Episode 11.1: Wives of David, Michal - Women of the Bible Series

Welcome to Episode 11 - PART 1 Michal! 
We are talking about the WIVES OF DAVID!

EPISODE 11 in 3 PARTS!
We did something a little DIFFERENT this month...because we wanted to keep the Wives of David AS A GROUP  yet still take time to get to know the 3 wives we selected, we are releasing a 3-part series of shorter episodes to honor each woman's story.  They are like mini-chapters of a bigger story - rooted in the importance of the Davidic Covenant and what it meant to be one of his wives within the tapestry of God's promise.

BACKGROUND
What is the Davidic Covenant? ( found in 2 Samuel 7)

• the unconditional covenant made between God and David through which God promises David and Israel that the Messiah (Jesus Christ) would come from the lineage of David and the tribe of Judah and would establish a kingdom that would endure forever
• God does not place any conditions of obedience upon its fulfillment
• the surety of the promise made rests solely on God’s faithfulness and does not depend at all on David or Israel’s obedience

Who were David's wives?  (1 Chronicles 3, 2 Samuel; 3:2-5, 5:13-15)

• *Michal- daughter of King Saul, sister of Jonathan
• Ahinoam- mother of Amnon
• *Abigail – mother of Chileab (Daniel)
• Maacah – daughter of King of Geshur, mother of Absalom and Tamar
• Haggith – mother of Adonijah
• Abital – mother of Shephatiah 
• Eglah – mother of Ithream
• *Bathesheba – mother of Shimea, Shobab, Nathan, Solomon

In this 3-part series, we will be talking about: 

Part 1: Michal - this episode!

Part 2: Abigail

Part 3: Bathsheba 

-------------------------------
>>> MICHAL <<<

Scripture Text: 1 Samuel 18:20-29, 19:11-17, 25:44, 2 Samuel 3:13-16, 6:16-23.

We will discover that Michal:
1. loved David.
2. was a pawn in a political game.
3. despised David and became critical.

She is one of us.  Who God is to her, he is to you and me.

Her story prompts conversations about being stuck in a difficult situation between two people you love, the choice we have in the waiting, how quickly wounds grows into bitterness that blocks us from blessings,  the danger in focusing on what others think rather than worshipping the presence of God, and more.

I didn't know Michal very well. But through our conversation I see her as a warning sign to what can happen when we don't prioritize God's presence in our lives especially in the face of waiting and disappointment.

You are my alone, my friend.
 
Much love,
Amy and Jamy


***DISCUSSION QUESTIONS for ALL 3 Wives of David on Episode 11.3, Bathsheba.

Transcript

Amy: 0:08

Hey everyone, welcome to Car Chat Podcast. I'm Amy, I'm Jamy, and each month we chat in my car about a woman of the Bible, and we're here to answer the question who is she? And discover these two things she is a lot like me and who God is to her, he is to me, and we hope to build a community of broken yet redeemed women, both with you here listening, as well as the women in the Bible. Because, ladies, you are not alone in your faith, in your struggle and in your growth, even when you feel like there's no one around. And it is such a joy for both of us and I know, jamie, that you would say this too when we hear how God has impacted and moved and taught you through our conversations as we look into His Word, to uncover who these women are and the friendships that they're making with these women.

Jamy: 0:58

I know. But, there's the connections to these women in the Bible. They're like friends.

Amy: 1:04

They really are, because there's so much about them that I can relate to, and we have loved hearing how these conversations you've been a part of in your own way. So continue to share this podcast with whoever God lays on your heart, because he is always working. Through whatever mode or means that he does, he is always working, he's creative he is. And, as you can hear, I kind of have a snot in my nose. I've been sick. Who else out there listeners has been sick?

Jamy: 1:35

Maybe some will be listening to it because they're stuck at home or somewhere. I don't know if you're like me.

Amy: 1:41

It has been a hard six season, so I hope that, in your weariness, that you have been able to have some pauses of rest and been intentional about what you do with some of your time. But today is episode 11 and we're chatting about the wives of David. Yes, this is a package deal, yeah, and it's a lot to it, and so we're going to take it a little differently and this is how it's going to work. With the wives of David, he actually had eight. We're only going to highlight three, and each one of them are standalone women to discuss. Yeah, they are.

Amy: 2:17

So we're going to do it in a three part series. This is part one and we're going to talk about Michal. There's going to be part two and we're going to talk about Abigail, and then part three. We're going to talk about Bathsheba and we're going to release them all at once, but they'll be kind of like separate parts to one big conversation about the wives of David, and we're going to talk in a minute about why being in that category of the wives of David, why that is an important thing to identify with these women especially because just the three we're talking about seem quite different too.

