You develop your skills, God will open up the doors.
You become good at what you're doing, God will open up more doors.
🎵 Music 🎵
In 1 Samuel 16, looking at the life of David and the kind of person that God mightily uses,
we're picking up at verse 14.
But the Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and a distressing spirit from the Lord troubled him.
And Saul's servant said to him,
Surely a distressing spirit from God is troubling you.
Let your master now command your servants who are before you to seek out a man
who is a skillful player on the harp, and it shall be that he will play with his hand,
and when the distressing spirit from God is upon you, you shall be well.
So Saul said to his servants, Provide me now a man who can play well and bring him to me.
Then one of the servants answered and said,
Look, I have seen a son of Jesse, the Bethlehemite,
who is skillful in playing a mighty man of valor, a man of war, pruning in speech,
and a handsome person, and the Lord is with him.
Sometimes when we're talking about the kind of person God can mightily use,
we talk about the type of people that God fills with His Holy Spirit.
We can think totally spiritual.
But even right here, we see the resume of David as one who was skilled and prudent in speech.
So I've made this a quality.
I think the fourth quality of the kind of person God can mightily use
is that they are skillful at something and they're prudent in speech.
So I would say developing your skills and your speech are hugely important
in becoming the kind of leader, becoming the kind of servant leader that God wants you to be.
David had become so skilled with a harp at 13, 14 years old that the king of Israel heard about him.
That's how skilled he was.
And I want to challenge you.
You know, find a skill.
Find something that you have a passion for and develop that.
God really uses people who develop their skills.
I mean, it could be anything.
I have a son who's a lawyer, and he loves law.
He has put in years and years of law school, and now he's in Washington, D.C.
And so he's developing the skills of a lawyer, and God's going to mightily use him in law.
I have another son who's really skilled in social media stuff,
and he has developed that skill to such a degree that his ministry
and the things that he's involved in are just flourishing.
This avenue opened up for them.
That's the way it always is.
You develop your skills, God will open up the doors.
You become good at what you're doing, God will open up more doors.
And that's what he's doing with David, because David has put in what Malcolm Gladwell,
in his book, his powerful book, Outlier, he calls the 10,000-hour rule.
And what he means by that is taking 10,000 hours.
They found that it takes about 10,000 hours to develop a skill at a master level.
Gladwell explains in his book, and I quote, that reaching the 10,000-hour rule,
which he considers the key to success in any field,
is a matter of practicing a specific task or skill
that can be accomplished with 20 hours of work a week for 10 years.
So he actually uses in the book different people like the Beatles.
And the Beatles, the rock band out of England, who in the 1960s were just a garage band,
who were asked to go to Germany.
And when they went to Germany, this nightclub really liked them
and booked them for over a year every night.
And it was at that time that they started writing,
because you can't keep copying everybody else's music as a garage band
if you're going to be at the same place every night for a year.
Because if the people quit coming because you're bored, you're going to get fired.
So the Beatles began to wake up in the morning and work on new stuff.
It forced them to write new lyrics, to write new music, and they became a huge hit.
But they put in the 10,000 hours.
And almost any skilled musician, any skilled athlete, any skill,
you're going to find someone that's put in the 10,000 hours.
Proverbs 22, 29.
It says, do you see someone skilled in their work?
They will serve before kings.
They will not serve before officials of low rank.
So this is what's happening to David.
David's being raised up because of his skill on the heart.
But it also says that David was prudent in speech.
And I can't overestimate this to say
that you become skilled and prudent and eloquent
and articulate in speech.
Man, the sky's the limit of how God can use you.
David evidently had developed articulation in his speech.
You know, I've got 10 fingers here.
And I don't have any maladies or arthritis here.
But I can move these fingers in all kinds of ways.
And that's kind of the way articulation is.
Articulation is skill in maneuvering something.
Well, you've got this tongue.
And it's one of the most powerful motor skills
and actually one of the most complex motor
skills on your body.
Learning to use your tongue is an art form.
It's a skill that we can learn.
And so it's through that skill that David
was noticed by God that he was articulate.
And so I want to challenge you men and women.
Become articulate.
Develop your vocabulary.
Read books.
Enlarge your vocabulary.
Take opportunities to speak or to talk to people.
Because the person who's articulate
is the person who wins the world.
I mean, it's always going to be that the president
of the company or the leading CEO of a business
is someone who is articulate.
Clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson
has said the most dangerous person is one who is articulate.
So grow in articulation.
Grow in skill.
Saul sent messengers to Jesse and said,
send me your son David, who is with the sheep.
And Jesse took a donkey loaded with bread, a skin of wine,
a young goat, and sent them by his son David to Saul.
