And God notices our heart. God notices what's going on in our work, in our school, and in our relationship.
It's not heroics. It's not the big outward things.
It's those inward cries, those inward truces with God.
We come and we say, Lord, I'm surrendering. I'm surrendering this area to you.
No one in the Bible, human, fully human, I mean Jesus obviously was used to the greatest measure,
but fully human, no one was used as powerfully in the Old Testament as David.
The last time I talked about that the first quality that I see in David in 1 Samuel 16
is his core identity, his heart, his intimacy with Christ.
And everything in David is about being a worshiper and being a warrior.
And he's a worshiper first before he's a warrior.
And on those hills of Bethlehem, God had developed that intimacy with him
to such a degree that when the prophet Samuel comes into Bethlehem and notices David,
God's description of him is, don't look at his outward appearance, look at his heart.
And then a few chapters before, in chapter 13, 14, it says that God has searched for a man
whose heart is completely his, a man who's going after him, and that was David.
So the first quality of the kind of man or woman that God can mightily use from the life of David
is intimacy with God.
So I want to look at the second quality.
So we're in 1 Samuel 16.
I started last time and looked at verses 6 and 7.
So let's pick things up in verse 8.
Jesse is bringing his sons to Samuel.
So Jesse called Abinadab and made him pass before Samuel.
And he said, Neither has the Lord chosen this one.
Then Jesse made Shammah pass by, and he said, Neither has the Lord chosen this one.
Thus Jesse made seven of his sons pass through Samuel.
And Samuel said to Jesse, The Lord has not chosen any of these.
And Samuel said to Jesse, Are all these young men here?
Are all your young men here?
Then he said, There remains yet the youngest, and there he is keeping the sheep.
And Samuel said to Jesse, Send and bring him, for we will not sit down till he comes here.
So he sent and he brought him in.
Now he was ruddy with bright eyes and good looking.
And the Lord said, Arise and anoint him, for this is the one.
So the second quality of a man or a woman that God mightily uses is a secret history with God.
And what I mean by that is that there are qualities in us as we see God in solitude
or even away from anybody else knowing what we're going through that God notices.
Even Jesse doesn't notice it.
Even his brothers, they don't even remember to bring David into the room with Samuel.
So he's not exactly esteemed in his own family.
But David on the hills of Bethlehem and as a shepherd was building a secret history with God.
And what I mean by that is that there are things in our life that nobody else needs to know about.
There's things in our life that nobody should know about.
Of our dialogue with God, we were asking for things and we're seeking Him for things.
And we see answered prayer.
We see God sees your tears and you're crying out to Him.
And I'm telling you, men and women, that when we develop a secret history with God,
God is hearing your prayers.
And even if other people don't notice, maybe your boss doesn't notice,
maybe your wife or your husband never notices as part of you, God does.
And in sincerity, crying out to Him as a worshiper and a warrior.
And so God is noticing David's heart.
And God loves to see us in worship.
In those times alone when we're worshiping God and we're crying out to Him
and we're really confused about something in our life, it might be our relationship with our mom,
relationship with our dad, relationship with a spouse, maybe personal upheaval in our life.
I remember growing up and having acne really bad in high school.
And I wasn't a believer.
But I remember many a night crying myself to sleep wanting to be healed of my acne.
And what's amazing is after I got saved, I continued those cries to the Lord.
And for three years, nothing happened.
was healed, it was unexpected healing that came to me.
But I had a secret history with God
during that time of crying out to God.
And God notices our heart,
God notices what's going on in our work,
in our school, and in our relationship.
It's not heroics, it's not the big outward things,
it's those inward cries, those inward truces with God.
We come and we say, Lord, I'm surrendering,
I'm surrendering this area to you.
So David had done that.
The passage continues.
Then Samuel took the horn of oil
and anointed him in the midst of his brothers.
And the Spirit of the Lord came upon David
from that day forward.
So the third quality of a man or a woman
that God mightily uses
is develop a spirit-anointed relationship with God.
So the Spirit of God was poured out upon David.
It says that he was filled with and anointed
by the Holy Spirit.
