Can I be honest? I struggled with the word to title this chapter. I knew exactly what I wanted to say and the Scripture reference that would be used, but I struggled with the right word. I tossed around ten or twelve words. I used a thesaurus. I asked several people, and we landed on know-how. I didn’t even know it was a real word, but it is. And it’s in the dictionary. I think it describes what I want to say better than anything else.
Know-how defines itself. If I were to ask someone, “Do you have the know-how?” I want to know if they know how to do something. I don’t have the know-how to change my own oil, but maybe you do. I do have the know-how to hit a golf ball, maybe you don’t.
What’s interesting to me is that some know-how seems to be instinctive. My cousin Aaron always had mechanical know-how. From an early age he was building things out of other things that didn’t have anything to do with each other. I still can’t really do this. It seemed like an innate ability, almost a God-given know-how.
On the other hand, my ability to hit a golf ball well was neither God given, nor innate. I’ve hit a lot of golf balls poorly to be able to hit some now in the general direction, the general distance I want to hit them. It was a learned trait I picked up by watching and playing with good golfers, and lots of practice.
I think David had some know-how. It comes from a fascinating story in 1 Samuel 30.
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David and his men home. Upon returning to their homes in Ziklag they are greeted with a disturbing reality.
Now the Amalekites had raided the Negev and Ziklag. They had attacked Ziklag and burned it, and had taken captive the women and all who were in it, both young and old. They killed none of them, but carried them off as they went on their way. When David and his men came to Ziklag, they found it destroyed by fire and their wives and sons and daughters taken captive.
1 Samuel 30:1-3
Their enemies, the Amalekites, had come in while they were away fighting and burned down their homes and taken all their wives and children. This would always be bad, but for men returning home from battle this is devastating news. I’m sure they had planned on coming home to spend time with their children. They probably envisioned sleeping in their own beds. But that was now impossible. These strong men were so overcome with emotion that they wept, “until they could weep no more”.
After David finishes crying for his lost family he begins to get worried. His men are looking for someone to blame. They need someone to pay for what has happened to their possessions and their families. There is talk of stoning David as retribution.
If I’m David, I am ticked off at God. There would probably be some shouting involved in my next conversation with Him. I would probably question His plan for my life. This cannot be what God had in mind when He commanded Samuel to anoint David to be the next king of Israel. He’s on the run for his life. He’s been fighting with the Philistines, another of Israel’s enemies. They have now turned him away. He returns home to find his village burned down, his family and those of his men are missing. Now the guys are talking about stoning him to death.
Where is God in all this?
But look how he responds,
“but David encouraged himself in the LORD his God.”
1 Samuel 30:6 (KJV)
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My wife Corrie is the middle child in a family of three sisters. Her mom, Cindy, is a wonderful woman of faith who has spent most of Corrie’s life as a single parent. As most single parents might attest, money’s always a little tight. While the Lord was always faithful and Cindy had good jobs, one income and three girls to feed, clothe and provide for usually meant the money ran out before the month. As long as I’ve known Corrie, she has talked about hearing her mom pray in the little laundry room of their duplex early in the morning or late at night.
Corrie tells of several occasions when the money ran out before the month did and they needed food. She would hear her mom in that little laundry room asking God for help. As Corrie tells the story, there was more than one occasion when they would open the front door to find groceries on the steps. She recalls one Sunday walking out to their car after church to find it filled with grocery bags. You don’t think this affects Corrie’s prayer life?
When money’s a little tight, or the bills keep coming and Corrie and I are praying for God’s provision, she is praying to the God that came through with those groceries. She is praying to a God that she knows can answer prayers. She relies on her know-how.
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I don’t know if David’s know-how was God given from birth or if was a developed ability. What I do know is that David knew right where to turn when things got bad. Do you? Do I?
How do you respond when the world is falling down around you? Like David, have you lost family members? Have you had friends to turn on you? What did you do? How did you respond?
