1 Samuel
David had been preparing for public service in the secret school of God. God will always work in secret with that soul which He intends to serve Him in public. In the desert he had learned the resources which faith has in God. He had slain the lion and the bear.
Are not our failures invariably because we have not been in secret with the living God? This is the essential and primary matter. Do we esteem communion with God our highest privilege? Our strength is in walking in fellowship with the living God. David had already gone through trial, and had therefore proved the God in whom he trusted. There had been dealing between his soul and God in the wilderness. O beloved, where is it that the saints really learn to get the victory? I believe it is where no eye sees us save God's. The hearty denying of self, the taking up the cross in secret, the knowing the way in the retirement of our closets, to cast down imaginations, and everything that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God; these are our highest achievements. The closet is the great battlefield of faith. Let the foe be met and conquered there. He who has much to do with God in secret, cannot use carnal weapons, and this should show us the importance of coming forth from the presence of the living God into all our service, that we may be thus prepared to detect and mortify all the pretensions of the flesh. It is sad indeed to see a saint trying to fight in the Lord's name, but clothed in the world's armor.
David said, moreover, "The Lord that delivered me out of the paw of the lion, and out of the paw of the bear, He will deliver me out of the hand of this Philistine.” v. 37. He knew that one was as easy to God as the other. When we are in communion with God we do not shrink from difficulty, for what is difficulty to him? Faith measures every difficulty by the power of God, and then the mountain becomes a plain. Too often, we think that in little things less than Omnipotence will do, and then it is that we fail. Have we not seen zealous and devoted saints fail in some trifling thing? The cause is, that they have not thought of bringing God by faith into all their ways. Abraham could leave his family and his father’s house, and go out at the command of God, not knowing whither he went; but the moment he meets a difficulty in his own wisdom, and gets down into Egypt, what does he do? He constantly fails in comparatively small things.
Faith discerns our own weakness so clearly that it sees that nothing less than the power of God can enable us to overcome anything. So faith never makes light of the danger, for it knows what we are, just as on the other hand, faith never faints a the danger, because it knows what God is.