Don't Stay in the Stronghold

Going to bring a message this morning that will make sense to you in a moment when we look in 1st Samuel. But the title of it is Don't Stay in the Stronghold. Don't Stay in the Stronghold. You know, I like when things sound poetic or intriguing, but that's not why. That's the title of this message.

I really believe it's a word from God. He is prophetically speaking to us, just like the prophet Gad spoke to David, which we'll see in a moment. And he's saying, don't stay in the stronghold. In C.S. lewis book, the Problem of Pain.

I revisited that one about a year ago. That book by C.S. lewis. In that book we find a pretty familiar quote that maybe some of you have heard. He said, pain insists on being attended to.

God whispers in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pain. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world. St. Augustine said God wants, which C.S. lewis actually quotes in his book the Problem of Pain. He said God wants to give us something, but cannot because our hands are full.

There's nowhere for him to put it. And often through the seasons of pain, we have to let go of the things we're holding on to because we tend to give attention to the things like pain insists on our intention, where more pleasurable seasons of life don't necessarily insist on our attention. I love the resort life. 53 years of living, I never put together that resort is what we resort to anyway. Just little.

Just little drops of wisdom for you today, for those that have been in a season of emptying. This is for everyone, not just who have been in a season of emptying. Actually, I believe all of us have been in a season of emptying in different ways, in different contexts, in different seasons. I made Nikita put that. Her fun fact is she's pregnant again.

Can I tell him what you said? She said that's not fun. So I said, well, write down that you're going to give your next one to me. Which she did, but she didn't win the giveaway. So Tamsy didn't get to read that.

But through different times, even in seasons with young ones, when there's no moments for you, right, It's a time of emptying. And in that, he has a plan. So over the last couple years, I've spent more time in Scripture. I've spent more time in the Book of Psalms than any other book, maybe aside from the few months of study leading up to the Revelation teaching. But even in that, I have found myself in the Psalms.

And my approach or my view of the Psalms is different than it's ever been. It's actually been freeing. Like, if you spend time reading psalm after psalm, you realize, wait a minute, I think David might have been bipolar. Like, for one moment he is declaring the power and strength of God, and in the next, he. He's like, I'm sick of everybody and everything, right?

So it's brought me comfort as I've read it, because we learn about David's life in many books throughout the Old Testament. But it's in the book of Psalms, where David has written more than half of them, that we don't. We aren't learning about David. We're learning or what's going on with David. We're learning what's going on within David, what's happening on the inside.

I just want to say this. This morning, God's really big on dealing with what's going on in here. We get preoccupied with what expresses externally, and we should put an importance on that. But the Lord's always about getting to the root and dealing with why things come out of us the way they do. So we're going to talk about that.

Congratulations. We're going to look in Psalm 142 and in 1st Samuel 22, because in Psalm 142 we see what's going on inside David. And in 1st Samuel 22, we see what's going on around David. Sometimes with the Psalms, we can kind of, based on the dating of things and certain language that David uses, we can make a best guess about what's going on in David's life. The context of the Psalm, like when Nathan exposed his sin, the prophet Nathan.

And then, you know, most commentators agree that's when David wrote Psalm 51, where he's crying out for God to create in him a clean heart. That was his repentance Psalm. But in Psalm 142, we know clearly, without a doubt. In fact, if you look in your Bibles, most of them will say a mascul of David when he was in the cave, a prayer. So we know that this is written at the time of 1st Samuel 22, which I'll talk about in a moment, but I'm going to read his cry before God first.

I feel a trembling. I rarely feel nervous when I do this anymore. I take it very seriously, but I don't always feel nervous, but I feel a trembling. So I'm just assuming the Lord is really wanting to do something. David, I'm going to read all seven verses of Psalm 142 I cry aloud to the Lord.

I lift up my voice to the Lord for mercy. I pour out before him my complaint before him I tell my trouble. When my spirit grows faint within me. It is you who watch over my way. In the path where I walk, People have hidden a stone snare for me.

Look and see, there is no one at my right hand. This is what he's saying to God. Look and see, there's no one at my right hand. No one's concerned for me. I have no refuge.

