living and active Holy Spirit. That evening God opened my eyes to the fact that I was asking the law to do what only grace could accomplish, and that would never work.
I began to understand that if all my children needed was a set of rules and a parent to function as a judge, jury, and jailer, Jesus would have never needed to come. It hit me that the fundamental changes that needed to take place at the deepest level of thought and desire in my children, leading to lasting changes in their behavior, would only ever happen by means of the powerful, forgiving, and transforming grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. I began to realize that as a parent I had not been called to be the producer of change, but to be a willing tool in the powerful hands of a God who alone has the power and willingness to undo us and rebuild us again. But there was a second thing I got that evening.
2. I faced the fact that in order to be a tool of grace, I desperately needed grace myself.In a moment of confessing and forsaking my delusions of autonomy and self-sufficiency, I faced my weakness of character, wisdom, and strength. I admitted to God and myself that I didn’t have inside of me what it takes to do the task I was called on to do. I did not have the endless patience, faithful perseverance, constant love, and ever-ready grace that were needed to be the instrument in the lives of my children that God had appointed me to be. And in that admission, I realized that I was much more like my children than unlike them. Like them, I am naturally independent and self-sufficent. Like them, I don’t always love authority and esteem wisdom. Like them, I often want to write my own rules and pursue my own plan. Like them, I want life to be predictable, comfortable, and easy. Like them, I would again and again make life all about me.
It hit me that If I were ever to be the tool of transforming grace in the lives of my children, I needed to be daily rescued, not from them, but from me! That’s why Jesus came, so that I would have every resource that I need to be what he has chosen me to be and do what he has called me to do. In his life, death, and resurrection I had already been given all that I needed to be his tool of rescuing, forgiving, and transforming grace.
That night I began to find joy in the impossibility of it all. The task is way bigger than our ability us as parents, but we are not our children’s messiah, and we are not left to the resources of our own character, wisdom, and strength. Our children have a Messiah. He is with them and working in and through us. The wise heavenly Father is working on everybody in the scene, and he will not call us or them to a task without enabling us to do it.
I’ve been thinking about these kinds of things a lot lately:
I just read this article about a mom who decided that she and her 3 teenagers were going to take a 6 month break from technology. ”My concern,” she says, “was that we had ceased to function as a family. We were just a collection of individuals who were very connected outwards – to friends, business, school and sources of entertainment and information. But we simply weren’t connecting with one another in real space and time in any sort of authentic way.”
I am convinced that these sort of sabbaticals, whether a day, a month or a half year, are becoming increasingly important parts of living a healthy life. The other thing that struck me is the connection she makes between boredom and creativity:
“Anni, Bill and Sussy confronted boredom – something that they were previously unfamiliar with because of their endless access to online entertainment. They found out that it made them resourceful. Indeed, their mother thinks boredom is fundamentally important in terms of creativity: ‘If nothing’s wrong, you’re never motivated to change, to move out of that comfort zone.'”
Wondering your thoughts about the connection of constant stimulus and creativity?
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It’s tricky, cancellations. I’ve had to do it twice this school year.
The first was back in November. We were scheduled to take the Followers students (grades 3-5) about an hour south of Hayward to Skate City (roller skating rink) and it had snowed considerably the night before (and was still snowing). The decision was fairly easy: it’s dangerous to drive in conditions that are questionable with other people’s kids. While I think we would have been fine (busses are incredibly resilient in “questionable” situations), it was smart and wise to take the cautious route.
The second situation was last Friday night. We had a Winter Lock-In for middle school and high school students scheduled to start @ 9pm and end @ 7am the following morning. I didn’t realize how much snow was accumulating in Hayward (and we are used to snow in our area, by the way) that day until a couple of hours before the Lock-In. The high school pastor, Loretta, and I met at the church at our designated time and talked through what the plan was. We wondered if we should cancel the event because of the snow. After all, if we did cancel, we would be turning away people who already successfully braved the inclement weather, why wouldn’t we just keep the event active? Besides, the students would be in the church building all night long, what would snow do to hurt them or cause danger?
Loretta and I ended up making the decision to cancel (knowing how bummed the students would be … we were expecting over 100 students, by the way) because of what the roads and access to the church would look like in the morning. We were worried that after a long evening hanging out with students all night long (10 hours!) we might have students that couldn’t get home by that morning.
We were right about a couple of things: 1) the students (and their parents) were really bummed! and 2) there was lot of snow in the morning (more than we thought we were going to get) and the roads didn’t get plowed until late mid-morning.
While cancelling an event is never a popular decision, it is often the “right” decision taken upon by responsible and caring adults who (hopefully) are thinking wisely through multiple factors and implications in order to keep children safe and sound.
What do you think?
Young David does what King Saul is supposed to do:
Instead, Saul depends on David to fight for what is right. And David does so with courage and conviction. David would not let Goliath get away with cursing God and His people. And the compare and contrast saga between Saul and David begins.
Read 1 Samuel 17:1-58
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