Jamy: 2:53

So they're bringing different personalities and experiences, and even belief systems. It's seasons of life. There's all kinds of things that make it really different, I mean they're so much there, all the others seriously and I could not really pronounce their names.

Amy: 3:09

So David had eight wives. Here's the question, Jamy, when I'm thinking about all the polygamy that was happening and God he first of all set forth only don't take many wives, especially ones in which the place that you've conquered what's the deal here. Can you give word to the fact that here's King David and he's having all these wives, even though God said don't?

Jamy: 3:34

Yeah, he should know.

Amy: 3:35

He's a bad idea.

Jamy: 3:37

Well and this is to me, this is an example of kind of that old hermeneutic little tip that the Bible can never mean what it never meant. So we go back to what the culture was like then, how things worked, not to say it's okay, but when we take our cultural ideas and try to put them on top or try to make them the foundation of these texts and narratives, we're gonna miss some things. So, but at the same time there is it's clear I think it's in Deuteronomy, deuteronomy 17,. God is giving them instructions about how the king should behave and he tells them not to have a lot of horses, not to have a lot of wives and not to have a lot of gold and silver. Now, that kind of it gets messed up when they're all up together, but each of those represents something that is gonna make a king of God, a king that belongs to God, a king that is representing God. That is gonna pull them away and make them not good leaders.

Jamy: 4:33

That's so God has already said, don't do this, but it is what everyone at their time did. So to us it seems unheard of because it's illegal, it's wrong. We would never, never support this, but then it was the wise thing to do. It was the right thing to do.

Amy: 4:50

Isn't that crazy.

Jamy: 4:51

It was the smart thing. A king would be absurdly foolish to not have this huge hair in him, and so David does. This is a place where David does a little bit more of what's right in the eyes of the world and in the big, huge, God-sized view down at people. We know how he felt about David. David always came back to God, came close to God, repented and stay close to him, and God called him a man after his own heart. So we know that David, in all of his ups and downs, stayed close to God. But that doesn't mean that we can't call out the fact that there are ups and downs in his behavior.

Jamy: 5:27

That's so good that we can see and it affected the women and the children that were a part of these stories and there's a lot of sorrow in that.

Amy: 5:36

It's really good, because when God says, don't do it, it's for our best, yeah, and he even tells them why? I know In this situation he does, and I love the fact that you said, culturally it was a wise thing to do, and we can't discount it with Iq Because we see it as Iqy. It was a wise thing, an acceptable thing for them to do back then, which does not excuse disobedience, but it gives us more of an understanding about what they're entering into.

Jamy: 6:05

Right, and how the wives would have reciprocated some of this and worked along with it and then also had hardships with it. That's good. The political part of this story is a little bit unfamiliar to us, because we can't even imagine our husbands having a second wife, let alone having to manage what that life would have been like. But it reminds me of Sarah and Hagar. Sarah and Avery were just like why would you do that?

Amy: 6:30

Why would you take a second wife?

Jamy: 6:31

That's so wrong, but at the time that was the right solution. In the world's eyes it was the right solution to their problem. Same thing here In their culture, in the way that the world would have defined it. But he wasn't a man of the world, he was a man of God and his decisions here definitely have repercussions that we're going to see.

Amy: 6:49

Okay, so that is very challenging and I just want to absorb that in application to us today. What are things and this is just for you to think about and just for me to think about? We're not really going to answer this, but what are things? Get really personal. I'm just going to think about this and bring it before the Lord. What are things that we do in order to solve a problem or meet a need that is wise within the world's eyes but is disobedient to God?

Jamy: 7:23

It's the way we problem solve. It's our initial problem solving energy in most of the things we face. We're going to figure out how to do it. We're going to hit the internet and research and figure it all out. See what everyone does. What are the answers to this? And that's not all bad, but it is when we're leaving God out of it or when we're even sensing that he might have a different way for us, and we're refusing it because this other way seems better.

Amy: 7:48

Wow, think about that for yourself, if you're listening. What are some things in your life that you are reaching for help in that are what the world seems as wise but is really disobedient to what God calls us?

Jamy: 8:03

to do.

Amy: 8:04

So, Jamy, here we are grouping these women, and the three that we're highlighting is Michal, Abigail and Bathsheba. But why is it important for us to group the wives of David as really one woman that we're focusing on?