No one cares for my life. I don't know that verse just blesses me. I cry to you, Lord, I say, you are my refuge, my portion in the land of the living. Listen to my cry, for I am in desperate need. Rescue me from those who pursue me, for they are too strong for me.

Set me free from my prison that I may praise your name. Then the righteous will gather about me because of your goodness to me. The backstory to this Psalm is in 1st Samuel 22. We'll look at more verses in just a moment. But I'm going to look at.

We're going to look at verse five right now, which is where the title of the message comes from. The prophet Gad said to David, do not stay in the stronghold, go into the land of Judah. So David left and went to the forest of Hareth. So David's conflicted. We read this throughout Psalm 142.

Many of the Psalms David's written. We see the conflict, we hear the conflict, and it's in the inspired word of God. It's there for you and I. God wants to know what's in in us. Even when it's conflicted.

In verse two, he qualifies. What I'm pouring out before God is a complaint. Now, if I'm honest with myself, that makes me uncomfortable. It's kind of like David, can you. Can you do that?

Can you complain to God? I mean, this vantage point is uncomfortable. I don't know what to do with it. I mean, didn't David remember that he's supposed to bless the Lord at all times, and his praise is supposed to continually be in his mouth? David actually wrote that Psalm 2, Psalm 34.

But with the pain David is processing in this moment in the cave, before the praise could be continually in his mouth, he had to empty himself of some things.

Where's my friend Amy Turner? That's what we talked about. Facing unthinkable circumstances. We spent a couple hours on the phone. She's like, I can tell God That I'm like, yes, like he wants it.

She said, but I want to be a good girl. No, he loves this. He had to empty some things out so he could get to the place of authentically blessing the Lord. He doesn't want us striving to bless him.

We don't fake it till we make it. Sometimes we move and we walk in what we know is right, whether we feel it or not. But we have to pour some things out before the Lord more. I'm going to back up on that CS Lewis quote. Go a little earlier.

In the passage in his book about pain. He said, the human spirit will not even begin to try to surrender self will as all seems. Sorry, let me start over. The human spirit will not even begin to try to surrender self will as long as all seems to be well with it.

We can ignore pleasure, but pain insists on being attended to. Take away number one, we've got to deal with this misconception. If I can't come to God the right way, I shouldn't come to him at all. We have got to deal with that misconception. And I'm telling you, that misconception was deep in me because what I was, the conflict within me.

I didn't know how to bring that to God because I didn't know he wanted it. So I was trying to fight these things in my mind and say what I was supposed to say. We think we have to package our prayers, our worship, our communion in a certain way. We have to package it in the way we think God wants it or in the way we've been taught. So maybe if I can say it in a bunch of King James Version or something like, how can we complain when God's been so good to us?

Have you wondered that?

If you have to leave early, make sure you listen to this whole teaching online. Because I'm not just giving you license to have a stanky ass. Trust me, we'll get there. Here's the reality. God is the only safe place for us to pour out our complaints.

That's it. And if we don't learn how to pour them out before God, they will spill out onto other people. And we don't want that. Even if you're mad as a hornet at someone, we don't want that. I used to say it this way.

If you want people to say at your funeral, she was the kindest woman I ever knew, you have to be kind. Just wisdom drops for you.

Like, we have to get to the place, like David did. Where can I go?

Where oh God, can I go? But your presence we pour out our complaint there. But we know in James 5 it says, don't grumble against one another so that you may not be judged. Behold the judge. Capital J is standing at the door.

First Peter 4:9 show hospitality to one another without grumbling. I'm good at the first part, but under my breath makes feels like it makes my hospitality easier. 1st Corinthians 10:10 don't grumble as some of them did and were destroyed by the destroyer. Ephesians 4:29 Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such is good for building up as fits the occasion that it may give grace to those who hear.

So if we're told not to complain, then why can we give our complaint to the Lord? Because he possesses all grace. So it's not our job to impart grace to God, it's our job to impart grace one to another. And we should not complain to each other. We should not grumble.