So David came to Saul and stood before him.
And he loved him greatly and became his armor bearer.
Then Saul sent to Jesse, saying, please let
David stand before me, for he has found favor in my sight.
Verse 23, and so it was, whenever the spirit from God
was upon Saul, and that means a demonic spirit in this case,
that David would take a harp, play it with his hand.
Then Saul would suddenly become refreshed and well,
and the distressing spirit would depart from him.
The fifth quality of the kind of person
that God mightily uses is one who's
developed the ability to fight in spiritual warfare.
David knew how to fight in spiritual warfare
through worship.
He knew how to use his heart in such
an articulate and powerful and skillful way
that he drove off demons.
Can you imagine a 13-year-old boy
who's so skilled in a musical instrument
that when he plays, the presence of God
falls on those that are in the room,
and their demons get cast out?
Well, in the same way, I think God
wants us to be able to use our skills that drive off demons.
I mean, I really believe this, that whether you
are in full-time Christian work or whether you're
in a secular job, most of you are in just regular jobs.
God wants to use you in that job
to be so anointed by the Spirit, so skillful,
finding your core identity through intimacy with Christ,
developing a secret history with God,
that when you walk into the room,
demons shudder because of the presence of God being upon you.
So learning to fight in spiritual warfare
is the key to success in your life.
And what I mean by that is the ability
to discern what demons are doing all around you,
the ability to go into your family,
go into your work, in relationships that you're in,
and discern that's of God, that's not of God.
And how do you fight that?
How do you battle that?
Well, I think the first thing is you put on the armor.
Every day, put on the armor of God.
And here's what I do.
I'll just show you what I do from Ephesians 6.
I say, Lord, I'm putting on the helmet of salvation.
With the helmet of salvation, renew my mind today.
I'm gonna renew my mind with things that are positive,
pure, noble, and good.
I'm gonna think on those.
You have control of my mind today.
Lord, I put on the breastplate of righteousness.
Well, Lord, your breastplate covers my heart.
I want the motives of my heart.
the way I treat people to be righteous in all that I do.
Lord, I take the shield of faith, which extinguishes the fiery dark to the enemy,
and Lord, I'm going to walk by faith. So increase my faith,
develop my faith, not my feelings, because I mean even today I don't feel
like that great. I mean I feel normal, but I mean I don't feel that great,
but I don't depend on my feelings. Sometimes I feel a little bit down, I'm
not going to depend on my feelings. Sometimes I feel super high up. I don't
depend on my feelings. I walk by faith, not by my feelings.
Feelings are fickle, man, and people are fickle,
and if you're depending on those things to find your security,
man, you're going to be so insecure. And so take the shield of faith. I'm going to
walk by faith today, and then I'm going to take the sword of
the spirit, which is the word of God. That sword is the word. I'm going to spend
time in God's word today. I'm going to put on
the belt of truth. Well, truth comes from the word. Truth
sets us free. You abide in Christ. You abide in his word,
and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.
So freedom comes through truth. And then I shod my feet with the gospel of peace.
All of this is found in Ephesians 6, 10 through 18.
That means that wherever I go, I pray I'd be a peacemaker.
My forerunner is at the Toyota place today,
and Adam is my service director there at the Toyota dealership,
and I pray that I'm a peacemaker. I bring God's peace and God's presence into
Adam's life by me being there to pick up my car.
So that's the first thing, is to put on armor. Second thing,
you got to be able to discern what's going on around you.
You got to discern what the enemy is up to.
And sometimes you can be in environments where people are angry,
they're frustrated, they're depressed, whatever it might be.
And if you'll ask God, he'll show you what's going on.
And sometimes it's demonic. I mean, demons are there
at work. And so that's why thirdly, learning to bind and loose.
So we learn how to bind the enemy through prayer and
to leave that place in the name and the blood of Jesus.
So that's how we fight in spiritual warfare.
So I hope that this series has been helpful to you.
Remember, core identity is intimacy with Christ.
Develop a secret history with God. Thirdly, be able to understand
what's going on around you by asking God, what are my skills? What are my
talents? And then develop your skills. Put in the 10,000 hours.
Develop a skill. Become prudent in speech.
Learn and grow in articulation in your speech.
Fourthly, develop your skills and your speech.
But then fifthly, develop the ability to fight
in spiritual warfare. This is key. This is key to becoming the kind of person
that God can mightily use. And I hope this has been helpful to you.
David is quite the man of God. And if you're interested in more,
read 1 Samuel 16 onward all the way through
1 and 2 Samuel. Get my book, Worshipper Warrior. It's on Amazon and Barnes and
Noble. And I take you chronologically in a
devotional way through the dangerous life of David.