Then David said to Achish, “If I have found favor in your eyes, let a place be given me in one of the country towns, that I may dwell there. For why should your servant dwell in the royal city with you?” So that day Achish gave him Ziklag. Therefore Ziklag has belonged to the kings of Judah to this day. And the number of the days that David lived in the country of the Philistines was a year and four months. (1 Samuel 27:5-7 ESV)
David was tired of running from Saul. Philistia was the perfect place to avoid any more run-ins with him. But he also did not want to get caught up in the mainstream paganism around him. So he settled in to wait, trying to blend in to the background. "Settling" is what we often do, hoping to avoid any conflict in our lives, blending in to the culture around us. We want to live in peace. What is wrong with that? Contrast what David had done before this: he had delivered cities wrongly attacked; he had added more and more of the hurt and abandoned to protect them; he had taken stands for justice. Now he is sitting and waiting. But when we are called by God to step up and make a difference, "settling" with a long term lease will not last long.
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