Jamy: 8:22

Yes, because when it comes to David God's promises to David we call it the Davidic Covenant those promises have repercussions that affect our faith profoundly, because the promise to David was that one of his sons would be on the throne forever, and the promise of this in its different places throughout Scripture where this is taught to us and brought out to us it's in 2 Samuel 7, 8 through 16 is one of them. But all of this reminds us that Jesus, the Messiah, is coming from David and we can trace all this back. Had these women and I would like to think they knew it was a part of their culture and their belief systems there to know what God had promised to David, knowing that and understanding that would have had to become a part of their own faith journey. For me to be one of these wives, I'm not just committed to a man who is a king, I'm committed to God and a promise that he has made to the heritage that's coming from this.

Jamy: 9:27

Now, there's a really messy side of this, but there's also a side of blessing here that we're going to see some of our women completely follow God into and some do in parts, and some one really doesn't. She doesn't want anything to do with it and because of that she doesn't get to be a part of it. So I think all of that it must have been really hard, I think, to stay in healthy relationship with David, because I was with the wives and his children, but God had promised that this man, he is the established king that kings and Messiah will be coming from.

Amy: 10:04

That is so interesting. The responsibility and the burden and the expectation that comes with being one of his wives is significant. We're going to talk about, in part one, Michael. Now I listened to how her name was said on blue letter Bible dot org, which gives you the pronunciation in Hebrew, and it was Mehal Mehal, but I don't trust myself for saying that all the time consistently. So in order to avoid confusion, I decided we'll just call her Michael.

Jamy: 10:33

Yes, our little way yes.

Amy: 10:35

Michal. So let me give a snapshot. Michael's story is found in 1 Samuel, 18, 19, 25. Those are all the different chapters in 1 Samuel and also 2 Samuel, 3 and 6. And there's little episodes within each of those chapters. But if you could post it notes in those places, a piece of paper, those are at least the texts within scripture for you to go back to and we'll have it in our show notes so that you can look at those on your own time. But here's the snapshot of her life and I don't know what your if you're listening, what your understanding of Michael is. I kind of knew her as a flyby but to really get involved with her story, as one of the wives is the first wife of David, it's just so fascinating. So here's the overview snapshot.

Amy: 11:22

She is the daughter of King Saul, so put that in context. She is the sister of Jonathan, put that in context. And the first wife of King David. She's the first of the eight. She loved David. King Saul gave her to marry him for the price of 100 Philistine, four skins. When Saul tried to kill David because of his jealousy, michael steps in and helps him escape through window. She covers up for him when her father searches, she lays an idol in the bed and puts a blanket over it, pretending it's David and that he's sick. This is like a whole Ferris Bueller day off scenario.

Jamy: 12:01

It's crazy.

Amy: 12:02

And they were young.

Jamy: 12:03

They were really young. Like how, what young do you mean? Well, teenagers, yeah, well, probably older teenagers.

Amy: 12:09

They were little. So she kind of tricks her dad and puts an idol in the bed and said no, david, sics sleeping. Saul asked to bring him out and realizes that he is a scapegoat.

Jamy: 12:20

I just just bring him in his bed to me. I'm going to kill him. He's really out of out of sorts, out of sorts.

Amy: 12:26

But Michael saved David, and David stayed away for over 10 years and married two women in that meantime. But then Saul also gave Michael over to another man to be a wife yes, and his name is Patel and he loved her very much.

Jamy: 12:46

This part just kills it kills me too and it says she loved David. It says yes, but never says anything about David, but then it says that her second husband loved her. She's such a sad picture because after Saul's death.

Amy: 13:01

When David returned to Jerusalem, david forced Michael to come back to him, and her second husband followed her all the way crying. He was really sad that she was being taken away from him, and then David said go back home. And he went. So when Michael? So that was one part of their story.

Jamy: 13:20

So many questions in that that I wish I knew had more details, but God has remind me all the time. If the details aren't there, there's a reason, so I just have to be okay with it. That's really. I really want to know that. Where the emotions in all of this, where the devotion was reciprocated and where it wasn't, there there's such political undertones?

Amy: 13:38

all of this? Yes, I don't know.

Jamy: 13:40

I mean I wish I'd anymore. Yeah, it's really her in this section.

