
4 So David and his men wept aloud until they had no strength left to weep. 5 David’s two wives had been captured—Ahinoam of Jezreel and Abigail, the widow of Nabal of Carmel. 6 David was greatly distressed because the men were talking of stoning him; each one was bitter in spirit because of his sons and daughters. But David found strength in the Lord his God.
1 Samuel 30:4-6
Have you ever been at rock bottom? Maybe it was the loss of a loved one or a broken relationship or a dream that had finally died. Regardless of the specifics, I think most people have at one point or another felt the sting of a great disappointment in life.
The words written by David in verse four are so tragic they seem almost as if they were stolen from a modern breakup song, and yet it displays a moment of vulnerability that David feels when he returns home from battle to see that his town had been burned, his stuff had been stolen, and his family had been kidnapped. On top of all of those things, David also is beginning to be abandoned by his men who had been loyal to him for years because of their anger, bitterness, and sadness at the reality that their life had been ruined.
This is a rock bottom moment for David. Yet, it is this moment that is one of the final stages of preparation for David in his ascent to be the greatest king in Israel’s history.
There is a simple line at the end of verse 6 that demonstrates the moment that David rebounds from rock bottom and is prepared to pursue God’s purpose for his life after this moment of pain and hurt, “But David found strength in the Lord his God.”
When David goes through one of the most traumatic and impactful negative moments of his entire life, he accepts the reality that the situation is bad, and he weeps at the pain of all that has happened. However, David does not stay in grief forever and does not let one moment of intense disappointment cause him to quit. Rather, he finds strength to get back into the fight in his strong relationship with the Lord.
The verse leaves open the details of how David finds his strength in the Lord, and yet the reader can fill in the answer with the ways that any and all of us should find our strength in the Lord. We look back at what he had done before, and we believe that He can and will do it again. For David, that means remembering when he fought the lion and the bear, and God was with him. He remembers slaying the giant, and God was right by his side. He recalls the moment Saul threw a spear at him, and God saved him once again. For David, he finds his strength in the Lord because of the reality that God has taken him this far, so why would he leave him now?
In the same way, you and I should find strength the same way. All of us have gone through moments of disappointment, but at the same time, we also have had moments where God has shown up and carried us when we could not stand on our own. And when we go through times of disappointment and pain, we should not just stare at the difficulty in front of us without remembering every time that God has been with us in the fight before and will be with us again.
I invite you today in your time with God to think about the times He’s been there for you. Ask your friends and family to help you jog your memory. Write them down if you have to so that you do not forget in the moments when you have no tears left to cry that you can strengthen yourself in the Lord just as David has done.
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