David Encouraged Himself In The Lord His God

David encouraged himself in the Lord his God

1st Samuel 30:1-6

You don’t smile like you used to.

You don’t love like you used to.

You don’t get happy like you used to.

You don’t feel the Spirit like you used to.

You don’t interact with others like you used to.

You don’t hug like you used to.

You don’t appreciate people like you used to.

You don’t enjoy life like you used to.

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 right.

Daved was Hated and Hunted For 8 – 9 years, Saul considered David his bitter enemy. He hated him. He hunted him. David fled to escape Saul’s jealous wrath. As the young giant-killer’s life became more and more like the adventures of The Fugitive, he gathered around him a band of rag-tag warriors who were the off-scouring of Israel. The Bible describes them as, “Everyone who was in distress, everyone who was in debt, and everyone who was discontented” (1 Samuel 22:2). What a group.

Eventually David and his new “army” fled across Israel’s border into Philistia, hoping to find safety among the Philistines. They thought Saul would never look for them there.

Now it happened, when David and his men came to Ziklag, on the third day, that the Amalekites had invaded the South and Ziklag, attacked Ziklag and burned it with fire, and had taken captive the women and those who were there, from small to great; they did not kill anyone, but carried them away and went their way. So David and his men came to the city, and there it was, burned with fire; and their wives, their sons, and their daughters had been taken captive. Then, David and the people who were with him lifted up their voices and wept, until they had no more power to weep. And David’s two wives, Ahinoam the Jezreelitess, and Abigail the widow of Nabal the Carmelite, had been taken captive. 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 (1 Samuel 30:1–6).

As the initial wave of grief subsided, David’s men began to point their fingers at him. They believed if it hadn’t been for David, they would not be going through this experience. They talked of stoning and killing him.

All human support systems had vanished.

I can’t imagine anything more stressful, more frightening, and more discouraging than this moment in David’s life.

Those who were nearest to him had turned against him. David was left alone to experience his grief and to wrestle with the questions that surely must have filled his mind.

Before we go on and talk about Discouragement and Encouragement, there are a couple of things we need to understand about discouragement.

1.First, discouragement does not come from the Lord, it comes from our adversary the devil. That is why David could encourage himself in the Lord, because the Lord was the source of his solution, not the source of his problem.

2.Second, discouragement is an indication that we are walking by sight, not by faith. Paul said, “We walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7), and that was the source of his stability and strength.

3.Third, Put worship before warfare.

4.Forth, We may not be able to change the problem, but we can allow God to change us

KJV 1 Sam 30:6

David encouraged himself in the Lord his God.

NIV 1 Sam 30:6

But David found strength in the Lord his God.

David’s Secret

1st Step Get Alone with God

In his moment of distress, in the heat of discouragement, David turned to the one true God, his God, for encouragement.

There was nowhere else to go.

Life had reduced his options to one.

Sooner or later, life does that to all of us.

David’s aloneness was his first step toward wholeness. There can be great healing in solitude.

But let’s be honest. Silence and solitude don’t seem to have a place in today’s world.

We live in a noisy, busy world

We have become a people with an aversion to quiet and an uneasiness with being alone.

Jim Elliott, the martyred missionary, once wrote in his journal: “I think the devil has made it his business to monopolize on three elements: noise, hurry, and crowds. Satan is quite aware of the power of silence.”

It’s not difficult to find examples in the Bible of people who, because of isolation, needed encouragement.

God put Moses on the back side of a desert for forty years before He sent him to lead the exodus.