In Ephesians 5.18, Paul says,
do not get drunk with wine,
for that is dissipation,
but be filled with the Holy Spirit.
So it's in being filled with the Spirit
that we surrender our throne to Christ.
And we give him the power of our lives
and the struggles of our lives.
To be mightily used by God,
men and women, you have to learn
to surrender everything to the Lord
and allow his power to flow through you.
And there's kind of this really supernatural work
that happens through the Spirit-filled life
that's really exciting.
I can't tell you how many times
myself and many others, friends of mine I know,
are in a dilemma, in turmoil about something,
a really difficult situation,
don't know what to do.
And then you just know what to do.
It's like you wake up one morning and you go,
oh, that's what I need to do in this situation.
Or we've got some kind of a situation
in which you feel like you're in a corner
and you can't get out.
And all you can think about
is this certain way of doing that.
Well, when you get filled with the Holy Spirit
and you allow the Holy Spirit
to be running his power through your spiritual veins,
you suddenly have a DNA of the Spirit of God
that was not true before.
And I remember one time I was in a situation
with a leadership problem at our church.
I was just convinced that this certain way
was the only way to handle that.
I had a secret history with God.
I was crying out to God days on end.
I didn't know what to do.
And then one morning I woke up
and I suddenly had a completely different perspective
to the situation that I had not thought about.
And it had to have been from the Holy Spirit.
So when we become Spirit-filled,
when we walk in the Spirit,
we have wisdom, we have understanding,
and we have discernment that we would not have.
The other part that happens through the Spirit-filled life
is God's character.
God's fruit flows through our lives.
And so in Galatians 5, it says,
the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace,
patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self-control.
So the more those qualities are happening in our life,
the more successful we are.
And those can only come through the Spirit of God
birthing, maintaining, and developing those in our life.
So walking in the Spirit is about the growth
of love, joy, peace, patience, and kindness in our life.
So David was discovering that, even as a young man.
It's quite interesting here that it says,
Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed David
in the midst of his brothers,
and the Spirit of the Lord came upon David
from that day forward.
Now that's very much the way in which the Spirit anointed,
the Spirit-filled life is described in the Old Testament.
In the New Testament, it's different.
But the reality, here's where the similarities are,
is that David had an outside-in experience
with the Holy Spirit, not an inside-out experience.
And what I mean by that is the Spirit came upon him.
In Acts 2, it says the Holy Spirit was poured out.
In other passages of Acts,
it talks about the Holy Spirit coming upon
or being poured out.
There is this internal decision
that we make to be filled with the Spirit,
but the Spirit's gonna come upon us,
and it's gonna transform us.
And so I wanna challenge you to be a person
that seeks to be filled with the Holy Spirit,
that if you know of a man or a woman of God
that is anointed.
with the Spirit, ask Him to pray over you.
And I've had just hundreds of experiences where the Holy Spirit has come upon me, and
I'm just different almost simultaneously as that person praying for me.
So God does His work through the filling of the Holy Spirit.
God does His work through surrender to His Holy Spirit.
So God mightily uses a man or a woman whose core identity is intimacy with Christ.
God mightily uses a person who has developed a secret history with God.
And then thirdly, God mightily uses someone who is Spirit anointed.
So I want to challenge you to be filled with the Holy Spirit, to have that secret history
with God, and learn to walk in the power of the Holy Spirit.
When you're walking in the power of the Holy Spirit, you're going to see signs and wonders.
You're going to see miracles.
And those miracles of healing, deliverance, and freedom, they're for everybody.
Jesus said, the works you've seen me doing, you also shall do.
So God can take any of us, housewife, mother, father, lawyer, mechanic, it does not matter
what we do in our work, if we'll be surrendered to the Holy Spirit, God will do the works
of Jesus through us.
And let me tell you, that is just so exciting.
And even this Sunday, when I was at church, I had the privilege of praying with someone
who felt the power of God come, and I believe they were actually healed of the particular
thing that they came up for.
So God can use anyone, anytime, any place, if you're surrendered to Him and anointed
by the Holy Spirit.
So in my next message, I want to talk about two more qualities that I think are key in
God using you in a mighty and powerful way.