Great Lives: David: A Man of Passion and Destiny
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The Bible tells us that David was a man after God's own heart, but what does that mean in practice? David, the Old Testament shepherd, king, and psalmist, offers an answer in the shape of his own incredible life.
Poet, musician, courageous warrior, and national statesman, David distinguished himself as one of God's greatest men. He modeled invincible confidence in the face of impossible circumstances. He made decisions with wisdom and equity. And he wrote with transparent vulnerability and quiet trust. But how well do we really know David?
In Great Lives: David, the first volume in Charles Swindoll's bestselling Great Lives series, Swindoll gives us a closer look at this incredible man who had his fair share of difficulties. Throughout his life, David was gripped by destructive passion, rocked by family chaos and personal tragedy, and motivated by political expediency. Like all of us, David was far from perfect, but Swindoll teaches us that David had the chance to become great when he placed himself at the Lord's disposal.
As Swindoll guides us through David's remarkable life and legacy, he asks and answers key questions along the way, including:
- How did David become the national hero of God's chosen people?
- Why is he the one character in the Bible described as "a man after God's own heart?"
- How can modern believers become people after God's own heart?
Join Swindoll as he teaches us that we can all endeavor to live a life marked by the humility, dependability, and integrity of David.
Charles R. Swindoll
Pastor Charles R. Swindoll has devoted his life to the accurate, practical teaching and application of God’s Word. Since 1998, he has served as the founding pastor-teacher of Stonebriar Community Church in Frisco, Texas, but Chuck’s listening audience extends beyond a local church body. As a leading program in Christian broadcasting since 1979, Insight for Living airs around the world. Chuck’s leadership as president and now chancellor emeritus at Dallas Theological Seminary has helped prepare and equip a new generation of men and women for ministry.
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Reviews for Great Lives
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- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Not so much about David, more about Charles.
Book preview
Great Lives - Charles R. Swindoll
Publications by Charles R. Swindoll
ADULT BOOKS
Active Spirituality
The Bride
Compassion: Showing We Care in a Careless World
The Darkness and the Dawn
Day by Day
Dear Graduate
Dropping Your Guard
Elijah: A Man of Heroism and Humility
Encourage Me
Esther: A Woman of Strength and Dignity
The Finishing Touch
Flying Closer to the Flame
For Those Who Hurt
God’s Provision
The Grace Awakening
Growing Deep in the Christian Life
Growing Strong in the Seasons of Life
Growing Wise in Family Life
Hand Me Another Brick
Home: Where Life Makes Up Its Mind
Hope Again
Improving Your Serve
Intimacy with the Almighty
Joseph: A Man of Integrity and Forgiveness
Killing Giants, Pulling Thorns
Laugh Again
Leadership: Influence That Inspires
Living Above the Level of Mediocrity
Living Beyond the Daily Grind, Books I and II
The Living Insights Study Bible—General Editor
Living on the Ragged Edge
Make Up Your Mind
Man to Man
Moses: A Man of Selfless Dedication
The Mystery of God's Will
The Quest for Character
Recovery: When Healing Takes Time
The Road to Armageddon
Sanctity of Life
Simple Faith
Simple Trust
Starting Over
Start Where You Are
Strengthening Your Grip
Stress Fractures
Strike the Original Match
The Strong Family
Suddenly One Morning
The Tale of the Tardy Oxcart
Three Steps Forward, Two Steps Back
Victory: A Winning Game Plan for Life
Why, God?
Title Page with Zondervan logo© 1997 by Charles R. Swindoll.
All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a registered trademark of Thomas Nelson, Inc.
Thomas Nelson, Inc. titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fund-raising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected]
All Scripture quotations in this book, except those noted otherwise, are from the New American Standard Bible © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1971, 1973, 1975, and 1977 by the Lockman Foundation, and are used by permission.
Other Scripture quotations are from the following sources:
The New International Version of the Bible (NIV), © 1983 by the International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Bible Publishers.
The Living Bible (LB), © 1971 by Tyndale House Publishers,
Wheaton, Ill. Used by permission.
The Modern Language Bible, The Berkeley Version in Modern English. © 1945, 1959, 1969, by Zondervan Publishing House.
Used by permission.
The King James Version of the Bible (KJV).
ISBN: 978-1-4002-0224-9 (trade paper)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Swindoll, Charles R.
