We have another rash statement, another person speaking from the flesh. David proclaims that he will kill every male of Nabal’s house before morning. It never happens.

Abigail comes and speaks wisdom. David listens to wisdom and changes his mind. He was willing to admit he has spoken unwisely and this woman, soon to be wife, was the one speaking wisdom.

I don’t know how wise it was for Abigail to say to let her husband’s sin be on her. That seems like an unwise thing to say, except that Jesus did that for us. She trusted in mercy, I guess.

What do your words show about what’s in your heart?

I find it interesting that David’s reaction was to avenge himself. He had refrained from avenging himself against Saul. It had to have been a struggle in his thoughts that this whole thing with Saul could have all been over. He had avenging on the mind. The flesh is always there, to a degree.

We are always working to crucify flesh, self, so that the resurrected life of Christ can live through us. As John said, “I must decrease. He must increase.” We need to keep getting out of the way to let Christ live through us. We need to keep self from resurrecting instead of the life of Jesus.

Our baptism is our burial, our being buried with Christ. Then we are raised to new life in Christ and filled with the Holy Spirit hopefully. I say hopefully because you don’t earn salvation. You can’t work for it. The work of baptism doesn’t earn you the Holy Spirit. Receiving Christ’s life in you is an act of faith and a pure gift from God. We need to rely on Him to do it, and only He can. There are no magic words to make it happen. It’s a supernatural work that transfers us from Satan’s kingdom into God’s.

Then we start on the life-long journey of working out that salvation we were freely given, allowing God access to our whole selves for the transforming work of sanctification, that becoming more and more like Jesus. It’s all His work. We just say, “Yes, Lord,” and surrender everything to Him.