Since the beginning of time, there has been this question, or some form of it ” Why do bad things happen to good people?” Some philosophers have asked ” What is justice?” Now Christians are not immune to these thoughts or questions, in fact I would argue, that we will all ask that question to one degree or another at some point in our walk, maybe at many points in our walk.
Now there are certain times in our life when it is not just one bad thing that happens. Sometimes they overlap don’t they? They threaten to overwhelm us and those initial questions are simply intensified as we try to figure out what is going on and what is the purpose of it all. Many of the you will readily identify with these times. They are specific times when the enemy comes in like a flood and threatens to drown us in our circumstances. We scramble in our minds to make sense of it all. We hear familiar Scriptures from our hearts reminding us that God will never leave us nor forsake us yet that is exactly how we feel, left and forsaken and then the hammer drops again.
Can I suggest that life, the Christian life, whether you know it or not is an all out battle. There is an enemy of your soul and he does seek to drown you, he does seek to simply sweep you away by wave after wave of circumstances. It is in these times that we make life altering decisions. Now remember, that the enemy is after is your testimony, make no mistake about that. He does not care about you at all, what he wants you to do is to curse God and die. He wants others to see, as they look upon your circumstances, merely a man or a woman just like them. He wants to steal hope from your heart. He wants to present you as hopeless to the world so that a hopeless world can take comfort from the fact that there is really nothing in what you have said in the past, that it was merely all words and now circumstances have revealed that you are no different from them.
He wants to rob you of your peace, he wants to show the world that the peace that you claimed to have was merely circumstantial peace, not a supernatural peace that surpasses understanding. He wants to present you to the world as just like them and that as long as things are going okay then you have peace, but as soon as you are opposed by trial and circumstance, then your peace is gone, just like the worlds. He wants to rob you of your joy. He wants to show the world that this joy that you had was not supernatural, but merely a happiness that the world understands which again is gleaned from circumstances. He does not want the world to see the kind of joy that Paul presents after having been scourged and thrown into a dungeon and yet begins to praise God in the darkness of the night. And in that incident we see that this kind of joy, this supernatural joy is a door that leads from the deepest valleys, the darkest nights, the most gruesome of circumstances into the throne room of God Himself and that open door allows the power of God to flow into that very darkness and convince those who dwell in that darkness that there is a light that can redeem them from their chains.
In 1 Sam 30 we see David in a season when he could have asked the questions that we asked in the opening of this post. David has done no wrong. He had been watching the sheep of his father when the prophet of God comes along and anoints him. He has acted valiantly on the battle field for the sake of God. He has killed giant overwhelmed the enemies of Gods people and brought victory after victory. He has been loyal to King Saul and the family of Saul. Yet here in 1 Sam 30 we see David in one of his many low points in life, where circumstances have multiplied and come against him, where just where a set of circumstances cannot seem to get worse, they do. You see brothers and sisters, we shall be challenged many times in our lives. That is a fact. Whether you know it or not, there is a raging battle and it is the enemies full-time task to tear down the witness of Jesus in the earth. And so here is David, having had to flee from his home and family with Saul hunting him down like a dog and now even the Philistines want nothing to do with him because they do not trust him. He returns to the town where he lived, Ziklag, undoubtedly very dejected, and what does he find? The town has been burned down and all the wives and the children have been taken. Now I can hear David’s cry now ” Lord, have I not had enough?” Sorrow has piled upon sorrow and it threatens to crush David and those who follow him, so much so that even those who have followed him begin to turn on him.
"Then David and the people who were with him lifted up their voices and wept until they had no more power to weep.”( 1 Sam 30:4) Have you been there brothers and sisters? Maybe some of you are there now? Now what are we to do? It says ” But David strengthened himself in the Lord his God.” There is no rebuke for his tears, in fact it is quite a thing to weep until you have not even the strength left to weep, and maybe you have done that. Yet David does something that he will be called upon to do many more times in his walk with the Lord , he ‘ strengthened himself in the Lord.” Now that phrase ” strengthened himself,” in the Greek is khaw-zak and it means multiple things like to bind, to restrain to conquer. You see we are called to overcome. It also means to hold fast, to maintain, to be steadfast, resolute and prevail. We cannot possibly see the bigger picture, God sees it all, He sits upon the circle of the earth, he sees our lives from beginning to end. He sees at this moment that David will prevail, he sees that he will pursue, and by His hand he will overcome. David does not know that because he cannot see that, he must trust God that God knows. He will have to do this time and again in his walk, and he does and he overcomes.
We see the clues and the insight in overcoming in one of David’s psalms, 40. ” I waited patiently for the Lord and He inclined to me and heard my cry.” We must wait upon the Lord and believe that the Lord not only sees our situations but that he sees our years and hears our cries. ” He also brought me up out of a horrible pit. Out of the miry clay and set my feet upon a Rock and established my steps.” You see, He hears and He sees and for those who trust in Him and wait upon Him, He delivers them from very dark places and He establishes them once again on solid ground where once they were sinking and drowning in a quick sand of despair and hopelessness. The tears must give way to hope and trust. After the tears end there must be a resolution in us to wait upon the Lord. In this we exercise our faith in God and this pleases God and confounds the enemies schemes. David comes upon his enemies and finds them having a party, rejoicing in their great victory but they had not reckoned upon the God of David and in God David overcomes.
David can then say , having gone through the gamut of hopelessness and despair and so many tears that "Blessed is that man who makes the Lord his trust…….I delight to do your will , O God and your law is written within my heart.” Jesus is seated on the throne of the hearts of every saint. It is this fact that brings us through every trial and every tribulation. It is because of our love for Him that when all our tears have been shed that we will rise from that place and bind and restrain the thoughts of self-pity and defeat. We will arise resolute and steadfast and we will prevail and overcome because He who sits on the throne of our hearts was Himself resolute and steadfast when He arose from His own tears and agony in Gethsemane. He arose having acknowledged the will of His Father and set His face towards Calvary and beyond. We too, who love the Lord will do this by the power and might of the Holy Spirit that magnifies the Lord Jesus who sits upon the circle of our heart and sees.........bro Frank