David: a man of passion & destiny: profiles in character / from Charles R. Swindoll.
p. cm.—(Great lives from God’s word: 1)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN: 978-0-8499-1382-2
1. David, King of Israel. 2. Bible. O.T.—Biography. i. Title. ii. Series.
BS580.D3.S95 1997
222'.4092–dc21 97-9020
[b] CIP
Printed and bound in the United States of America
10 11 12 13 14 EPAC 5 4 3 2 1
Information about External Hyperlinks in this ebook
Please note that footnotes in this ebook may contain hyperlinks to external websites as part of bibliographic citations. These hyperlinks have not been activated by the publisher, who cannot verify the accuracy of these links beyond the date of publication.
DEDICATION
It is with much delight
that I dedicate this volume
to the four men in our family:
My sons, Curt Swindoll and Chuck Swindoll
My sons-in-law, Byron Nelson and Mark Dane
May each of you, like David,
become a man after God’s own heart.
May your lives, like his,
be marked by
humility, dependability, and integrity.
CONTENTS
Introduction
1 God’s Heart, God’s Man, God’s Ways
2 A Nobody, Nobody Noticed
3 Soft Music for a Hard Heart
4 David and the Dwarf
5 Aftermath of a Giant-Killing
6 Every Crutch Removed
7 For Cave Dwellers Only
8 Life’s Most Subtle Temptation
9 What to Feed an Angry Man
10 Cloudy Days . . . Dark Nights
11 Two Deaths . . . A Study in Contrast
12 New King, New Throne, Same Lord
13 David and the Ark
14 When God Says No
15 Grace in a Barren Place
16 The Case of the Open Window Shade
17 Confrontation!
18 Trouble at Home
19 Riding Out the Storm
20 Friends in Need
21 Being Big Enough to Forgive
22 A Song of Triumph
23 When the Godly Are Foolish
24 The End of an Era
Conclusion
Notes
INTRODUCTION
David: A Man of Passion & Destiny
Our world is desperately in need of models worth following. Authentic heroes. People of integrity, whose lives inspire us to do better, to climb higher, to stand taller. This has always been true.
Maybe that explains why biographies of great men and women have fascinated me throughout my life. I can still remember the first Bible I owned because of the colorful pictures of various characters interspersed through its pages. I spent many a Sunday morning, sitting beside my parents in church, fighting boredom by leafing through that Bible, staring at those strong-hearted ancients. Each one loomed larger than life as I relived each drama, imagining the sounds, entering into the action-packed scenes portrayed on the pages.
• There was Noah, surrounded by every animal in the zoo, riding out the storm.
• There was Jacob, wet with sweat, wrestling with an angel who had a pair of huge, mysterious wings.
• There was Joseph with his coat of many colors, looking at the angry faces of his brothers.
• Next was Moses, leading the Hebrews across the dry bottom of the Red Sea as the waters were miraculously pushed aside.
• Then came one of my all-time favorites, Samson with bulging muscles, arms outstretched between two marble columns.
• Esther, with her glistening queen’s crown, was pictured in an opulent setting as she knelt before the king, pouring out her heart on behalf of her people.
• Amidst a treacherous sea, Jonah was being swallowed by a giant fish.
• Mary was pouring ointment on Jesus’ feet.
• Peter, with the reflection of a fire flickering off his face, stood in the shadows as a rooster was crowing in the distance.
• Paul, under a laserlike light from heaven, was blinded as he stood beside his mount on the road to Damascus.
There were others, all intriguing . . . all igniting one’s imagination to take over and live the scene yet again.
My love for biographies has intensified as time has passed. While building my library over more than forty years, I have taken special delight in collecting and digesting great biographical works, most of them no longer in print. I still find delight in reentering those scenes from antiquity. My soul is stirred and my heart inspired as those saints of old, people of whom the world was not worthy
(Heb. 11:38) play out their lives, make their mistakes, accomplish incredible feats, and finally pass on into glory. What encouragement, what enrichment!
The words of the Russian poet, Boris Pasternak, come to mind, It is not revolutions and upheavals that clear the road to new and better days, but someone’s soul inspired and ablaze.
¹ Because that’s true, I have remained a serious student of the great lives woven through the Scriptures. For more than thirty years in the pastorate, I found the lives of those inspiring men and women to be rich sources of sermon material. Again and again I found that people were ministered to in deep and meaningful ways whenever I spoke on the characters of the Bible.