Amy: 13:44

I do too in that first section. Now, in the second section of her life, which is in second Samuel, here's the snapshot David has come back. Michaels would taken away from her second husband. She is now living in Jerusalem with David. When she sees David celebrating because David has brought the Ark of the Lord, ark of the Covenant, back into Jerusalem, he is leaping and dancing. He is rejoicing before the Lord. She despises him in her heart. And afterwards, when David gets home, gets home to bless his household, she goes out and Publicly calls him vulgar for disrobing in the side of the slave girls and David replies that he will celebrate before the Lord and become even more indignified and be humiliated in my own eyes. And then the last mention of Michael was verse 23 of second Samuel 6 and Michael, daughter of Saul, not wife of David daughter of Saul.

Amy: 14:38

That's important had no children to the day of her death, and that's the end of her story. So that's the snapshot. Now we're gonna go back and pull out three things from her life, yes, and kind of follow the story from that, but we wanted to give you just a snapshot of the entirety of where we are and where we're heading, so that you'll have a little bit of context to grab hold of. Here's one interesting fact that Michael loved David, and it is the only place in the Hebrew Bible where it is stated that a woman loves a man.

Amy: 15:09

Oh, I didn't know that that's amazing in that interesting very interesting, and so there's a lot of theory and thought of what that means. Was that because she?

Jamy: 15:18

only one mention it's a pretty yeah and so her passion.

Amy: 15:22

This is what this scholar thought that her passion must have been apparent to everyone around her.

Jamy: 15:26

She was really loves it, or David yeah okay, so three ways to describe Michael.

Amy: 15:32

She loved David. I did a little word study on that word love, and it's a human love, often sexual, having affection for desire for long, for to breathe after I kind of think of, like to huff and to puff, and she really wanted him. Yes, so that is what I found out about this word. Yeah, in Describing how Michael loved David, what do you? What?

Jamy: 15:55

Yeah, that's the same. Yeah, I agree with all of that.

Amy: 15:58

So what would you make of this description of her love for him?

Jamy: 16:01

Well, you know, he first. All of it is manipulated by Saul. So I think it's really weird, because first Saul offers the older daughter.

Jamy: 16:09

Yes, I kind of wonder if there's some kind of Intrigue with all of that. But Michael definitely. It's so clear she loved him, she was glad for this. Yeah, and David, again, we don't know if it's for Michael's sake or just to prove to Saul, but he doubles the bride price. I like to kiss. I'd like to think that Doubling the bride price says something about the value of the bride to David.

Amy: 16:33

But but again, we don't know that for sure. It's just something to ponder and to know that that's what the text tells us.

Jamy: 16:40

But it's clear that she she loves him and she is stuck in one of the most difficult places because she's stuck between a very manipulative, violent, unpredictable father and a husband that she really loves, who but who is In a lot of trouble. I mean, he's very vulnerable as far as he can't just be welcomed into the home and they make their own little home, but they can't live and have a regular life where they can't start their life the way a newlywed would wish to and see.

Amy: 17:14

This kind of love is as unhealthy, maybe one that's rooted more in emotion and attraction than something else. Because, if we remember, david first came to Saul as younger than this, was his harpist to calm him, and then he came and killed. I mean, he had quite a reputation, they tell us he was handsome, and so she has seen this warrior grow into who he is a young man and loves him crazy about him.

Jamy: 17:46

I think the traumatic situations that they faced, their marriage, didn't have time to get the roots that it needed, and what she's, what she's going to do next, is how she chooses to live during the season of separation. I think it really shapes how she reacts when, when David does try to bring her home, and I think all of us have a challenge with that too. There's places where our situations in life bring circumstances that are too chaotic or traumatic for us to really get down the roots we need with another person. So then we get to choose. Am I going to stay established here with God and make sure that my thoughts and my faith and my beliefs and my actions are pleasing to him, even though what's happening around me is not what I would choose? I'm disappointed. How am I going to keep living with God?

Jamy: 18:38

And this is the decision she makes and so she's really powerless in a lot of it. She didn't get to make a lot of decisions, but she always gets to choose. She always gets to choose what she believes about God.

Amy: 18:47

Well, that makes me an empathetic towards her, so she loved David number one. The second way, and what you want to describe, michael, is that she was a pawn in a political game.

Jamy: 18:58

Yeah, and we have talked about that a little bit. But it just gets worse after my after I mean after David has to disappear.

Amy: 19:03

It really does. How does that play out then? After David disappears.

Jamy: 19:09

Well, because she's given to another man and I think when it says she was given to him and it highlights her helplessness in that, I think I don't know that that's what she chose. When her new husband follows weeping when she's taken from him, did she reciprocate that?

