Sharpened Together - 28 October

"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."
1 Samuel 16:13

Jonny's sermon on difficulties, on the back of our Anointed series, got me thinking about David.

"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." (1 Samuel 16:13)

David was anointed king long before he ever sat on a throne. A lot of us carry the idea that once God moves, everything will just fall into place. But that's not what we see in David's life. God was already at work in him, preparing him for the anointing that would one day be fully realised. And David knew it.

The lion and the bear

When David stood before Saul, offering to face Goliath, he didn't point to his anointing. He pointed to his history with God out in the paddock (1 Samuel 17:34–37). A lion took a lamb, and he went after it. A bear came, and he dealt with that too. "The Lord, who delivered me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear, He will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine."

Those weren't easy jobs. They were hard, dangerous moments where David had no choice but to lean on God. As Jonny said about exercise, the difficult stuff is what's required to grow. You don't build strength by lifting nothing.

And here's the thing: when we step into God's anointing on our lives, it isn't there for the easy days. It's there so we can get through the difficult ones.

Anointed for the everyday

Men, you are anointed to be fathers, husbands, providers and carers. Sometimes we see those roles as ordinary, even unimportant, and we miss the opportunities they give us to use the anointing that's already on us. The school run, the hard conversation with your teenager, showing up for your wife when you're flat out, keeping the business or the job going in a tough season. That's the lion and the bear.

Look at David's road. He went from being anointed, to seeing Goliath fall, to running for his life from the very king he'd been faithfully serving. Saul's son-in-law one day, hiding in caves the next. All up, it was around 15 years before David stepped into the very thing he'd been anointed for.

Lean in and enquire

But in those hard years, David didn't question his anointing. He leant into it. Over and over, Scripture says David enquired of the Lord (1 Samuel 23:2, 30:8). He'd ask, "Is this what I'm meant to do?" God would answer, and David would get on with it.

That's a pretty good pattern for us. When things get hard, go back to Him and ask. Is this still the plan? Yep? Then keep going. Do the difficult things long enough and they start to become easy.

Think about the things you used to lie awake worrying about. Most of us would gladly swap today's problems for our old ones. Why? Because we overcame them. Or we realised they were never really problems to begin with.

The anointing in you

Scripture calls Jesus the Anointed One. The word Christ itself means "the anointed one", and with Him comes His anointing. Why does that matter? Because when you accepted Christ, that anointing came to live inside you.

David's anointing came upon him. Yours dwells in you, because of the finished work of the cross.

Whatever you're facing right now may well be difficult. But with difficulty comes a great testimony. And our testimony is this: He has anointed me for this moment, to achieve great things.

So lean in, enquire of Him, and keep going.