This past Sunday I had the pleasure of filling in for an absent Sunday school teacher. I gladly obliged, as I love the opportunity to pour into people that are hungry. I was handed a book on the subject that they were covering and was very interested to see the subject matter. The book was Max Lucado’s, “Facing Your Giants.”

Here is a breakdown outline of Chapter 5, Facing Your Giants:

Let me get straight to it…

The story in the section of the book that I was given is the story of David on the run. Saul is jealous, envious, and angry. David is scared. In just a few short scriptures, his military career is over, his marriage is destroyed, and his friends have left him. So he runs. He tries to find peace in the enemy’s camp but that doesn’t work, they don’t want him either. So he goes to where there is no one. He goes and hides in a cave called Adullam.

The whole journey to Adullam can be described in three words…

“Discouraged”

Who wouldn’t be in this scenerio. One minute the prophet of the land is saying you’re the next best thing since ice cream, to only end up a fugitive on the run for your life.

“Disconnected”

Fugitives don’t have a home. They are marked men. They are wanted most of the time more dead than alive.

“Deceitful”

When David ran to the priest he opened his mouth and spoke lies. He had to lie and fake about being crazy in Gath. Sometimes desperation will make a man do things that aren’t in his character to do. We start to see a side of David that only God knew about.

All is not lost…David reaches Adullam and in the midst of the shadows, wet, and moist rocky surface finds peace and solitude…and much, much more.

He finds…

“Refuge”

At the cave of Adullam, for David, finds refuge. The word refuge means “a shelter or protection from danger.” The word was popular with David. If you circle all the times it appears in the Psalms that David wrote you will find that it appears more than 40 times. But if there is ever a time where the word carried a definite weight it’s in Psalm 57. In Psalm 57 are the very words he cried out into the dark caverns of black void.

“Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me, for in you my soul takes refuge. I will take refuge in the shadow of your wings until the disaster has passed.” (Psalm 57:1)

“Community”

As David stayed at the cave others came and joined him. The misfits, rejects, losers…you know the type. They are the same people that sit next to you in church everyday. They are ordinary individuals that have problems just like we do. They know what you are going through because they have been where you have been. They feel a burden and passion for you because they know what it’s like to be on the run with nowhere to go. They welcome you in as one of their own. My favorite line in this chapter was this, “David was king of the marginal people”. He was king of the ordinary average person. That’s me. That’s you.

Where is your Adullam cave?