Amy: 19:24

I don't know, we don't know it's so hard to know those things, but she was upon a political game from her father in marrying her to David, in addition to then taking her which he had no right to because she was still married to David, but then he gave her to another man.

Jamy: 19:41

And I think she must have felt divided because, you know, at the end it says that she was Saul's daughter. That's how she's remembered in the text. And also after she helps David escape back before he leaves, when she's having to give a count to her dad, you know she says, oh, he threatened me, he would hurt me. That's not true. So I think she's stuck in this. Whatever, you know what? What can I say to keep my dad? Okay, what? How can I save my husband? I just I do have a lot. I think she still was pretty attached to her dad.

Amy: 20:12

And don't you know, because he was unhealthy. I mean, he fostered those kinds of. Yes.

Jamy: 20:18

Yeah. And one of the stories when Jonathan is trying to figure out what's going on and he throws the spear at Jonathan who, who he loves, he does not. He's very violent and predictable, so that Michael would have been affected by what we know to be true of Saul's character.

Amy: 20:34

Y'all, if you're listening and you think that there's no relevancy in scripture for your broken past, take note of this story and there's many more, but this story particular with Michael and her father was erratic. He was abusive, he was manipulative, he used others for his own gain. He, he that may be very familiar for you who are listening, who may have also had fathers like that or significant people in your life and just know that you're seeing that because she was a pawn in his political game.

Amy: 21:16

She was also. She also loved David. But then we see in the, the second part of her story, that we see in second Samuel, that she despised David and became critical. So it's interesting that she went from loving, yes, to despising, yeah. What do you? I think in those 10 years.

Jamy: 21:37

That was her choice to stay loyal and figure out how to continue to and some of this, some of this choice is taken away from her, but how to live faithful to God in those years.

Jamy: 21:49

What is sad to me is that what the return of the Ark is not about David, it's about God, and it's about David's obedience to bring God back to the forefront.

Jamy: 22:00

Oh, this is crazy.

Jamy: 22:01

I'm studying this for a different thing right now, but when this, the Ark, had just been forgotten and the Ark is this, it's the symbol of God's presence with his people and it had just been left out in the woods.

Jamy: 22:15

And so when David is resolute to find it and to bring it home, and then is celebrating it and all the people are celebrating with him, the fact that what she sees is embarrassment, that David does not behave, leaving like a king, which maybe we can make the attachment not behaving like her dad would have expected. What she sees is David seeming foolish to her, and what should have captivated her had she been listening and looking for it is the reality that God and his presence was coming home to them. That should have made her celebrate as a woman in that time, in the dynasty, of being a princess in God's people. She should have seen it that way, and she could not see beyond the fact that David had disappointed her, god had disappointed her, she hadn't been taken care of the way she deserved, and all she could see is how could a king act like this?

Amy: 23:14

She missed the whole thing about God.

Jamy: 23:16

She missed the God part which makes me think we can kind of assume that she hadn't been relying on him during that time. So, whatever had happened, she had lost or given up that.

Jamy: 23:30

And man, we do this in ministry or even in our marriages, all the time we see, because we have I mean, we're not princesses, but in ministry life we have these ideas of what our little kingdoms are going to look like and how we're going to be great in them and how we're going to make God great in them, but really only if we're great in them and God doesn't like that and he sharpens us and he changes things so that we get to choose whether we're really going to follow him or not and we get to choose if we're going to put our foot down and say this is not the way ministry should be, this is not the way my marriage should be, this is not the way my husband should be behaving and refuse to let God into that pain and follow him out of it.

Jamy: 24:08

And she just that's what she did. She just stayed in that gosh and she lost. She lost her connection, her connection to the covenant God made. She was the first wife In an ideal life, the first son should have come from her, the first wife.

Amy: 24:25

She didn't get to be a part of it at all Because of the choices that she made.

Jamy: 24:29

There were some choices that were made for her. Yeah, some way she was victimized, but also her own choices contributed to it.

Amy: 24:34

And I think oftentimes we either get stuck we can get stuck in the choices that were made for us, which are helpless, but we in her situation can see that there are, there's opportunities in which she had to choose God in the midst of the choices that were made for her, and isn't it always in the times of waiting that those determinations are sifted out? Yes, and I just think during those 10 or more years of her, I mean she was in love with David, she saved his life, how her heart must have been, and then he left and he came back with two other women. I mean that would just be like this gut punch. And so in understanding that about her, I can understand how she would despise him and be really and misguided at all, because she's so wounded and hurt and disbelieving that this is what her life is like, and so she's just going to criticize. Anytime. I'm disappointed, I criticize.

