David had seven brothers. When it came time to pick a king to replace Saul, Samuel thought any one of them would make a better king than David. But God rejected them all. Why? Because: <\/p>\n
(1) They had the looks but not the spiritual core.<\/i> God explained to Samuel, \u2018People judge by outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.\u2019<\/i> (1\u00a0Samuel\u00a016:7\u00a0NLT) David\u2019s spiritual core was formed by years spent with God. His heart\u2019s cry was, \u2018As the deer pants for the water brooks, so pants my soul for You, O God.\u2019<\/i> (Psalm\u00a042:1\u00a0NKJV) <\/p>\n
(2) They had no personal experiences with God to fall back on.<\/i> The lion and the bear were big, and Goliath was bigger yet. But David wasn\u2019t intimidated. \u2018The 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.\u2019<\/i> (1\u00a0Samuel\u00a017:37\u00a0NKJV) There are no insignificant battles. The little ones equip you for the big ones that shape your destiny, so stand on your \u2018God experiences\u2019. How you respond in a crisis is determined by the experiences you have had with God. <\/p>\n
(3) They were easily influenced by others.<\/i> David\u2019s brothers allowed the fears of those around them to erode their faith. Fear is contagious; if you listen to it long enough, you will get infected. No, you shouldn\u2019t be isolated from the world, but you must be insulated against its negative influences. Listening to Goliath frightened David\u2019s brothers, but it didn\u2019t frighten David. Who are you listening to today? Get God\u2019s opinion and build your life upon it; allow His Word to settle every issue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
David had seven brothers. When it came time to pick a king to replace Saul, Samuel thought any one of them would make a better king than David. But God rejected them all. Why? Because: (1) They had the looks but not the spiritual core. God explained to Samuel, \u2018People judge by outward appearance, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2004"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2004"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2004\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}