Await & Arise Teaching: Fear into Faith- 1 Samuel 21-24

**Angela** (0:01)
Welcome back. Well, today I'm coming to you from the schoolhouse. It is spring, late spring in Wyoming, and we have a guest coming to stay on our little farm, and so I'm just making it spick and span. But I wanted to share with you one of our teachings from when we did 1st and 2nd Samuel. And this one goes over chapters 21 through 24, and it's focusing on when David is running from Saul. He has scurried out of the window of him and his new bride's place and is running for his life. He's run to Nob, and at Nob, he's begging the priest for any kind of protection, a weapon, a sword, anything that he can use to defend himself. He is facing this trial with fear first. And in this teaching, that's what we talk about, is running and dealing with things with fear first and how God can turn that into faith when we put it in front of him. When we trust him with our fear, with our situation, he will turn it into faith. And we can then meet him and walk with him through whatever is in front of us. So in this situation, David is asking for a sword, right? And the sword that they give him is the sword of Goliath. And I think it's such a telling moment that the sword that he is like going to rely on for his salvation from Saul is the sword that didn't offer even salvation to its owner, Goliath. Because it was God that offered the victory. God threw five little stones and David's sling offered the victory to Israel. And here we can look at this as a parallel in our lives as well. When we run in fear, nothing else can save us but God. And so our trust has to be fully in Him. And He will walk with us and He will give us then the faith to trust in Him, to rely on Him for our salvation in any situation. As Corinthians says, that we are not faced with things that are not normal to man, but that God will always show us the way out. He doesn't say He's going to fix it for us. He doesn't say He's going to take us out of the bad situation and plop us into goodness. No, He says, I'm going to walk with you and I'm going to show you the way out. And that's what we see with David here. He's being shown eventually the way out, the way through the situation. But it's not in fear, it's through faith. So I hope you enjoy the teaching. Go back and read those chapters, Samuel 21 through 24, before you listen to the teaching. And then enjoy. And thanks for being here.
Welcome to another episode of Await & Arise. Join me as we dive into scripture and just pause in awe of our good God and as we give our souls just a moment of rest and refresh. Well, how was everybody's week this week? Good.
Saul, oh Saul.
Peril is imminent danger to life or limb. And a Psalm is sacred song of praise. So we meet David in a crux of his life, a turning point, definitely a time or opportunity to lean into God. His start is rather shaky, right? He's fleeing out a window with nothing but his clothes on his back, and he runs to a himalek, and he lies, and he puts a himalek and all of the priests in the town of Nob at danger. He then takes the sword, which is really telling of the place of fear that he's standing in, because it's the sword that when he opposed the one who carried it and took it in the first place, he stood with faith not needing a sword. And now here he stands in fear, saying, have you got a sword or anything in this place?
And it's interesting that it's Goliath's sword. It should be kind of telling to him that, hmm, maybe our faith is in the wrong place right now. We're leading with fear. And David was a man, he was anointed by God, and in the beginning he showed no fear. He had strong faith and trust in God's provision and protection, but as Saul is pursuing him, we see that deteriorate a little bit in the beginning. We see that, I don't know what to do, I'm fearful, and we don't first run to God. We run away from the person who's chasing us.
So it seems to decline a bit. Sometimes when we seek the Lord, we find success. And when we find success, we kind of become complacent. We go, well, this is how it's going to be forever. And then we sit back in our nice little throne chair and enjoy our successes until a curveball of life hits us. And we don't always, in complacency, respond really well to the curveball. We go, oh, what was that? And I'm out of my chair, and I'm mad at the curveball, and I don't first go, God, what should I do with this? Sometimes our first response is in fear, like it was for David. Sometimes we turn to anxiety and stress and fear before we go to faith. There's an old country song that says, sometimes you're the Louisville slugger, and sometimes you're the ball. Sometimes it all comes together, and sometimes you're going to lose it all. And I think that's what we're seeing here. We see him flee out this window, we see him running to a hemilech, we see him lie to a hemilech to get provision and protection. He fails to go to God first. He's letting fear lead him. As we progress in the chapters, we see him return to faith, and his Psalms give us this unique ability to actually see his heart as he walks out this particular valley in his life. He proves to us our own humanity, doesn't he? It's a little bit comforting to watch David, because you can kind of go, oh yeah, I've been there.