Jamy: 25:39

In the 10 years. The battle was for bitterness and her bitterness blocked her from being able to see the blessing that God was bringing. Bitterness blocked the blessing Always. It always does. It seems like we've talked about bitterness a lot. It comes up in these girls' lives because it comes up in our lives.

Amy: 25:57

It so does, and we sometimes don't even realize it.

Amy: 25:59

I had to do a little word study on despised, because it's one of those words that I knew but I didn't, and it means to hold and contempt, and contempt is a feeling that a person is beneath your consideration, is worthless or deserving scorn. Yeah, it's disrespect. It's disrespect, it's worthlessness, and it is even considered a word stronger than hate in terms of intense emotion. And so it is. She really hated him, and to the point of devaluing him as a king, as a husband, as a man, and so she verbally criticized him. Now I've seen funny pictures of a half-naked man dancing in the streets and we all go oh, david's dancing, david's in the sundays, yes, and I'm curious about what you know about a linen e-fod.

Jamy: 26:59

It was a priest uniform.

Amy: 27:00

A priest uniform and it looked different in different things that I researched and it was for religious exercises.

Jamy: 27:09

He stripped off the royal and was wearing the spiritual, and that's really what that image represents.

Amy: 27:18

That's really good.

Jamy: 27:20

And he was dancing with the always might. This is why we love him, even though we hate him, I know. This is why we love him. This is why this is what was so charismatic, this charismatic part of him.

Amy: 27:30

This is actually a beautiful picture. God was home, yeah, and the man in the back of the covenant was home and he was so happy.

Jamy: 27:36

He was so happy, full of joy, yes, and wanted to celebrate with her. I think this would have been the time they reconciled what if she would have?

Amy: 27:47

had she yes. So let's take that fork in the road of her, because it says in verse when she was looking down from the window, in verse 16, 2 Samuel 6 16. She wasn't participating in the joy. She was watching from a window and she was not down there celebrating. She had a choice at that point she could have despised him and said this is not what you should be doing, or she could have gone down and celebrated and become renewed in marriage and in life and in celebration and worship and hardship and all the things that I don't want to miss those moments.

Amy: 28:29

I don't want to miss those fork in the roads. Sometimes I can be gripped with anxiety, not wanting to miss anything. But, ladies, here's the thing If we just keep in step with the Lord, he won't have us miss it. And we need to, especially in thinking over those 10 years. If she would have leaned in to Yahweh, if she would have learned more of who he was in David's absence, I think that her choice would have been a natural progression of where her heart already was. And it's important for us in those waiting seasons, for us to know and follow and love and devote ourselves to God, because we don't know when the choice will come which will change the trajectory of our lives. And we can get wrapped up in that, we can get anxious in that and not want to miss a thing, but we're focusing on the wrong thing. That's right. He wants us to be near his presence. He wants us to rejoice in his presence, like David was, and we won't miss those things.

Jamy: 29:29

And to trust him in the hardship that there is some, that he is with us and there is some good that is coming and that he's he's worthy to be followed See that's so good.

Amy: 29:39

He is so worthy to be followed. So I hope, as we shared about Michael, that there were parts in her life, the hard parts that, sadly, you may have been able to relate to, but then also those, those, the proposition that she had to choose. And may we be faithful women who, in the waiting and in the in between and in the disappointments, we don't grow bitter, but we lean into the presence of the Lord so that we can follow him in the significant steps that our life takes. Who was she? She was loved, she was a pawn and she despised. She is one of us and who God was to her, he is to you and me. Now, I had a pause on this one with her because I didn't know who was God to Michael and who how would you answer that question?

Jamy: 30:32

It's hard because she never really exemplifies it. In other stories we have more, more to show the woman, the friends, a response to God, and we don't really see that here, but we do know the opportunity he gave her, both in her start and where she started, the different opportunities he gave her to choose him and to worship him. Yeah, it was there all along.

Amy: 30:57

Oh, it's so true, and it's really who he could have been to her if she would have chosen that. Sadly, yes, and I just we leave that with you listening. What choices are you making in the presence of the Lord, in following him and worshiping him and loving him, or growing distant and bitter and despising those who love him?

Jamy: 31:19

Yes, that is kind of hard. That is a hard one.

Amy: 31:24

That is one that's an important truth to kind of lay out there and allow the Lord to do some work on your heart. Well, thank you so much for listening. We will see you next time on Car Chat podcast as we dive into part two of the wives of David and we're going to get to know Abigail. We'll see you then.