Interestingly, each time we would broadcast my biographical pulpit messages on our radio program, Insight for Living, the interest among our listening audience was invariably heightened. People appreciate hearing about those who have gone on before us . . . leaving us models to exemplify, teaching us lessons about life. In fact, no series we have aired over the radio since 1977 has received a greater response from our listening audience than my studies on the life of David.
Realizing the inspirational value of biblical biographies, for years I have wanted to write a series of books based on the lives of various men and women who appear on the sacred page. My desire has been to provide a set of volumes that would acquaint readers with each individual, helping them see how relevant and realistic those lives are . . . and how closely they track the situations and struggles of our own times. I am delighted to see this long-awaited desire become a reality.
It is with profound feelings of gratitude that I express my thanks to several of my friends for their vision and commitment to this multivolume project: Byron Williamson, Kip Jordon, David Moberg, and Joey Paul . . . true friends, long-term friends. And it is also appropriate that I state how greatly I appreciate the hard work of two very faithful ladies: Judith Markham, for her splendid editorial assistance, and Helen Peters for her tireless efforts in preparing my manuscript with such personal care and excellent attention to detail. Thank you, ladies, for your outstanding work. You have no peers!
Back in the late 1930s, Carl Sandburg finished a four-volume masterpiece, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and The War Years. It is among my most treasured volumes and has afforded me hours of reading pleasure. As the author sought for an appropriate title of the seventy-fifth chapter, covering the events immediately following Lincoln’s assassination, he settled on a quaint line from an old woodsman’s proverb, A tree is best measured when it’s down.
²
In Sandburg’s opinion, not until a life is down
can we adequately measure its length of significance, its breadth of impact, its depth of character.
What is true of a once great president named Lincoln is equally true of a once great king named David. The only one in all of Scripture to be called a man after God’s own heart,
this single individual is mentioned more than any other Old Testament character in the pages of the New Testament. Poet, musician, courageous warrior, and national statesman, David distinguished himself as one of God’s greatest men. In battle, he modeled invincible confidence. In decisions, he judged with wisdom and equity. In loneliness, he wrote with transparent vulnerability and quiet trust. In friendship, he was loyal to the end. Whether a humble shepherd boy or an obscure musician before King Saul, he remained faithful and trustworthy. Even in his promotion to the highest position in the land, David modeled integrity and humility. What a man of God!
But, as we shall see, he (like us) was anything but perfect. Having earned the public’s trust and respect, he forfeits it all in a brief season of sensual pleasure. Then, as the consequences kick in, we discover another side of the man’s makeup—lustfulness as a husband, weakness as a father, and partiality as a leader. It’s all there, written for all to learn, preserved for all to remember. A great man, though far from perfect, nevertheless lived a life with strengths worth emulating. Since our world is desperately in need of models worth following, here is one deserving of our time and attention: David, a man of passion and destiny.
CHUCK SWINDOLL
Dallas, Texas
CHAPTER ONE
God’s Heart, God’s Man, God’s Ways
On the surface, there seemed to be nothing about David that would have impressed God. Nothing caused Him to say, Wow! That’s my man!
David didn’t look much different from any of the other Jewish boys his age. Samuel simply said, He was ruddy, with beautiful eyes and a handsome appearance.
That’s the only physical description we have of young David. So we know he was handsome, had beautiful eyes, and had a healthy complexion. He may have had red hair or, more likely, he was reddened or bronzed from the hours he spent out in the sun and the wind. David’s outward appearance didn’t seem to set him apart in any way.
He was nothing more than a shepherd, and a very young one at that, living in the little village of Bethlehem. Yet God said, in effect, You have what I’m looking for, young man. You are the future king of Israel.
If we had been living in the farmhouse next door to David’s family on the Judean hillside, we might not even have known the name of Jesse’s youngest son. After all, his own father didn’t even think of including him until Samuel asked, Are these all your sons?
Then Jesse rubbed his beard and said, Oh, yeah, there’s my youngest. Almost forgot about him. He’s out in the field tending the sheep.
Go and fetch him,
Samuel said.
And suddenly, this young nobody, a boy even his own father forgot about, became somebody.
But before we get to David the king of Israel, we need to go back about forty years and get a sense of background and history, so we can appreciate the world in which he lived.
