Week Eleven: From Shepherd to King!

"The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want..."   

- David, king of Israel

Saul had the right look.  Saul had the right credentials.  Saul had the right experience.  Everybody thought Saul was the guy!  God blessed Saul and came upon him in power to be the first of Israel's kings.  The only problem was... Saul didn't have God.

Actually, Saul had God once upon a time.  He had been strong and faithful... but when he allowed his newly acquired power as king to go to his head, he decided he didn't have the same need for God that he once did.  He rejected the Lord and His leadership over Israel by his impetuousness and by his lack of trust... so the Lord rejected him.  God tore the kingship and the kingdom from Saul and promised to give it to another... a man after God's own heart who would be faithful and trustworthy.

That man was no man at all... at the time.  He was a young boy, the youngest of eight it seems in his family, who happened to be out tending the sheep of his father.  Nobody was aware yet that God had rejected Saul nor aware that God would choose young David to succeed him.  If they had been aware, I doubt many would have believed it.  Replace Saul.. strong, physically imposing, decisive... with David, a little boy who tended sheep and wrote poetry?

Yet that is exactly what God did.  He chose the "little boy David" and made him into Israel's greatest king... and the king by which every subsequent king would be compared against.  This week in The Story we come to our first encounter with David in what will be a two-part look at his life, his rise to power and his trials as king.  I hope you'll be reading along and joining us on Sunday in our continuing discussion through the incredible story of God!

This week read:  ch. 11 of The Story or 1 Samuel 16-18; 24; 31; 2 Sam 6; 22; 1 Chronicles 17 and Psalm 59