22nd June 2026

22nd June 2026


Pray (ACts)


Read (2 Samuel 2:1-11 focus v1)


Message (Alan Burke) 


I’m in Rome, not of course as I write this but likely as you read it, as long as you’re reading this somewhere between the 22nd-24th. Although if you’re one of those keen people who read this devotion at 6 am on Monday 22nd as soon as it’s posted, well Scott and I are hopefully boarding the plane at Dublin and will be there by 11 am. As many of you know, we went last year too, and we had a Senior member or Presbytery with us. He doesn’t want to be named because it would ruin his street cred, and he vowed never to go back. With all its history, Rome is a fascinating place to visit; the Colosseum in my mind is one of the highlights, although when you think about it, it is a monument to how nations will rise and fall. But the good news is that God’s kingdom is an everlasting one (Job 12:23). What matters in this life is not whether your allegiance to nation, to a flag or an ideal, is whether or not your allegiance is to King Jesus and that you are a citizen of the kingdom that will last into all eternity. 


I begin this way because we come to a passage where there are attempts to thwart the plans and purposes of God, but they would fail. We will get to that later in the week, but for now, we focus on v1. In it, we learn that David enquired of the LORD. Time has passed; we don’t know how long, but David, in the midst of his self-imposed exile, had found strength in the LORD once more and had learnt to trust in the LORD (1 Sam 30:6). Before, he relied on his own wisdom; this time, David looks to the LORD, enquires of him. This is now a David who is fit to lead the people of God, a David who, rather than relying on his own wisdom, enquired of the LORD. What had happened to him while living among the Philistines had served to better equip him to be king. David was still a man like you and I; he was still a sinner, he would still fail, but the years in the wilderness as Saul had pursued him, the time in self-imposed exile had all served to refine David, to make him more of the man that he was supposed to be. David is not the same man that he was; the LORD has used what he faced to sanctify David, and with the death of Saul, there is nothing barring David’s return to Israel. But unlike how Saul lived his life, David here inquires of the LORD, and he asked; “Shall I go up to one of the towns of Judah?” (See 1 Chron 10:14). We’re not told how David enquired of the LORD, just that he did. The LORD tells David to go up, and David asks where, and the LORD says Hebron. Hebron was in Judah, and so David, in a sense, is returning home, for he was from the tribe of Judah. But there is much more going on, for the LORD was working out the fulfilment of his promises right in the midst of all that was unfolding. 


How quick are we just to do things without a second thought, or think to ourselves as David did that led him to live amongst the Philistines? We are far too quick to do things without a second thought or do things in our own wisdom as David. Like with the job opportunity, retirement plans, holidays, new cars, maybe a house move. How many of us look to the LORD and his Word, letting him be the one who rules and guides our lives and decisions? He has given us his Word which teaches us what we are to believe concerning God and what duty that he requires of us. And if we want to know the will of God for our lives, then it is his Word that we must look to, and it means that we must know his Word; we must know our Bibles. And when we know it, in order to live in response to it, to trust in it, enquiring of the LORD through prayer and his Word. We should be those who look to the LORD in all things, knowing the call of God in our lives and responding to the amazing grace we have been shown through Christ.


Pray (acTS)


Sing


WSC
Q100 What doth the preface of the Lord’s Prayer teach us?
A. The preface of the Lord’s Prayer, which is, Our Father which art in heaven,” teacheth us to draw near to God with all holy reverence and confidence, as children to a father, able and ready to help us; and that we should pray with and for others.
​