Hey, this is Stephen Ferdick. I'm the pastor of Elevation Church, and this is our podcast.

I wanted to thank you for joining us today. Hope this inspires you. Hope it builds your fate.

Hope it gives you perspective to see God is moving in your life. Enjoy the message.

When I was praying about how to start the year and the theme we should start the year with,

I was led to 2nd Samuel 19, a scripture that originally I was attracted to from a leadership perspective.

But I think it has implications for our church.

As I set this image before you, I invite your attention to 2 Samuel chapter 18.

Let's go 18 verse 33 and get the context and read down to chapter 19, verse 8.

And so I know we were done with David because we preached a whole series about him last

year called Bars and Battles.

But I asked him would he come over to 2018 and help us start the year.

And so he said that he would.

But there's going to be a real dramatic difference between the David we saw in 1st Samuel

19 and the David we see in 2nd Samuel 19.

Because when we saw him in 1st Samuel 19, he was on the come-up and God was really

blessing him and he had a lot of courage.

But now we're going to see him at a place that is very unfamiliar to someone of his caliber. And David's confidence

is shaken. And so this would be a very strange thing if you just picked up the Bible and

you heard about David from Sunday school and he was killing Goliath and ripping off the heads of Philistines and driving back the enemies of Israel.

But now the scripture says in 2nd Samuel 1833, the king was shook.

I put it in a little bit of a modernized translation. He was shook. I put it in a little bit of a modernized translation. He was shook and he went up to the room over the gateway and wept.

As he went, he said, oh, my son, Absalom, oh, my son, my son, Absalom, if only I had died instead of you.

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