Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life

and the time it takes to get to work.

I'm Tanya Wilmuth.

What do these words have in common?

Restraint, discipline, patience, resilience, steadfastness, perseverance, long-suffering, fortitude.

They're all really hard. You thought I was going to be deep, and you know, just honest.

Actually, these are things that we all want to have more of. They're traits that we want to build and develop,

but there are also things that we don't want to have to go through things in order to get more of them, because it means that life is hard and complex.

Now, if there's one person in scripture who understood what it meant to walk through

complexity, what it meant to walk through hardship and develop patient endurance, it was David.

David didn't rise to the throne and then live this happily ever life. Even as a king, his life was full of the same tensions,

betrayals, and sufferings that had marked his early years on the run. And now in 2nd Samuel 16,

David is again on the road, but this time he's fleeing from his own son, Absalom, who's attempting

to steal the throne. And this chapter gives us a glimpse into the complexity of David's life and the depth

of his endurance. So first, let's just consider how complicated things had become. David's relationships

had become politically and personally complex. In this chapter, David's met by Ziba. He's the former servant of Saul that was put in charge of Maphibishath's land. He, Maphibishath was one of Jonathan's descendants that David promised to have an inheritance in the kingdom. So he runs into

Ziba, the servant, and Ziba says, yeah, Maphibishath's not here, he stayed back because he is

hoping to reclaim Saul's throne. Now, is Ziba telling the truth? Or is he manipulating the

situation to gain Mephibishat's land for himself? David doesn't know for sure.

He acts, though, on what he's been told, and he gives Ziba all of the estate. See, his relationships

had become so complex and loyalties are so blurred, motives are murky, but yet David has to

lead, and he has to make decisions amid uncertainty.

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