1. Responsibility — Keep your focus when your emotions want to take over (2 Samuel 19:1-8).

• How you react in any situation will affect how others react (1-4).
• A wise person needs people who can stand outside the situation and tell them when they are reacting poorly (5-7).
• A wise person listens when someone they trust tells them what they don’t want to hear (8).

Action Step: Identify someone you trust to give you honest feedback — and give them permission to tell you when your response is becoming unhealthy or unwise.

2. Perseverance — Keep your focus when people are complicated (2 Samuel 19:9-18a).

• Real life is messy, and people do not always make good decisions (9-10).
• Sometimes people — and committees in particular — struggle to make obvious decisions (11-13).
• Getting the right thing done sometimes requires saying the right thing at the right time (14-18a).

Action Step: When you are dealing with complicated people or situations, don’t give up simply because the obvious solution is not happening. Ask, “What needs to be said, and who needs to hear it?”

3. Grace — Keep your focus on restoration rather than retaliation (2 Samuel 19:18b-30).

• People make mistakes, and sometimes their mistakes will hurt you (18b-20).
• How we respond to people who admit their mistakes reveals our character (21-23).
• Sometimes the right way forward is simply to move forward regardless of what has happened in the past (24-30).

Action Step: Ask yourself, “Am I trying to move forward, or am I still trying to make someone pay for what happened?”

4. Unity — Keep your focus on what matters instead of fighting over recognition (2 Samuel 19:31-43).

• Even after God brings us through a crisis, we can lose focus over secondary things (31-39).
• Self-focus turns secondary issues into major conflicts (40-43).

Action Step: When conflict arises, ask, “Is this actually about what matters, or is this about me?”