Moses said in Exodus 16 when the Lord gives you the evening meat to eat, and in the morning bread to the full, because the Lord has heard your grumblings and your grumble against him. Understand, your grumbling is not against us, but it's against the Lord. So when we grumble one to another, we're grumbling against him. See, in the presence of God, when we bring our complaint, he changes our heart. I don't want to get ahead, but it is super important in Hebrews 12:15, which is a verse that I meditate on every day.

I have meditated on it every day for the most part for the last two years. See to it that no one falls short of the grace of God, so that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile the many. We cannot afford to let what we're struggling with on the inside in our mind stay inside of us, because then a bitter root springs up. It grows out of that place, and then we defile everyone around us. We can't even see how negative we are in anymore.

We can't even see like our mode of operanda and the damage that it brings. So we've got to bring it to God. The first takeaway is get rid of the misconception that if we can't come to God the right way, we shouldn't come to God at all. David said to declare well, the scripture says that David cried aloud. I heard a preacher say recently we can change the spelling there of allowed a L O U D to a L L O W E D We're allowed to cry aloud.

We have to take away number two. We cannot keep our struggle in our minds. It will come out.

I've always tried to fight what's going on in my mind with my mind. Has anyone ever done that? I'm the expert. It doesn't work because in our minds there's often enemy held territory. So we can't keep it in our mind.

We've got to learn how to fight what's in our minds with our mouths. We need to pray aloud. Do what you got to do. You know what I do sometimes in my car? I put in my AirPods that are.

Well, actually they're beats. Cause those are better and they're kind of like a bright pink. And I'll put my hair behind my ear. There's nothing playing. I'm just talking and praying and saying things.

And people think I'm on the phone. Probably the person in front of me at the traffic light is like, woo, I'd hate to be that person on the phone. I'm like, well, it's him and he can handle it.

Because we can think a thousand things at once. Some of you are doing it right now. You're smiling as I speak, like, oh, I want Terri to feel, you know, loved on and that I'm being attentive. But I also have just made my grocery list in my head. We can think a thousand things at once, but we can only say one thing at a time.

And we've got to start declaring in honesty before God.

David said, if I make my bed in hell, then he says you're there.

If I say I'm going to dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea.

Listen, I had a moment. It got so dark for me. I pictured myself driving my car into the bottom of Lake Norman. I've only told a few people of that, that I'm not telling the full context of that. I understand that pain of like, if I dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, yet God says I'm there.

He will meet you in the depressed place. He'll meet you in the dark place. He'll meet you in the addicted place. God will meet you in the cave. That's where David is when he pens Psalm 142.

He writes this song from the cave. Have you ever sung in the shower? I sound good when you're in the shower. I mean, the acoustics are so good. I'm like, I think I'm gonna audition.

I'm going to Pastor Duda right After that, I sound just like Brittany and Sarah. I sound better than them combined, which your harmonies are on point, by the way. Like, the acoustics are really good in the shower. You know what I heard the Lord say to me this week? The acoustics are so good in the cave.

Terry.

Some of our best acoustics are experienced when we're under attack. Some of our best expressions of our relationship with God are not when we're standing in victory, but when we're hiding in despair. Don't waste the cave.

So here's the backstory. First Samuel 22, verses 1 through 5. David left Gath and escaped to the cave of Adullam, which is this cave experiences how the refuge got its name. By the way, the Lord spoke to Pastor J and Pastor Mel. When his brothers and his father's household heard about it, they went down to him there.

All those who were in distress or in debt or discontented gathered around him, and he became their commander. About 400 men were with him. From there, David went to Mizpah in Moab and said to the king of Moab, would you let my father and mother come and stay with you until I learn what God will do for me? So he left them with the king of Moab, and they stayed with him as long as David was in the stronghold. But the prophet Gad said to David, do not stay in the stronghold.

Go into the land of Judah. So David left and went to the forest of Heres. David's on the run from Saul. He defeated Goliath. He had to leave the land where his throne, where he was going to occupy the throne in the future.

