Anger Issues - Part 2

Day two hundred forty-eight

As I was studying the story of Abigail I came across a prayer that is intended for a wife to say for her husband:

Father,
I ask you to bless my husband in every facet of his life--
his health
his work
his relationship with our children
our relationship together
and his relationship to you.
Let nothing and no one, including myself, hinder your work in his life.
Amen

I thought it was worded beautifully, so simple, yet powerful.  It is thought provoking. If I were to say a prayer for my husband what would I ask for?  With that, I dedicated my prayer to my husband this morning. I sometimes forget that he is not just mine, but that Heavenly Father also needs him to further His work.  I am grateful for the reminder and for the love that Heavenly Father shows me through my husband.  I hope I return that love tenfold!

1 Samuel 25

In the last post, we left David in an angry rage ready to take his 600 men and kill Nabal and all the males in his household.  This is not one of David's finer moments.  But I love this story for that fact.  David wasn't perfect, he made mistakes, he was human just like us!  God can still work through you, even if you are less than perfect.  And he knows when we need a kick in the pants to pull us back on track.  David is about to have an attitude adjustment from an unlikely source, Nabal's wife Abigail.

Nabal was a fool, but his wife was everything that he was not.  She was a beautiful woman physically, and she was a wise woman spiritually.  She was as lovely of heart as she was of appearance.

When she hears what her foolish husband has done, she takes the necessary steps to make matters right.  She gets together the food and things that David and his men need and she goes out to David with the hope that she can change his mind. (vv 14-20)

As soon as Abigail saw David, she fell to the ground at his feet, making one of the longest speeches by a woman recorded in the scriptures.  She approaches David in humility.  She refers to herself as David's "handmaid" six times and calls him "my Lord" fourteen times.  She admits that David and his men have suffered wrong at the hand of Nabal and that her husband is a fool (v 25).  She asks for forgiveness and pleads with David to accept her gift and to spare Nabal and the rest (vv 27-28). 

It is in verse 26 that we see Abigail's spiritual wisdom.  She appeals to David's spiritual side.  She tells David that if he kills Nabal in anger it will hang over his legacy like a dark cloud.  If he does what his anger is telling him to do, he will regret it forever. 

Abigail reminds me of the Holy Ghost in this verse.  Sadly, the loud cry of anger in our hearts is so strong that we cannot, or will not; hear the still, small voice of the Spirit of God as He tries to reason with us.  We shut out the wisdom of " the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God" (James 1:19-20).  David's anger has gone beyond listening to the Spirit, so God worked through Abigail to get His message to David.  She is the still, small voice for David to hear.

How lucky is David that Abigail was there to give him the kick in the spiritual pants that he needed!  How lucky are we that the Lord puts people like Abigail in our lives to prevent us from making some devastating mistakes! If we could just learn to calm down, listen to what the Spirit is saying and respond to Him instead of the anger, it would save us a lot of heartache in every relationship in our lives!

Abigail's wisdom overcame the anger in David's heart and he backed away from his plans.  Disaster was averted because of Abigail's efforts, but David gets some credit for overcoming his anger too.  There were some things that he had to be willing to do for Abigail's pleas to make a difference.

David had an Open Heart (vv 32-35)
David backed down because he saw that God had worked in the situation to send Abigail to him to prevent him from committing a terrible sin.  He realized that only God is authorized to right all our wrongs. David conquered his anger because he was open to the Lord and willing to do things God's way.

David Trusts the Lord (vv 36-42)
David says goodbye to Abigail and moves on with life.  He is not sitting around brooding over the situation.  Because David was willing to allow the Lord to take care of his problems for him, he enjoyed the victory over Nabal.  (When Abigail tells Nabal what happened, Nabal has some sort of heart issue and dies).  Instead of taking revenge and getting his hands stained with the blood of his enemy; David's hands are clean. In the end, David marries Abigail and probably came to possess all that had belonged to Nabal.  In other words, David got it all simply because he refused to allow his anger to rule his life.

That is the big message from this chapter:  We need to bring our anger to the Lord and ask Him to help us act like Him towards those who offend us.  There is a quote that I think fits this story,

"Before God we are all equally wise – and equally foolish." ~ Unknown

We have the ability to choose which side we will be placed on.  I am hoping for a little more wise and a lot less foolish in my life!