When Dark Days Confront You! Series

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When Dark Days Confront you! by Rev. Shine P Thomas

How do we react when the Dark Days Confronts Us?

Is there still Hope when the Future seems Dark?

God has put dreams and desires in our life. We all have goals we want to accomplish and situations we believe to turn around but so often when things are taking a long time, when the going gets tough we tend to think negatively and get discouraged. Maybe you have started good and with great enthusiasm only to realize that you are hitting a dead end. Maybe situation in your life is going from bad to worse and have reached to a point where there is no hope. Is there still hope when the future seems dark?

Today we are going to see how to handle the dark days/ discouragements and stay hopeful

Discouragement is a terrible disease and a very powerful weapon in the hand of the enemy. It is a simple English word that is made up of two words: "Dis" and "Courage," which means lack of courage. How many times has the devil made us lose courage in our lives? David got discouraged and let us see how he handled it.

Brief History

David the shepherd boy was summoned by King Saul to play the harp. King Saul was so pleased with David especially after his victory over Goliath that he honored David with a post in the army, but very soon Saul because jealous of David.

1 Samuel 18:5

Whatever Saul sent him to do, David did it so successfully that Saul gave him a high rank in the army. This pleased all the people, and Saul’s officers as well.

1 Samuel 18:14-15

14 In everything he did he had great success, because the Lord was with him. 15 When Saul saw how successful he was, he was afraid of him.

Saul is so eaten up with envy and paranoia that he mistakenly thinks David is trying to steal his throne. So he tries to take David’s life on several occasions. David sensing danger eventually had to run away from King Saul.

David fled to many places but finally David and his men fled to the Philistines, the enemies of Israel thinking he will find peace there. Oh! David did a fatal mistake here. Sometimes when we go through difficulties the devil will make us think that before accepting Christ, before baptism things were fine. Maybe your people are telling you that your struggles have increased since you are in Christ. Maybe a fling or two when you backslid and went to the enemy’s camp things were going great, everything was okay. Even when David went to the enemy he found peace and relief from Saul but that does not mean that he was in God’s will.

1 Samuel 27:4

When Saul was told that David had fled to Gath, he no longer searched for him. The devil does not want to bother you are on his side. See Saul did not bother him and Philistines honored and gave incentives to David.

1 Samuel 27:6

So on that day Achish gave him Ziklag, and it has belonged to the kings of Judah ever since.

David went for a temporary relief, but he ended up staying there for long. For one year and four months David and his men lived in the enemy camp. David now even started to fight for the Philistines. God wanted him to fight for Israel but now he is fighting for the enemy.

David thought he found peace, security, and prosperity in the enemy camp, but it was short-lived. Soon the Philistines were preparing to battle King Saul, and David and his men had gone to join with the Philistines. In the planning meeting the Philistine commanders were unhappy with David and men fighting against Israel and they were sent back midway.

So David and his men returned thinking of taking some rest back home. They thought they were coming home to the welcome and warmth of their families, to rest and food, but instead, they saw smoke coming out of their city at a distance. Oh! In the meantime the town of Ziglag had been attacked.

1 Samuel 30:1-5

1 David and his men reached Ziklag on the third day. Now the Amalekites had raided the Negev and Ziklag. They had attacked Ziklag and burned it, 2 and had taken captive the women and everyone else in it, both young and old. They killed none of them, but carried them off as they went on their way. 3 When David and his men reached Ziklag, they found it destroyed by fire and their wives and sons and daughters taken captive. 4 So David and his men wept aloud until they had no strength left to weep. 5 David’s two wives had been captured – Ahinoam of Jezreel and Abigail, the widow of Nabal of Carmel.