Everybody, what is going on? You know what time it is. You're listening to join the Journey podcast with your host, Emma, daughter.

Thanks for joining. Today, we're reading First Samuel 30, in which David and his men journey back to Zichlag, it's a tongue twister, which was the city given to him by the Philistines back in Firstst Samuel 27, and when they get there, they discover

that the Amalekites had raided it, burned it with fire, and taken everyone captive, which is

pretty bad news. So the question is, how do we, or how should we respond when we receive bad news?

I mean, what a horrible homecoming. Picture it with me. You've had a long day at work.

You pull into your driveway and you get to your house except your house is gone and your spouse is gone

and your kids are gone. Everyone wept and mourned their city and those taken captive.

And David's wives, Ahenowam and Abigail, were among the ones taken

captive. So David naturally was distressed because his life, well, it was also in danger. So what

does he do? He doesn't fret. Verse 6, he strengthened himself in the Lord his God. I'd say that's a

far cry from the last chapter when he didn't consult the Lord at all.

And it's easy to turn to things other than the Lord when we're in times of distress.

Maybe it's people, your significant other, your friends, your parents.

Maybe it's a substance, a drug, an alcohol of food.

Or maybe it's some other way of trying to grapple for control. Self harm,

throwing up, masturbation. Maybe it's something I didn't say, but it ran through your head when I

began talking about things we do to cope with stress. Whatever it is, if it isn't the Lord,

it's not going to fulfill or sustain us. We weren't created to do this life on our own. And in this

chapter, it seems, David realized this, at least for now. He's learned his lesson. And he asked the

priest for the Ephod, the breastplate priest's war as part of their priestly uniform, which may seem

random. Like, why did he want this piece of clothing? But inside a pocket of it were these two stones, which we've talked about them on the podcast before, they were used kind of like a holy magic eight ball when communicating with God. We'll link a helpful article from Got Questions in the episode description regarding those stones. But back to the story. Here, David asks God if he should pursue those who

burned Zichlag, the city, or leave them alone. And the Lord responded, saying in verse 8,

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