Remember, he was anointed as king, but it wasn't fitting for him to stay there right then because Saul wanted to kill him. Have you ever had God declare a promise over you, but when you're in, try to be in the land of that promise. It doesn't fit. And that's where David was. He couldn't be in the land that God had promised because it wasn't time.

He had to leave Judea, Bethlehem, Jerusalem. He couldn't be in those places that he was eventually going to rule from. He couldn't stay in the place where he was called because Saul wanted to kill him. So he's on the run. He ends up in Gath.

Does anyone know someone important that's from Gath. Goliath, of course you knew. Oh, so much I could say about you. Goliath is from Gath. So even the origin of the enemy he just defeated, he couldn't stay there either.

We like to hang out in the places of our past victories. And while it's good to remember, we can't stay there. David couldn't stay there. Verse one says, David left Gath, so he escapes there. And he's hiding in the stronghold, the cave of Adullam.

The cave was a south, it was a safe place. But David was trapped in this cave. He was trapped in between what he had been promised. He had to leave the place where he experienced victory in defeating Goliath. And he didn't want to move forward to what was next.

And he was trapped in that place. David's safe, but he's stuck. And David feels all alone. Takeaway number three. Don't estimate.

Don't underestimate the people God has surrounded you with.

You need to come out of the stronghold. Don't underestimate the people God has surrounded you with. When I was reading Psalm 142, I said, this verse blesses me. It makes me laugh, like the Bible is awesome. The Bible's not boring.

If you think the Bible is boring, you're boring.

I don't know. That just felt good. I thought of my niece, Hope. That was her worst thing she could say to people when she was younger because she got in trouble for saying things were boring too much. So when she would get mad at people, she would say, you're boring.

So I've taught that to some of our staff. That's what we say if we're annoyed, they're boring. So now I'll know what you mean if you say that. So I don't actually think you're boring, but if we'll sit with the Lord and allow him to open things to us. David says in the psalm that he writes from the cave.

Look and see. This is what he's saying to God. There's no one at my right hand. No one's concerned for me. I have no refuge.

No one cares for my life. Now maybe, I mean, if you read those five verses that I just read again, you see that his father and mother went to visit him in the cave. Maybe he didn't count them because remember when his dad acted like he didn't even exist when they were looking for a king? These are all my sons. No, there has to be another one.

Oh yeah, little Davey, Davey out in the field. But maybe that's why. But his parents did come. But then we look in 1st Samuel 22, verse 2, that there were 400 men with him.

As much as I would love to present this like, man, you could have people that are all around you, but they're not actually for you. That's what the cynical part of me wants to say, but the Lord's like, no, don't underestimate the people who are around you. He orders your steps. You know, they're kind of described as a pretty motley crew. All those that were in distress and in debt, discontented, they were gathered around him, and he became their commander.

You know, I could just picture David being like, yeah. So I look to my right, and there's no one. Nobody cares, right? But what David couldn't see is those were the men that would be the same men to bring him to his throne. They destroyed people on his behalf.

They destroyed lions on his behalf. These men that God sent to David in the cave became David's mighty men.

So in this takeaway of not underestimating the people God surrounded you with, I want to say to you this morning, you might feel alone. You're not alone. I can guarantee it. I know how God works. Takeaway number four, my least favorite of the four.

Be careful where you escape to.

You may have heard me reference. You know, I've tried to escape. I'm telling you, a less intense one, because the deeper ones are none of your business. I'm being funny, kind of, but, like, I would find myself listening to Adele, which she's so melancholic and so. Oh, my gosh.

Where she's talking about turning tables. I knew I had to stop when I, like, was starting to lift my hands in worship. Yeah, Adele, right. Be careful where you escape to. David left Gath and went to the cave of Adullam, and he was so stuck.

I'm going to preach to you on this one, but I'm preaching to me. Sometimes the thing we go to escape to, we end up stuck in. Don't do that. He leaves the cave. He's.

Well, he leaves Gath. He ends up in the cave, and he leaves the cave, and he ends up in Moab. So in both cases, escaping to the cave, escaping to Moab, neither were great scenarios. They weren't great places to escape to. Yes, the cave is a place where we run to when we're in difficulty.

