Everybody’s Doing It
May 6, 2012
“Now’s your opportunity!” David’s men whispered to him (v.4).
READ: 1 Samuel 24:1-22
When I joined a popular social media network, it was thrilling to reconnect with friends. We swapped messages and fortified our cyber-connection by joining each other’s causes, comparing quiz results, and exchanging virtual hugs. After a while I felt the pressure of staying plugged into the website so that I could respond to each message.
Going along with the crowd isn’t necessarily a bad thing, unless our actions contradict God’s law. David had to decide whether to follow the advice of his peers or honour God in a critical situation. He and his fellow soldiers (and probably some large spiders!) were hiding from King Saul in the back of a cave—for Saul had been stalking David, intending to murder him.
Incredibly, Saul wandered into the same cavern. David’s peers, having been incessantly chased, understandably whispered: “Now’s your opportunity. . . . Today, the Lord is telling you, ‘I will certainly put your enemy into your power, to do with as you wish’ ” (v.4). David’s friends tried to influence him by telling him what they thought God was saying. Yet David said, “[God] forbid that I should . . . attack the Lord’s anointed one, for the Lord Himself has chosen him” (v.6).
When David opted for God’s influence rather than that of his friends’, the cat and mouse game ended without bloodshed. Saul actually cried and confessed to David, “You are a better man than I am, for you have repaid me good for evil” (v.17).
The next time you’re being pressured into a bad decision, and your friends say, “Just go for it,” don’t. Instead consider how it—whatever it is—lines up with God’s standards for Christian living (Ephesians 5:1-4). Listen to God’s voice and honour Him rather than earthly allies. —Jennifer Benson Schuldt
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