Day 54 - Mixed Messages
📖Daily Reading
2 Samuel 6-24
🎥 Video
Join me on my morning walk as we rise and shine together by walking through the Bible daily and learn a practical applicable coaching nugget from the ultimate life coach - our creator (whatever that means to you). No judgement zone here, all are welcome, we are all on a spiritual journey because we are after all spiritual beings having a human experience.
📝 Reflection
2 Samuel 16:11-12
Then David said to Abishai and to all his servants, “My own son is trying to kill me. Doesn’t this relative of Saul have even more reason to do so? Leave him alone and let him curse, for the Lord has told him to do it. And perhaps the Lord will see that I am being wronged and will bless me because of these curses today.”
We create chaos for ourselves and others when we send mixed messages.(period) That is what we see happening to David and his family all over the place. The 1 and 2 books of Samuel read like Game of Thrones. Just to sum things up as succinctly as I can; David has an affair with one of his officers, Uriah’s wife, Bathsheba, tries to cover it up because she got pregnant and eventually causes Uriahs death. He is confronted with his sin by Nathan. She is pregnant and then after the appropriate mourning period, he marries her, but their son dies soon after birth. David has other children of course with his other wives and concubines. After they are all grown up, one son, Amnon, commits the sin of rape against his half sister, Tamar another brother, Absalom, takes her in and protects her. Absalom understandably harbors anger against his brother. Absalom takes revenge and murders Amnon. David I am sure feels caught in the middle, he loves both of his sons. He probably is not sure the best way to handle things. He ends up allowing Absalom to return to the kingdom, but he will not see him. This hurts Absalom, he is receiving mixed messages from his father and this causes even further confusion and resentment sets in his heart towards his father. Absalom begins plotting and puts in to action plans to win over the people and become King himself. Eventually he gets popular enough and has a following that threatens David’s rule as king.
So next we find David on the run from Absalom and he encounters a man named Shimei from Saul’s family. Shimei proceeds to curse and throw stones at David and his men. His men of course want to defend him and kill this man for insulting their king. That is when he says the verse quoted above. He first says ‘no, who asked your opinion anyway, if the Lord told him to curse me who are you to stop him’. In this moment of clarity David must have seen the irony of the chaos that he had caused for himself and everyone! He must have thought to himself ‘My own son is chasing me and wants to kill me, but yet I am expecting someone from my enemy’s family to show me respect, someone who has every right to be against me?’
This was really convicting to me as I took some personal inventory of relationships within my own family that have been adversarial at times. How I justified it because I was taking sides and defending and protecting one against the other etc. How many times have I had one of my own children or even husband look at me and say ‘whose side are you on, I don’t get it?’ Even in my ‘nice’ness I was causing chaos and confusion by trying to make everyone happy or prioritized being praised by one that I alienated and confused another.🤦♀️ Anyone else resonating with this. And then we can’t face what we have done, so rather than having the tough conversations, we just go silent or just pretend like things didn’t happen. This of course only makes matters worse. Then we get the proverbial elephants 🐘 in the room, or egg🥚shells we find ourselves walking on…
✍🏼Daily Journal Prompt
Are you ready to throw today’s message across the room or unfollow me? I know this is tough stuff! If you are courageous enough though, I would like to invite you to look in the mirror and see where you might have either sent mixed messages and or been on the receiving end of being sent mixed message and ask yourself if it has sent you on a path of rebellion or brought chaos into your life? There is hope. With courage, humility and brutal honesty we can begin the process of setting things right with forgiveness and ‘owning it for good’!
📖Tomorrows Reading
1 Kings 1-2
Coaching Opportunity
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