Monday, June 22 – Sunday, June 28

In the middle of his flight from his own son, David receives word that his trusted counselor Ahithophel has joined the conspiracy. His first recorded response is not a strategy. It is a prayer. Before David positions a single ally or sends Hushai back into the city, he turns — instinctively — to his Father.

It is easy to assume that fatherhood is the deepest identity a man carries. It is not. Before David was ever a father to Absalom, Amnon, or Tamar, he was a son to God — and it was that sonship, not his crown, he reached for when the ground gave way beneath him.

This matters more than it first appears. A man who has forgotten he is a son will father from anxiety, trying to manufacture a security only his own Father can give him. A man who remembers he is a son will father from rest, even in crisis, because his identity was never resting on his children’s choices in the first place.

So before you ask what kind of father you are being today, ask the prior question: what kind of son are you being to your Heavenly Father? Are you bringing Him your Ahithophels — the betrayals, the losses, the moments the ground gives way — or are you carrying them alone, as though fathering well depended only on your own steadiness?