Training

Take a minute and read 2 Samuel 22:33 – 40, Psalm 144:1, and Ephesians 6:10 – 20.  You see the connections.  It is interesting to me that Paul leans on David’s earthly warfare experience to inform our spiritual warfare certainty.

Think through what you know about David’s life.  I will not attempt to outline it here it would take too much space.  If you want to refresh yourself on his life skim through 1 Samuel 16 – 2 Samuel 24.  David is described in Acts 13:22 as a “man after My heart.”  Ponder that.  David was a shepherd, a musician, a warrior, a liar, an adulterer, a murderer – he made some really bad decisions and life choices.  Yet he is described as hard after God’s heart.  That brings us to the passages I asked you to read above.

All that David did, assuming for the moment that God is sovereign, God directed.  The bad choices and the good, God used in David’s life to shape him into the instrument of His purpose.  Even arguably the worse choice David made, the Bathsheba and Uriah issue, resulted in Psalm 51.

As you think through your life you may see some parallels with David.  I sure do.  Not all of my choices have been stellar.  There has been a lot of pain caused by some of those choices and those of others with whom I have been associated.  But if God is sovereign He is using all of that to shape me into the instrument of His will.  Preparing me for battle.

The interesting thing is the depth of that preparation.  Look at the passages again.  He trains:

• My arms
• My hands
• My fingers

Through all that He takes me.  In physical development terms that is both large and fine motor skills that He is training.  The training is for His purpose, in His time, for His glory, in His way using all of my experiences and choices both good and bad.