G. Frederick Owen, in his book Abraham to the Middle-East Crisis, describes those ancient times perfectly in one sentence: The people were on a long drift from God.
³ That was the world into which David was born.
Eli, the high priest, and his wicked sons were gone. His God-chosen successor, Samuel, the last of the judges, was an old man. The people had heard all the stories about the days when Israel was a great nation and about the years when Samuel was at the zenith of his career, when he subdued the Philistines and judged the land wisely and well. But most of them knew nothing of that personally.
They knew only that Samuel was an aged man and that he had appointed his sons to judge Israel. And what a mistake that was! Look at what the Bible says about them:
And it came about when Samuel was old that he appointed his sons judges over Israel. . . . His sons, however, did not walk in his ways, but turned aside after dishonest gain and took bribes and perverted justice.
1
Samuel
8
:
1
–
3
So the people were disillusioned, and they wanted something done about it. What they really wanted was a king.
Actually, Samuel’s wayward sons weren’t the only reason for their demand. The elders of Israel held a summit meeting at Ramah—a place in the hill country about five miles north of Jerusalem—and they said, Samuel, there are three reasons we want a king. First, you are old. Second, your sons don’t walk in your ways. And third, we want to be like the other nations. So appoint a king to judge us like all the nations
(1 Sam. 8:5).
SAUL: THE PEOPLE’S CHOICE
People have always wanted to be like everybody else, to do the popular thing, and these folks were no exception.
We’re tired of worshiping an invisible God. Everybody says, ‘Where’s your king?’ And we have to say, ‘Oh, he’s in the heavens.’ We want a leader here on earth, Samuel. We want to be like all the other nations. Look at the Philistines, and the Moabites and the Jebusites and all the other nations. They’ve all got kings. We want to be like all of them!
They didn’t say, We want to wait on God to provide what we need.
This broke Samuel’s heart, and so he went to God in prayer about it.
And the L
ORD
said to Samuel, Listen to the voice of the people in regard to all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, they have rejected Me from being king over them. . . . Now then, listen to their voice; however, you shall solemnly warn them and tell them of the procedure of the king who will reign over them.
1
Samuel
8
:
7–8
So God let them have exactly what they wanted. Did He ever!
The man they chose, Saul, was tall, dark, and handsome. That’s how people choose kings. They go for someone who looks good. Wow, he’ll be a good image for Israel. Saul’s our guy.
So Saul came on the scene and swept them off their feet. He had a measure of humility to begin with, and he seemed able to rally people around a cause. He had enough moxie to get an army together, and before long the Israelites thought, He’s the man for the job.
But guess what? Even though Saul was forty years old when he started to rule, before long he became thin-skinned, hot-tempered, and given to seasons of depression, even thoughts of murder. So much for the man who was the people’s choice.
David was born about ten years after Saul became king. Talk about being born into volatile times! The people of Israel were on a long drift from God, and now, to make matters worse, they were becoming disillusioned with the leader they had chosen. But what do you do when your king doesn’t walk with God? What do you do when you’ve gotten your own way and it’s all wrong. It’s the most disillusioning, insecure feeling in the world, yet you can’t put your finger on what’s wrong.
But graciously, God does not abandon His people. Through Samuel, He intervenes.
DAVID: THE LORD’S CHOICE
And Samuel said to Saul, "You have acted foolishly; you have not kept the commandment of the L
ORD
your God, which He commanded you, for now the L
ORD
would have established your kingdom over Israel forever.
"But now your kingdom shall not endure. The L
ORD
has sought out for Himself a man after His own heart, and the L
ORD
has appointed him as ruler over His people, because you have not kept what the L
ORD
commanded you."
1
Samuel
13
:
13
–
14
(emphasis added)
Look at that little three-letter word in verse 14: man. God had sought out a man. Only a man . . . but what a man he was!
Would it surprise you to learn that more has been written about David than about any other biblical character? Abraham has some fourteen chapters dedicated to his life, and so does Joseph. Jacob has eleven. Elijah has ten. But do you have any idea how many are dedicated to David? Sixty-six, if my counting is correct, and that does not include some fifty-nine references to his life in the New Testament.
When you realize how much is said about David in the Scriptures, coupled with the fact that on two occasions he is specifically called a man after God’s own heart,
you could get the feeling that he was some sort of super phenomenal person. Some superhero.
