Check out all the previous David readings here.
David Reading | Week 3 | Day 2
Prayer
Allow some silence for your soul to catch up with your body. Thank God for time to spend with Him and ask Him to meet with you.
Bible Reading: 1 Samuel 20:1-17
Read these verses three times slowly.
Then David fled from Naioth at Ramah and went to Jonathan and asked, “What have I done? What is my crime? How have I wronged your father, that he is trying to kill me?”
“Never!” Jonathan replied. “You are not going to die! Look, my father doesn’t do anything, great or small, without letting me know. Why would he hide this from me? It isn’t so!”
But David took an oath and said, “Your father knows very well that I have found favor in your eyes, and he has said to himself, ‘Jonathan must not know this or he will be grieved.’ Yet as surely as the Lord lives and as you live, there is only a step between me and death.”
Jonathan said to David, “Whatever you want me to do, I’ll do for you.”
So David said, “Look, tomorrow is the New Moon feast, and I am supposed to dine with the king; but let me go and hide in the field until the evening of the day after tomorrow. If your father misses me at all, tell him, ‘David earnestly asked my permission to hurry to Bethlehem, his hometown, because an annual sacrifice is being made there for his whole clan.’ If he says, ‘Very well,’ then your servant is safe. But if he loses his temper, you can be sure that he is determined to harm me. As for you, show kindness to your servant, for you have brought him into a covenant with you before the Lord. If I am guilty, then kill me yourself! Why hand me over to your father?”
“Never!” Jonathan said. “If I had the least inkling that my father was determined to harm you, wouldn’t I tell you?”
David asked, “Who will tell me if your father answers you harshly?”
“Come,” Jonathan said, “let’s go out into the field.” So they went there together.
Then Jonathan said to David, “I swear by the Lord, the God of Israel, that I will surely sound out my father by this time the day after tomorrow! If he is favorably disposed toward you, will I not send you word and let you know? But if my father intends to harm you, may the Lord deal with Jonathan, be it ever so severely, if I do not let you know and send you away in peace. May the Lord be with you as he has been with my father. But show me unfailing kindness like the Lord’s kindness as long as I live, so that I may not be killed, and do not ever cut off your kindness from my family—not even when the Lord has cut off every one of David’s enemies from the face of the earth.”
So Jonathan made a covenant with the house of David, saying, “May the Lord call David’s enemies to account.” And Jonathan had David reaffirm his oath out of love for him, because he loved him as he loved himself.
Reflection & Questions
Today, we’re continuing to look at the relationship of Johnathan and David. This was a friendship forged in the fire and faithful to the end.
In our verses above, Jonathan says to David, “Whatever you want me to do, I’ll do for you.” There was nothing off the table when it came to helping David. This is going the extra mile for a friend. This is putting his life on hold for his friend and putting his friend’s needs above his own. Jonathan indeed “loved him as he loved himself.”
Being a true friend requires investment and sacrifice. It requires putting someone else’s needs above our own. Proverbs 18:24 says, “One who has unreliable friends soon comes to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.” The fact is that Jesus is a friend who sticks closer than a brother. In Him, we have a friend who will “never leave us nor forsake us” (Hebrews 13:5), who is “with you always” (Matthew 28:20) , and who laid down his life for his friends (John 15:13).
As the old hymn, “What a Friend we have in Jesus” says
What a friend we have in Jesus
All our sins and griefs to bear
What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer!
O what peace we often forfeit
O what needless pain we bear
All because we do not carry everything to God in prayer
- Do you relate to Jesus as your friend? How does seeing Jesus as a friend change the way you view prayer?
- How can you copy the example of Jesus and be a friend to someone today?
Prayer
Talk to God in response to today’s reading.
Worship Song
You might use this song today to worship Jesus today:
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Questions?
Ed Applegate
