Gospel According to David

Read 1 Samuel 16.14-32. What does this text tell you about the character of God? What does it tell you about the nature of God? What does it tell you about love of God?

Why did God reject Saul as King and anoint David? How would you characterize Saul?

1 Samuel 16.14 says, “The Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul.” Where else in the Old Testament does the Spirit withdraw from a person?

What’s the primary difference in the role of the Spirit in the Old Testament and New Testament? What does Jesus teach His followers about the Holy Spirit? Note your examples using chapter and verse. Where do you sense the Spirit at work in your life today?

David sees what happens to Saul. He sees what happens to a life where the Spirit has departed. Read Psalm 51.10-12. What does David’s confession include regarding the Spirit?

The Spirit of God is primary and pervasive. He is permeant in the life of every believer. Yet we have the capacity to “grieve” the Spirit and to “quench” the Spirit. Read 1 Thessalonians 5.19, and Ephesians 4.30. How have you experienced this in your life?

Scripture gives a prominent role to music in the Bible. Note a few ways music is evidenced as powerful in Scripture.

Read 1 Samuel 16.23. What happens to Saul when David plays his lyre?

Read Psalm 6.6 and 31.9-12. David writes both of these Psalms yet he is the “man after God’s own heart.” How do you reconcile such pain and anguish in David and yet he has the Spirit of the Lord upon him?

How does David’s example give you strength in the places and spaces of your own pain and anguish? How does it encourage you to reach out to others when you are in similar places?

How does it encourage you that while God sends the spirit that inflicts Saul, He also sends David who is able to play in which the spirit flees? What is the primary purpose of this text?

Read John 9.1-3. What does Jesus mean when He says, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.” How might God use your places of pain and suffering to “display the works of God?”

How might others join you in this journey of healing, wholeness and holiness?

Spend some time praising Him for being at work in you and through you.

Read 1 Samuel 16.1-13. What does this text tell you about the character of God? What does it reveal about the love of God? 

Read 1 Samuel 7-8. What was Samuel’s role in Israel? Why did Israel so desperately want a king? Why did God relent and allow them to have a king? 

Read 1 Samuel 13:14. What does it mean today to be, “a man or woman after God’s own heart?” How does the one after God’s own heart love, serve, care, forgive, and give? How does the one after God’s own heart receive? 

When Jesse introduces his sons to Samuel he chooses not to bring in David from the flocks. Why? 

Read Psalm 27.10. Years later, David’s Psalm expresses his heart. If you were to write a Psalm today, what would you note about your family, and about God’s faithfulness? 

John Eldredge notes that men receive their identity from their fathers and their sense of worthiness from the mothers. How do you resonate with that belief? What can happen to a person who does not receive these kinds of parental blessings? Consider your own story, where or when have you experienced a “father wound?” How have you experienced healing in this place of deep hurt? 

How might David have received this kind of wound? How was Jesus blessed by His Heavenly Father? How have you experienced blessing by your Heavenly Father? 

What does it mean to you that you live in God’s Kingdom? How is His will being accomplished “in your home as in heaven?” 

Read and reflect on Romans 8:14-17. How do these truths encourage you? How do they challenge you? How do they bring you to a place of rest?