1 Samuel 21:10 “And David arose, and fled that day for fear of Saul, and went to Achish the king of Gath.”

This is something I’ve thought about for a long, long time, and tonight is the night to pen it!

My thought is… “How far will fear make you run… and where and whom to?” Hopefully this thought could inspire a generation of Christians so easily put to flight in a world so hostile to God’s Christ… and now so far away where God would have them be!

For David, fear made him run to people and places he never would have in “a perfect world”.

…But we don’t live in a perfect world, and we, like him, are going to have to negotiate ugliness of life as he was forced to… as a Christian, it is part of bearing the cross of Christ.

There’s a big lesson to learn here from David’s life, because if you read all about him, you’ll find a man who for many chapters was running for his life, barely staying ahead of Saul’s pursuit of his life… a continual retreat spurred on by fear and his “rational” assessment of his own grim situation…

“And David said in his heart, I shall now perish one day by the hand of Saul: there is nothing better for me than that I should speedily escape into the land of the Philistines; and Saul shall despair of me, to seek me any more in any coast of Israel: so shall I escape out of his hand.”

And so end result, David ends up a long way from where he needed to be all because of a bloke named Saul. Where once fearless in the face of a giant… here, David let fear dictate his movements, rather than faith in God’s continuous supply of grace.

For much of the Bible when you read about David, you find a man living under great pressure. …How much pressure do you feel under, this world can be a pressure cooker!

For most of us Christians, the strain that is inevitably placed on our faith journey can bend us and even threaten to break us… but only then to truly reveal whether we have Christ’s unbreakable bones in our little profession!

David is such a wonderful character in the Bible, he’s so worth getting to know. He was a godly young man who God began to use mightily, but in so doing, he gained an enemy he never wanted in Saul.

Saul hounded David out of God’s will and way for David’s life… and who in your life will put you under enough pressure and fear to cause you to deviate off the straight and narrow path that God put you on?

For Jacob, it was his brother Esau. Jacob was terrified of Esau, Esau as the older brother had it all over him, and for twenty years Jacob lived in a far country to avoid having to face him.

For Elijah, it was a wicked queen called Jezebel. For all of Elijah’s courage, he got a note one day from this woman telling him she was going to kill him, and he fled into the desert, forsaking company, and asking God to kill him because he felt all alone in the world.

…If this happened to such characters, and more, as a Christian, know we will all go through the Saul pressure test that David had. If you’re going to slay giants like David did you will also earn enemies like David had.

In all this, it’s important to remember that David never wronged Saul, in fact he did his best to faithfully serve him, but Saul was just so envious of him. And the thing is, the actual problem never was David, it was that Saul had issues with God because of his own rebellion… and be assured, in like manner, that those who are after you, often it’s because they have their own issues with God.

David for the most part did a pretty good job of not letting Saul ruin his life. David had multiple chances to “get him back” but would not violate his own conscience to God in satisfying what we would probably say are understandable retaliatory desires.

But quoted above is David walking through the valley of the shadow of death that he would write about … but he’s letting fear control his decision making, and that doesn’t produce good results!

And so have a look at your life, and ask yourself… has fear made you run? Has fear forced you to places and people and thinking processes you’d never have if circumstances weren’t contrary to you? Is your life maybe even now opposing God… where once you fought for him you now take sides against him and his people?

David made a big mistake in letting Saul run him off where he needed to be… are you going to let people run you off salvation and a life serving God? Don’t let it happen brothers and sisters, God is still God, if the king’s heart and breath is in the Lord’s hand… he’s plenty able to turn it all around quick smart when this season of your life inevitably concludes… as it did for David!

Psalm 27:1 “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? the Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?”

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