And strongholds are the place we run to when we're in difficulty. But we can't stay there. So be careful that the place you escape to, you don't stay in. Well, now he leaves the cave, and he's looking for a place of safety for his parents, and he goes to Moab. He has Some connection there.

His great great grandmother's from there. That's a whole other message. Moab wasn't a great place, but it wasn't a terrible place. They weren't persecuting Christians, they weren't burning Christians alive like Nero was doing in other parts of the world. But Moab was a place of idolatry.

It was a place where other gods were worshiped. The reality is, sometimes we escape to places to survive, but that place can end up imprisoning us in the process.

Speaking out of my own soul, my own experience, in 1st Samuel 22, verses 3 and 4, it says, from there David went to Moab and said to the king of Moab, would you let my father and mother come and stay with you until I learn what God will do for me? So he left them in the king of Moab, and he stayed with them as long as David was in the stronghold. In 2nd Corinthians 10:4, it says, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the the flesh, but they have divine power to destroy strongholds. A stronghold in its simplest form is not a bad thing. We hear stronghold, especially in a charismatic Pentecostal context, and we say, no, it's bad in its simplest form.

It's not bad. A stronghold is a fortified place. It's a place where the opposing forces can't get to you. But a stronghold that protects you from the enemy might also imprison you to another one. And that's where we get in our places to run in the soulish realm or that provide safety for you and for me.

And I'll explain that more in a moment. The prophet Gad says to David, don't stay in the stronghold, but go to the land of Judah. Let me give you some examples. The stronghold of pessimism.

We choose pessimism to protect ourselves from disappointment. There's songs about it. I'm not going to give my heart to you because you're going to disappoint me anyway. So we're just pessimists. We're pessimistic about things because if we're saying it's not going to work, then we're not going to be disappointed when it doesn't.

Or pessimists about people, because they're probably going to disappoint me anyway. So I'm going to be a walled city, and it's a safe place for us. That does create a level of safety. But then we become imprisoned to it. Then we can't see everything's negative.

We don't Lift our eyes for anything positive. You ran to that place of pessimism because of what has happened to you, but now it's become your prison and you don't even see clearly. Or what about the stronghold of drama? Either drama that you create or drama that you're drawn to, whether it's through media or other people's drama or getting sucked into things online. The stronghold of criticism, of gossip.

This protects you from being alone with your thoughts because you can just be in the middle of someone else's drama, or you can catastrophize, catastrophize your own drama, but it keeps you from being steady. It keeps you from being productive.

It's like, well, if I can create drama, then I have something to blame because I can't live with holding the blame myself if I am in the stronghold of criticism and analytical thoughts and all those places where our minds can run away with us. I'm telling you this from experience. Like, I've gone two years of, like, coming into a room and trying to assess what people are thinking and saying about me. That's a protective thing because I know how delicate my heart is. But it's bondage.

It's a way to escape. But when we're. But when we get in the place of blaming others or being addicted to what other people are thinking or saying, we fail to take responsibility for ourselves in the presence of God, who knows everything about us anyway. If I blame you, I don't have to deal with the shame of me. But the Lord wants to touch that shame because you can blame others and the shame's still there, but he wants to set you free.

But if you don't go before God and give him authentically what's in you, he can't deal with it. And then we become enslaved to bitterness. And the very thing that we ran to to protect us, we end up being enslaved to. So you say, well, if you knew what I went through as a kid. Yeah, if a lot of people knew what you went through as a kid, there'd be more grace for the ways that you behave.

But we have to find the place of freedom because we don't want to carry our prison around us to validate where we're at when there's freedom in him.

And it's easy. It's easy to be drawn to the people that will validate the pain of your season and give you permission to act terrible.

I'm not talking about people being judgmental. I'm talking about people that will take you by the hand and say, come on, tell him. Tell him. I just had a conversation with a friend on our staff this week. Like, give it all to him.

