To Encourage You

2 Samuel 2:3-4 “And David brought up his men who were with him, everyone with his household, and they lived in the towns of Hebron. And the men of Judah came, and there they anointed David king over the house of Judah.”

2 Samuel 2:8-9 “But Abner the son of Ner, commander of Saul’s army, took Ish-bosheth the son of Saul and brought him over to Mahanaim, and he made him king over Gilead and the Ashurites and Jezreel and Ephraim and Benjamin and all Israel.”

I used to somewhat facetiously tell my staff at work that my life’s motto was “nothing’s ever easy.”  I say “somewhat facetiously,” for truth be told, it seems like very little ever is easy, including the things that we think should be.  I don’t know how many times over the years, as I was about to try my hand at fixing something around the house, that I’ve given my wife a woeful underestimate of how long it would take.  There seems to always be some unforeseen problem, some minor thing that becomes major.  Interestingly, I’ve seen this same pattern many places in the Scriptures. 

One such example is in the passage above from 2 Samuel.  One of the themes of this book of the Bible is the inauguration of David’s kingship. At the end of 1 Samuel, Saul, Israel’s first king, has died. Throughout his reign, Saul had persecuted David. Time after time David had to flee from Saul and hide from him in some way.  But now that Saul was dead, it would seem that David could waltz right in and begin his rule – for hadn’t God anointed him as the rightful new king many years earlier?  However, it didn’t work that way.  As David followed God’s direction to begin his reign, he moved into the town of Hebron in Judah. The citizens welcomed him there and anointed him as king, reaffirming the anointing of Samuel many years before.  But almost immediately there was conflict.  You see, Abner, the commander of Saul’s army, was still in the picture, and he was still faithful to Saul. As such, he took action to make Saul’s son Ish-bosheth the king over much of the remaining territory of Israel.  As a result, there was continual conflict between Abner and Joab, commander of David’s army.  And so, David assumed his rule over the land by degrees, little by little, as the conflict raged. 

As I thought about this, it occurred to me that in all of this God was still sovereign.  Although David was the rightful king, God allowed the realization of his rule to proceed through conflict, resistance, difficulty.  It was because of this very thing that David was motivated to stay close to God and seek His direction. 

You see, it seems that we, like David, tend to cry out to God in the midst of trouble, but then we so often have a tendency to forget God when things are going well.  The Lord warned Israel of this very thing in the following words from Deuteronomy 8:11-20: “Take care lest you forget the Lord your God by not keeping his commandments and his rules and his statutes, which I command you today, lest, when you have eaten and are full and have built good houses and live in them, and when your herds and flocks multiply and your silver and gold is multiplied and all that you have is multiplied, then your heart be lifted up, and you forget the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, who led you through the great and terrifying wilderness, with its fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty ground where there was no water, who brought you water out of the flinty rock, who fed you in the wilderness with manna that your fathers did not know, that he might humble you and test you, to do you good in the end. Beware lest you say in your heart, ‘My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.’ You shall remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your fathers, as it is this day. And if you forget the Lord your God and go after other gods and serve them and worship them, I solemnly warn you today that you shall surely perish. Like the nations that the Lord makes to perish before you, so shall you perish, because you would not obey the voice of the Lord your God.”

With these words we can see one of the reasons, perhaps, that “nothing’s ever easy,” for it’s in this reality that we are being protected by the God Who knows us much better than we know ourselves. He knows that any time we “go off on our own,” as it were, we become subject to the tragedies that befall those who forget God. It is in the struggles of life that we are led to draw near to Him, to keep looking up to Him, and to stay in a closer relationship to Him than we otherwise would.

May God help us to be those who “Trust in the Lord with all (our) heart, and . . . not lean on (our) own understanding. (May we) in all (our) ways acknowledge him, (so that) he will make straight (our) paths” (Proverbs 3:5-6).  As we face the fact that “nothing’s ever easy,” may we thank the Lord for it, for if it was easy, our tendency might too often be to take our eyes off of our loving God.