Welcome to today's encouragement from our daily bread.

I'm Amy Boucher Pye and I called our reading, Clinging to God.

When Johnny Erickson Tata speaks of Rika, she highlights her friend's deep, time-tested faith in God and the endurance she's developed

while living with a debilitating chronic condition. For more than 15 years, Rika has been

bed-bound, unable even to see the moon from her room's tiny window. But she hasn't lost hope.

She trusts in God, reads and studies the Bible,

and as Johnny describes it,

she knows how to stand firm

during fierce battles against discouragement.

Johnny likens Rika's tenacity and persistence

to that of Elie Azar,

a soldier at the time of King David who refused to flee the Philistines. Instead of joining the troops who took off, Eliezer

stood his ground till his hand grew tired and froze to the sword. Through God's power,

the Lord brought about a great victory that day.

As Johnny observes, even as Eliezer hung on to the sword with determination,

so too does Rika cling to the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

And there, in God, she finds her strength.

Whether in glowing good health or battling discouragement over a chronic condition, we too can

look to God to deepen our stores of hope and to help us to endure. In Christ, we find our strength.

Today's Our Daily Bread devotional scripture reading is from 2 Samuel

23, verses 8 through 12. These are the names of David's mighty warriors.

Yeshua Bashabet, a Takamonite, was chief of the three.

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