But I don’t want you to get the wrong idea about why God chose David—or why He chooses anyone, for that matter. So before we begin to look at the fascinating life of this man, we need to set the record straight.
Why does God choose people? Or perhaps the question should be: What kind of people does God choose and use? To determine that, we need to look first at a New Testament passage, in 1 Corinthians 1. The context here has to do with the way different people viewed the apostle Paul. Some readers of Paul’s letter were Jewish, and they were looking for a miracle, for a sign that proved this man was of God. Some of his readers were Greeks, and they were looking only at surface impressions. One’s inner life meant little to them. The Greeks of that day were influenced by brains, brawn, and/or beauty.
In light of this, then, Paul’s whole thrust in the first chapter of his first letter to the believers at Corinth was, I’m not coming to you with brilliance or human wisdom, and I’m certainly not coming to you with any kind of impressionable physique. Instead, I come in the power of God. And there’s a good reason for that.
Note carefully how Paul put it:
For consider your calling, brethren, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble; but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the base things of the world and the despised, God has chosen, the things that are not, that He might nullify the things that are, that no man should boast before God.
1
Corinthians
1
:
26
–
29
I especially like the way the New Berkeley Version translates the last two verses of that passage: God also has chosen the world’s insignificant and despised people and nobodies in order to bring to nothing those who amount to something, so that nobody may boast in the presence of God
(vv. 28–29).
Paul says, Look around, Corinthians. You won’t find many impressive people here.
Why? So that no one can boast before God. That’s a principle we tend to forget, because many of us are still a lot like the Greeks. When we look for people to admire, when we choose our role models, our heroes, we are often swayed or impressed by things that are cause for boasting. We want the beautiful people, the brilliant people, the successful
people. We want the best and the brightest. We are terribly enamored of the surface. The superficial impresses us much more than we’d like to admit. We even elect a president because he looks good on television!
But God says, That’s not the way I make my choices. I choose the nobodies and turn them into somebodies.
And that, in a nutshell, is the story of the life of David.
THREE PRIORITIES FOR GOD-APPOINTED SERVANT LEADERS
When God scans the earth for potential leaders, He is not on a search for angels in the flesh. He is certainly not looking for perfect people, since there are none. He is searching for men and women like you and me, mere people made up of flesh. But He is also looking for certain qualities in those people, the same qualities He found in David.
The first quality God saw in David was spirituality. The Lord has sought out . . . a man after His own heart.
What does it mean to be a person after God’s own heart? Seems to me, it means that you are a person whose life is in harmony with the Lord. What is important to Him is important to you. What burdens Him burdens you. When He says, Go to the right,
you go to the right. When He says, Stop that in your life,
you stop it. When He says, This is wrong and I want you to change,
you come to terms with it because you have a heart for God. That’s bottom-line biblical Christianity.
When you are deeply spiritual, you have a heart that is sensitive to the things of God. A parallel verse in 2 Chronicles confirms this:
For the eyes of the L
ORD
move to and fro throughout the earth that He may strongly support those whose heart is completely His. . . .
2 Chronicles 16:9 (emphasis added)
What is God looking for? He is looking for men and women whose hearts are completely His—completely. That means there are no locked closets. Nothing’s been swept under the rugs. That means that when you do wrong, you admit it and immediately come to terms with it. You’re grieved over wrong. You’re concerned about those things that displease Him. You long to please Him in your actions. You care about the motivations behind your actions. That’s true spirituality, and that’s the first quality David had.
The second quality God saw in David was humility.
Now the L
ORD
said to Samuel, How long will you grieve over Saul, since I have rejected him from being king over Israel? Fill your horn with oil, and go; I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have selected a king for Myself among his sons.
1
Samuel
16:1
The Lord had gone to the home of Jesse in spirit form. Jesse didn’t know God was there. Nobody did. God was on a secret surveillance mission in that home, and he spotted Jesse’s youngest son and said, in effect, That’s My man!
Why? Because the Lord saw in David a heart that was completely his. The boy was faithfully keeping his father’s sheep. God saw humility: He saw a servant’s heart. If you want further confirmation of this, go to the Psalms.
He also chose David His servant,
And took him from the sheepfolds.
Psalm
78:70
"I have found David My servant;
With My holy oil I have anointed him. . . ."