Let it all come out so he can fill you. We often end up creating the very reality that we try to protect ourselves from because we end up projecting it by our own expectation. We do it. We have so much power, what we declare, so we say it aloud. But when you hear yourself saying out aloud, like, God, nobody's for me.

I look all around me, there's no one here, even though there's 400 people there. And we pour it out, we give it to him, we pour ourselves out, and by the end we just say, oh, the righteous will surround me, and I will declare of the goodness of God. Like, we stay until he digs it out of us. If David would have stayed in the cave, he wouldn't have been able to save the people of Keilah. If you Keep reading in 1st Samuel 22, 23, 24, it talks about how God used him to save the people there.

But he had a battle to fight in Judah that he didn't know about, and he wouldn't know about it until he came out of the cave. Listen, we may be safe in these strongholds, but we can't see God's provision, and we can't see him use us in what he's equipped us with unless we come out of the stronghold. So I'm here to tell you, like the prophet Gad told David, don't stay in the stronghold. Takeaway number five. And this is the last one.

We must go to Judah.

The word Judah, the tribe of Judah means praise. When we say the lion of the tribe of Judah, the banner over that tribe when they would surround the tabernacle was a lion. And it's a sound. It's a roar. The lion of the tribe of Judah releases his roar, silencing our enemies.

But it's the job of the people of God to release our roar. And even what we were singing earlier, we open up our hearts, we let the healer set us free. And then as we're dancing from an authentic place, the world will dance too. Like, that's our job. But we've got to get out of the cave.

We've got to go to Judah. Worship team, why don't you come? We've got to step into praise. Psalm 142 begins with David trapped in a cave, but it ends with him in the place of praise. Let me read it again.

I cry aloud to the Lord. I lift up my voice to the Lord for mercy. I pour before him my complaint. Before him I tell. I tell my trouble.

When my spirit grows faint within me. And it will. When you're pouring out your complaint, when it's coming from the depths, you're going to feel your spirit growing faint. But when that happens, it's you, God, who watches over my my way in the path where I walk. People have hidden a snare for you.

But for me, maybe they have. I've had to start saying that when I enter into rooms and places in the city. Maybe people have prepared a snare for me. Maybe it does feel like look and see God. There's no one at my right hand.

No one's concerned for me. I have no refuge. No one cares for my life. Listen, I remember when Amelia was in her health journey. I had two doctors tell me they didn't think she was going to survive.

And it was so lonely and so dark.

Only Amelia and I could have fully known what it looked like. She's not the only one, but this woman right here, summer. For 40 days she fasted and prayer walked our neighborhood. So I would say, in those times, God, I feel so alone. But then I would picture Summer walking my neighborhood.

First of all, I invite you to be that for people. Because she wasn't alone either. I would feel guilty. But she wasn't alone either, because God was with her. Look and see God.

There's no one at my right hand. If that's how you feel, then you say it to God. No one's concerned for me. I have no refuge. No one cares for my life.

And it can feel that way. People you've given your life to then having judgment and a lot of the judgment I deserve. But based on my season, the title that I never thought. I never thought I would be in this season at 53, a divorced woman. I never thought.

And maybe people have prepared a snare. Maybe they couldn't wait for me to fail. Maybe they couldn't wait to say we knew that about her, all her radical ways about God. We knew that there was something off. And people have said that.

But there are more for me than against me. And here's the reality. Even if that wasn't true in the natural. And it is my friend Mary Biven weeping through the night. Sarah and her husband David.

So many crying out Hakel, many of you. I don't even know how you've cried out.

My friend that gave me her ring, that cried out for me and declared beloved over me. And then gave me this physical sign like we're not alone. But if it's how you feel, you say it to him. Because even if you don't have it in the natural, Elisha said about his prophet, his servant, God, open his eyes, let him see the spiritual armies that grew. Greater are those that are for him than against him.

I cry to you, Lord. I say you are my refuge, my portion in the land of the living. Listen to my cry. I'm in desperate need. Rescue me from those who pursue me, for they are too strong for me.

Set me free from my prison that I may praise your name. Then the righteous will gather about me because of your goodness to me.