Good morning sisters!

There are two mayor topics or lessons  I found in these 3 chapters from 2 Samuel:

1.- The Power of a covenant - Called to be a blessing

David desired to bless someone in Saul's family because of the covenant he had made with his friend Jonathan. 

David's covenant relationship with Jonathan included all of Jonathan's children.

I believe that just as David was looking for someone to bless, for Jonathan's sake, God looks for people to bless for Jesus' sake. God is merciful, gracious and kind. He constantly extends His love and mercy toward us, the only thing we need to do is to be willing to accept it.

The faithful love of the Lord never ends!

    His mercies never cease.

 Great is his faithfulness;

    his mercies begin afresh each morning. 

Lamentations 3:22-23

In covenant, we offer God what we have...all of our sins, faults, weaknesses and failures, in exchange He gives us His ability, righteousness and His strength. He takes our poverty and gives us His riches. He takes our diseases and sicknesses and gives us His healing and health. He takes our messed up, failure-filled past and gives us bright and hopeful futures.

God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. - 2 Corinthians 5:21

All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away.
Isaiah 64:6

We don't have to talk God into being good to us. That's who HE IS. He is looking for someone to bless for Jesus' sake.

Today make the decision to receive what you don't deserve,  receive what you have not earned and when you do, you'll start experiencing God's awesome grace, which is freely available to all who receive it!

2.- Dead-Dog image (on low self-esteem)

As David looked for Jonathan's descendants, he discovered his friend's crippled son, Mephibosheth.

Mephibosheth, was living in less-than-desirable circumstances.

He was living in a small town called Lo-debar, Lo-debar, means "pasture-less", this could represent a place of poverty...In other word words, lifeless.

I think most of the times, when our self-image is poor, we tend to choose surroundings that fit the way we feel about ourselves. I'm not talking about geographical places necessarily, as many times, we don't really get to choose where to reside.

I'm taking about the way, we present ourselves...the way we dress perhaps? For example, the way some people are filled with low self-esteem that they will not even bother to try to dress or look nice. 

On the other hand, we have the opposite extreme. People who feel so bad about themselves inwardly that they will try to hide by becoming perfectionists outwardly.

Truth is, that the way we feel about ourselves reflects on the outside.

What we need to realize is that God wants to bless us regardless our imperfections. Our worth and value are not in the outward things but knowing in our hearts who we really are in Christ.

Our imperfections cannot and will never stop God from working in our lives. God  does not want us to live in a barren, lifeless place...He has called us to experience His unlimited kindness and love! He delights in being merciful!