Psalm
89:20
It’s as if God says, I don’t care about all that slick public image business. Show me a person who has the character, and I’ll give him all the image he needs. I don’t require some certain temperament, I don’t care if he has a lot of charisma, I don’t care about size, I don’t care about an impressive track record. I care about character! First, is the person deeply authentic in his or her spiritual walk or is he faking it? And second, is he or she a servant?
When you have a servant’s heart, you’re humble. You do as you’re told. You don’t rebel. You respect those in charge. You serve faithfully and quietly.
That’s David. God looked at David, out in the fields in the foothills surrounding Bethlehem, keeping his father’s sheep, faithfully doing his father’s bidding, and God passed His approval on the lad.
It should also be noted that a servant doesn’t care who gets the glory. Remember that. A servant has one great goal, and that is to make the person he serves look better, to make that person even more successful. A servant does not want the person he serves to fail. A servant doesn’t care who gets the glory, just so the job gets done.
So while David’s brothers were off in the army making rank and fighting big, impressive battles, David was all alone keeping the sheep. He possessed a servant’s heart.
The third quality David had was integrity.
From the care of the ewes with suckling lambs He brought him,
To shepherd Jacob His people,
And Israel His inheritance.
So he shepherded them according to the integrity of his heart,
And guided them with his skillful hands.
Psalm
78:71–72
Circle the word integrity. That is so significant! God is not looking for magnificent specimens of humanity. He’s looking for deeply spiritual, genuinely humble, honest-to-the-core servants who have integrity.
Listen to some of the synonyms for this Hebrew word thamam, translated integrity
: complete, whole, innocent, having simplicity of life, wholesome, sound, unimpaired.
Isn’t that beautiful? Integrity is what you are when nobody’s looking. It means being bone-deep honest.
Today, we live in a world that says, in many ways, If you just make a good impression, that’s all that matters.
But you will never be a man or woman of God if that’s your philosophy. Never. You cannot fake it with the Almighty. He is not impressed with externals. He always focuses on the inward qualities . . . those things that take time and discipline to cultivate.
GOD’S METHOD OF TRAINING HIS SERVANTS
In this regard, it is enlightening to look at how God trained David for a leadership role. His training ground was lonely, obscure, monotonous, and real. Let me describe each of these four disciplines.
First, God trained David in solitude. He needed to learn life’s major lessons all alone before he could be trusted with responsibilities and rewards before the public. As the late biographer, F. B. Meyer, writes,
But Nature was his nurse, his companion, his teacher. Bethlehem is situated six miles to the south of Jerusalem, by the main road leading to Hebron. Its site is two thousand feet above the level of the Mediterranean, on the northeast slope of a long gray ridge, with a deep valley on either side; these unite at some little distance to the east, and run down toward the Dead Sea. On the gentle slopes of the hills the fig, olive, and vine grow luxuriantly; and in the valleys are the rich cornfields, where Ruth once gleaned, and which gave the place its name, the House of Bread. The moorlands around Bethlehem, forming the greater part of the Judaean plateau, do not, however, present features of soft beauty; but are wild, gaunt, strong—character-breeding. There shepherds have always led and watched their flocks; and there David first imbibed that knowledge of natural scenery and of pastoral pursuits which colored all his after life and poetry, as the contents of the vat the dyer’s hand.
Such were the schools and schoolmasters of his youth.⁴
Solitude has nurturing qualities all its own. Anyone who must have superficial sounds to survive lacks depth. If you can’t stand to be alone with yourself, you have deep, unresolved conflicts in your inner life. Solitude has a way of helping us address those issues.
When was the last time you got all alone with nature and soaked it in— so alone that the sound of silence seemed deafening? That’s where David lived. That’s where he first learned to king it.
For many nights he sat alone under the stars. He felt the blustery winds of autumn and the cold rains of winter. He learned to endure the burning rays of summer’s sun. Solitude was one of the teachers God used as He trained young David for the throne.
Second, David grew up in obscurity. That’s another way God trains His best personnel—in obscurity. Men and women of God, servant-leaders in the making, are first unknown, unseen, unappreciated, and unapplauded. In the relentless demands of obscurity, character is built. Strange as it may seem, those who first accept the silence of obscurity are best qualified to handle the applause of popularity.
Which leads us to the third training ground, monotony. That’s being faithful