The timeline’s a little fuzzy, but as best we can figure it David spends 10 years bouncing from cave to cave — running for his life. And from a human perspective, it looks like God’s promises aren’t going to come true. This is not like having a bad day or a bad week. David is having a bad decade!

He wasn’t completely alone during this time. He had some people who gathered around him and formed a little community, but they weren’t a real promising group. The Bible says, “All those who were in distress or in debt or discontented gathered around him, and he became their leader. About four hundred men were with him” (1 Samuel 22:2).

This is David’s community: the distressed, indebted and discontented.

Q: What’s worse than one depressed guy in a cave?

A: 400 depressed guys in a cave.

So, they bounce around for a while and eventually establish a refugee camp in a place called Ziklag. They actually get married and raise families, and periodically they’d go out and raid an enemy village. That’s how they survived. But one day they come home to find that their little camp was gone — burned to the ground. Their wives and children were gone — taken captive. These men — outlaws and fugitives from their own country — established a refugee camp where they could raise their kids — and now it’s all gone. “So David and his men wept aloud until they had no strength left to weep” (1 Samuel 30:4).

Have you ever wept like that? Wept until there aren’t any more tears left? Wept until you can barely stand up?

Then, believe it or not, things go from bad to worse for David: “David was greatly distressed because the men were talking of stoning him…” (30:6a).

Here’s David — a fugitive from his own country, his own king trying to kill him, his mentor is dead, the Philistines don’t trust him, his wife and kids are gone, his best friend is gone, his ragged little community of friends is ready to stone him. There’s no one left to turn to. And next comes one of the greatest statements in the entire Bible: “But David found strength in the Lord his God” (v. 6b).

It’s great to find strength in others. To gather together in little groups of people and find strength in friendships. It’s fantastic that we can read a book or listen to a CD that encourages. But when you’re in the cave, and there’s no one to turn to — you can find strength in God alone. That’s a skill we all need to cultivate.

David’s living in a cave. No explanation why. No word when it’ll be over or if it will ever be over.

The cave — you know this place. This is where you end up when all the props have been kicked out — all the things you’ve been leaning on vanish. The cave is where you find yourself when you thought you were going to do such great things for God, have that great marriage, those wonderful kids. But then it all went down the tubes.

Some of you have been there. Some of you are there right now. Trust me: if you’ve never been there, you will be. Nobody plans on it, but sooner or later we all spend time in the cave. And it’s here that you start to wonder, “Has God lost track of me? Has he forgotten? Does he even remember where I am? Does he hear? Does he care? Will I ever get out of here? Am I going to die here?”

Two things you need to know about the cave: (1) You will spend time here; (2) God does some of his best work here.

It’s not usually in the palace, it’s in the cave where you meet God. When all the props are gone and all you’ve got left is God — that’s when you find out that God is enough all by himself.

David had been anointed by Samuel, employed by King Saul, defeated Goliath, embraced by the people. They wrote songs about him. Everything he touched turned to gold.

Then a funny thing happened on the way to the palace. He lost everything.

He’s been promoted from shepherd to court musician to officer in the army. But then Saul became jealous, threw a spear at him (you think you’ve got problems with your boss), and David disappeared. No job, no income, no security. He goes from being an officer to being a fugitive.

He married Saul’s daughter Michal, but Saul sends some hit men to kill David. Michal helped David escape but is captured by her father. Eventually Saul has her marry someone else. Now David has no job and no wife.

He runs to Ramah where his mentor Samuel lives. Samuel — you’ll remember — is the guy who started this whole thing by anointing David and telling him that he would be the next king. David seems to have been perfectly content out there with the sheep until Samuel pulled him in for the big family meeting. Still, David knew Samuel was a safe person — knew Samuel spoke for God. But Saul heard about it and sent soldiers to Ramah. Now David has to make another escape. Samuel is old and cannot go with him. Shortly after this, Samuel dies. David has lost his job, his wife and now his mentor.

He runs to his best friend Jonathan — the one person David could trust with everything — the one person who knew David better than anyone else. Jonathan stood up to his father (Saul) and risked his life for David. But Jonathan couldn’t leave the court and go with David. He couldn’t raise a sword against his own father. So David has to run once more, and now he’s lost his best friend.

Eventually, David runs to the Philistine city of Gath. He’s lost his home and has nowhere to go but to his enemies. They don’t trust him, and he ends up in the cave of Adullum surrounded by people who were in distress, in debt or just discontented.

He was on his way to the palace. He was expecting to take his seat on the throne. He had wealth, power, beauty, fame, friends, security and what he thought was a guaranteed future.

Now his life is one big mess. No money, no home, no friends, no job, no advisors. He’s running for his life. He expected a palace and ended up in a cave. He doesn’t have an explanation why this has happened. He doesn’t have any word when it will be over. He doesn’t even know if it will ever be over.

So, what do you do when you find yourself in a cave? When all your props and crutches — everything that’s been holding you up — all the scaffolding is torn down? When you thought you were going to do great things, have a great family, be a great person, but things haven’t worked out the way you planned — what do you do now?

Question: What’s the single most important factor in shaping human character?

