2026-10-05 | 💝 Stop Forgetting God’s Grace: Let Gratitude Become Obedience | 1 Chronicles 19 Devotional (7-Step QT)
7-Step QT Notes
1. 🙏 Quiet Time
Pause.
Take a deep breath.
Ask God to help you remember his grace, recognize the voices influencing your heart, and respond to his kindness with gratitude and obedience.
2. 📅 October 5, 2026
Today’s passage reminds us:
When we remember grace, we respond with gratitude. When gratitude becomes visible, it produces obedience.
3. ✝️ 1 Chronicles 19:1-7
After Nahash died, David remembered his kindness and sent messengers to comfort his son Hanun. Misled by suspicious Ammonite leaders, Hanun humiliated David’s servants by shaving them and cutting their garments. Realizing they had offended David, the Ammonites hired Aramean chariots and troops with 1,000 talents of silver and gathered near Medeba for battle.
4. 📖 Key Verse
And David said, “I will deal kindly with Hanun the son of Nahash, for his father dealt kindly with me” (v. 2a).
5. 📝 Reflection
Among the traditional folktales I often read to my children when they were young was a story called “The Tiger Who Forgot Kindness.” The story goes like this. A man takes pity on a tiger trapped in a pit and rescues it. Instead of repaying the man’s kindness, however, the hungry tiger tries to devour the very person who saved him. At that moment, a rabbit appears. After hearing what happened, the rabbit suggests reenacting the original situation and persuades the tiger to enter the pit again. In the end, the tiger is trapped once more and pays the price for trying to harm the person who saved him.
The evil intention to harm someone who has shown us kindness, or the act of betraying such a person, may be difficult for children to understand fully. Yet my children clearly remembered the wicked tiger who betrayed his rescuer. Even children recognize that repaying kindness with hostility is unacceptable and deeply wrong.
Yesterday, we reflected on how David actively responded to God’s grace through devotion and service. David consecrated to God not only the silver and gold he had obtained in battle but also the many valuable objects brought to him by neighboring nations. While ruling a powerful kingdom, he also treated all his people with justice and righteousness. All these actions were expressions of David’s genuine gratitude as he remembered God’s grace.
In today’s passage, however, we meet someone whose response stands in sharp contrast to David’s. David remembered the kindness he had received from Nahash, the king of the Ammonites, and sought to show the same kindness to Nahash’s son, Hanun. As the new king, Hanun simply could have received David’s goodwill with gratitude. Instead, he was swayed by the suspicions and divisive counsel of his officials and brought great humiliation upon David’s servants. In the end, King Hanun of Ammon repaid David’s kindness with hostility.
Dear brothers and sisters, does Hanun’s behavior not appear terribly foolish? Yet we must also examine ourselves to see whether we are too easily forgetting God’s grace or betraying it by living in ways unworthy of that grace. Our salvation is clearly a gift given by God’s grace. Therefore, as people who have been saved, we must live in gratitude and in a manner worthy of our salvation. If we forget God’s grace and respond with disobedience, we will eventually face the consequences of foolish choices, just like the ungrateful tiger and Hanun.
6. 💬 What does this passage speak to you today?
- Have I recently assumed the worst about another person’s intentions?
- Which voices are influencing my thoughts and decisions most strongly right now?
- Have I become so familiar with God’s grace that I no longer treasure it?
- In what area of my life have I received God’s grace but resisted his direction?
- What is one specific act of obedience through which I can express my gratitude to God today?
7. 🙏 Prayer
Our heavenly Father, thank You for saving me and showing me kindness that I could never earn.
Forgive me for the times I have forgotten Your grace or responded to it with distrust and disobedience.
Help me remember the cross, the forgiveness of my sins, and my new identity in Christ.
May my gratitude become visible through the way I speak, work, serve, give, forgive, and love others today.
Amen.
Scriptures
📖 (1 Chronicles 19:1-7, ESV).
1 Now after this Nahash the king of the Ammonites died, and his son reigned in his place. 2 And David said, “I will deal kindly with Hanun the son of Nahash, for his father dealt kindly with me.” So David sent messengers to console him concerning his father. And David’s servants came to the land of the Ammonites to Hanun to console him. 3 But the princes of the Ammonites said to Hanun, “Do you think, because David has sent comforters to you, that he is honoring your father? Have not his servants come to you to search and to overthrow and to spy out the land?” 4 So Hanun took David’s servants and shaved them and cut off their garments in the middle, at their hips, and sent them away; 5 and they departed. When David was told concerning the men, he sent messengers to meet them, for the men were greatly ashamed. And the king said, “Remain at Jericho until your beards have grown and then return.”
6 When the Ammonites saw that they had become a stench to David, Hanun and the Ammonites sent 1,000 talents of silver to hire chariots and horsemen from Mesopotamia, from Aram-maacah, and from Zobah. 7 They hired 32,000 chariots and the king of Maacah with his army, who came and encamped before Medeba. And the Ammonites were mustered from their cities and came to battle.
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