David Encouraged Himself in the Lord” 1 Samuel 30: 1-25 key verse-6 We all need encouragement from time to time. All of us at sometime or other face a crisis when everything seems to fall apart. There are times of discouragement, when things go wrong even when we are trying to do the right thing. Now David was greatly distressed, for the people spoke of stoning him, because the soul of all the people was grieved, every man for his sons and his daughters….” Some went so far as to suggest that they stone David. It is always easy in a crisis to blame somebody else or to look for a scapegoat. What does that have to do with encouraging yourself in God? A lot of times when your life gets hairy you’re tempted to do what David’s troops did. You’re hurting so you hurt someone else. Hurt people hurt people. So what happens after the crisis passes and you have time to reflect on having behaved badly toward someone else because you were in pain? Now you have another problem. You have to mend the fences you took down in your anger and your pain. So do yourself a favor, when troubles come be aware of yourself and behave yourself. Think of what must have been going through David’s mind as he stood over the ruins of his home not knowing whether his family was dead or alive. He must have asked himself some questions. Like, “Why, if God is with me, is Saul trying to kill me? Why is Saul so insanely jealous of me? Why, if I am anointed do I have hide myself in the wilderness? Is this the reward I get for being a man after God’s own heart?” David had a choice. He could either, as a great many of us do, just stand there and continue to look, and see nothing but the disaster or he could look beyond them and see God. David looked deep within himself and there he met God and found the strength and direction to carry one. Then verse six continues with “…But David strengthened himself in the LORD his God.” It is now, here in the book of 1 Samuel 30:6 we find one of the most eloquent “but” in the Bible. David had lost just as much as any of the rest of the men. David’s only worldly possession at that moment was the clothes wore. Everything else was gone; his property was carried off by raiders, his home was a mass of smoldering embers. But they was one thing that the Amalekites had not and could not take from him, they could not take his relationship with God. Although he could no longer say, “My house, my city, my possessions,” he could say, “My God.” You cannot know God if you do not know him personally. You can know about God but you do not know God. You may be able to use all the correct religious term-inology and you may even attend worship services but you do not know God. David was able to strengthen himself in the Lord because he had a personal relationship with God.
Posted on: Sat, 09 Nov 2013 04:03:32 +0000
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