A. Education
B. Media
C. People
D. Monkeys

As valuable as education is, as influential as media is, as funny as monkeys are, I don’t believe there’s anything more important in shaping our character as people.

Sometimes people we haven’t known for very long can have a tremendous impact. Sometimes it’s people we have known for years. But the people who have the greatest influence over us are people we call “friends.”

What a great word “friend” is. There’s nothing better than having a real friend. In fact, I don’t think you can have a friend and be considered poor. On the other hand, you can have all the money in the world, but if you don’t have a friend — you’re not wealthy.

We’ve been looking at the early portion of King David’s life — the part before he was king. And we cannot really understand David as a young man without examining the friendship between David and Jonathan.

They were both warriors — both strong-willed. Jonathan was the son of the king and heir to the throne. He was kind of the golden boy who might have been king. But David was going to prevent that from happening. We would expect them to be at each other’s throats.

Instead, we find they are very close friends. Their relationship was never easy, never convenient. It wasn’t a conventional friendship, but there was an unmistakably deep bond between the two of them. We’re even told in 1 Samuel 18:1-4 that they made a covenant and Jonathan gave David his robe, his armor and his sword. It was Jonathan’s way of telling David that he would not fight against David under any circumstances. He recognized that David was chosen by God to be the next king, and he would not stand in David’s way.

Jonathan was willing to risk everything — his future, the throne, his place in the family, his father’s hatred, even his own life — for his friend. There is nothing in the world like a friend.

Unfortunately, Jonathan was killed in battle, and David had to go through the majority of his life without his best friend. He had other friends, to be sure. But you never replace a friend like that. And I wonder — how often did David take out that sword and look at it? How often did he try on that robe and think about his friend and their oaths of loyalty?

Did David take out that sword after he’s won a battle? Did he look at the robe after he brought back the Ark of the Covenant and danced like a whilrling dervish? His wife didn’t think he was very kingly that day. Maybe he took out the robe and remembered that his best friend Jonathan thought he looked like a king.

Did he think of his friend after he’d been broken by his own sin with Bathsheba? Would it have even happened if he’d had someone like Jonathan serving as his advisor?

Years later, when David was an old man, he asked, “Isn’t there anyone left from Saul’s family that I can show kindness to for Jonathan’s sake?”

He find Mephibosheth — Jonathan’s crippled son. David brings him to court and sits him at the table and treats him like a son.

When David looked at Mephibosheth, he must have remembered his friend and that promise they made that nothing could break — not rivalry, ambition, families, war, geographic separation, political factions, not death itself.

There’s nothing in all the world like a real friendship.

Wow! That’s a compelling title, isn’t it? But it’s really important when facing giants to remember that Christians are ontological dualists. By that I mean that we believe there are really only two categories of things that exist: (1) God; (2) everything else.

Normally, we draw lines of distinction in the wrong places: male/female; animal/plant; physical/spiritual. That last one is the favorite of most Christians. We think there are things that are physical, and there are other (more important?) things that are spiritual. We tend to draw vertical lines to separate things from other things. But we ought to draw a heavy horizontal line to show that every thing — male, female, animal, plant, physical or spiritual — it all goes into category #2: everything else.

Only God is God.

The Bible is not God. The Church is not God. You are not God. I am not God. Prayer is not God. Evangelism is not God. These are all good things — godly things. But they all go into category #2: everything else.

Here’s what this matters. I do not know what your giant is. I don’t know how big your giant is. I don’t know if your giant has a sword, spear, javelin, helmet, shield, etc. But I do know which category your giant is in (hint: it’s not God).

Cancer is not God. Divorce is not God. Unemployment is not God. Depression is not God. Fear is not God. Addiction is not God. These are all bad things — ungodly things. And they all go into category #2: everything else.

Here’s one other thing I know: Category #1 is larger and more powerful than all the contents of category #2 combined.

When you decide to do something no one else is willing to do — when you decide to step up and face a giant that everyone else is hiding from — you need a brave heart. And that heart doesn’t just develop out of thin air. It is forged in the heat of everyday obstacles and challenges. In the mundane, daily grind of life is where character is developed, and if you haven’t shown a courageous willingness to face down the lions and bears in your normal life, you won’t have the strength to step up and face down a giant like Goliath.

When you do finally step out of the crowd and choose to face Goliath, you’re going to encounter opposition and unfair criticism. Be prepared for that. But there’s something else you’re likely to encounter: pressure to conform.

For David — who is apparently too young to join the army but old enough to be trusted to run errands on his own — this pressure to conform comes from King Saul. First, Saul tries to talk David out of taking on the giant, but David succeeds in persuading Saul to allow him. It’s probably a sign of just how desperate Saul had become that he would even listen to a young boy. But Saul does not trust God to work independently of the latest technology:

“Then Saul outfitted David as a soldier in armor. He put his bronze helmet on his head and belted his sword on him over the armor. David tried to walk but he could hardly budge. David told Saul, ‘I can’t even move with all this stuff on me. I’m not used to this.’ And he took it all off.”

Turns out, the armor didn’t fit. Saul was a 52L; David was a 36S. Saul was a man; David was a boy. Saul was a seasoned veteran; David was a rookie. Saul was the Commander in Chief; David was too young to join the army. Saul was the King; David was a loyal subject.