Driven by the Spirit or Fear?

  I asked myself if it was David’s fear or the Holy Spirit that drove David to go live among the Philistines. (I Samuel 27 –it’s an awesome story.) Perhaps it was the Holy Spirit using David’s fear.  What I realized is that it didn’t really matter in the scope of things.  God knew everything about David.  He loved him, he called him, he protected him, instructed him and fulfilled his plan for David’s life and all the promises he made.

  I remember how hard it hit me when I realized that this man of the bible, that I admired so much, was far less than perfect –except in his faith.  You may say, “But if he doubted, then he was not perfect in faith.”  Yet, like Abraham, he believed God and that ran his life regardless of the things he didn’t get right.  Faith counted for righteousness again. 

  Even Elijah spoke in doubt a couple of times.  But when God spoke, Elijah believed him and it drove him.  God is bigger than mankind’s weakness.  God is not flighty or changeable. 

  He certainly was not in David’s life.  And David was not unaccustomed to walking into precarious situations.  He had, just before this, walked into the center of Saul’s camp at night with one other man and taken the king’s water bottle and spear.  I think he knew God had caused a supernatural sleep, but he still taunted the head of Saul’s army about not guarding his king.

  So it is that we find David living among the enemy, conducting raids on a regular basis, continuing his fight for his nation even as a fugitive.  We find David asking the king to give him a place to live outside the capital city and the king’s palace and being given Ziklag as a dwelling for his men and their families and flocks.

  Regardless of what drove him there, it is the story of a bold, purposed life.