On Eagles' Wings Pt 121 — Don Courville

Have you ever had one of those days when it seemed like your whole life was just coming to a stop? God had brought you to such a point to where you realized you could not go on any longer in your own strength.

And all you could do was just fall on your face before him and say, Oh God, I can't go on. There was a day in the life of David, what you might have said was more than just a bad day. It was a day in which he had just been kicked out of his own kingdom, kicked out of his own castle, kicked out of the city of Jerusalem, and was leaving in disgrace.

David’s Valley of Humiliation and the Attitude of Faith

When I'm sure his heart was at the bottom, except that he had been disciplined in life in this one area, and that was not to give up on God no matter how hard life got. My friend, you and I will go through many trials.

That's what life is. And it's not the trials that will determine the outcome, but your attitude toward them. Many years ago, I had a pastor. On preaching on this passage in 2 Samuel 16, when David was leaving the kingdom, and Shimei was cursing and throwing stones, he said, No Shimei can hurt you, but your attitude towards him can kill you.

Calvary and the Daily Dying to Self

Now let me read you the passage on David, and then I want to take you, as the Spirit of God leads us today, to Calvary. You see, my friend, life begins at Calvary. Life proceeds from Calvary. And when Jesus told his disciples to take up their cross and to follow him, what he meant was that there was a daily dying to self.

But before the daily dying to self would come, there would have to come a day in their life where they died to self, and they considered themselves as dead, and that Jesus was their life. When the Lord Jesus Christ arrested Paul, Saul of Tarsus, out on the Damascus Road, that day Paul died, and Jesus revived.

Jesus came into his life, and Jesus became his life. But it took him a few years, as God buried him off out into the desert. And he taught him, by the Holy Spirit and by the Word of God, he taught him the cross.

So when Paul came out of the desert, there was a man walking, and talking, and looking. But it was no more Paul of Tarsus, it was now Paul of Jesus. He had been taken to the cross. And so when he came out, he was a new man.

As the Scripture says, therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. Old things have passed away. But the question is, when you go into your trial, will you come out like Jesus? Or will you come out bitter?

I've been sharing the last few weeks on bitterness. And I wanted to go on, I wanted to take you into a revival series, but the Spirit of God just would not let me. He's checked me at every corner. And even would not clearly give me a message to prepare ahead of time.

I said, Lord, you want me to depend on you completely. And he says, yes. He's been taking me deeper and deeper. Sometimes you think, how deep, how far will he take you? I don't think there's any bottom, as long as we're on this earth.

There's no place to where we stop. No place to where we get up and we plateau and we say, this is it, I've arrived. The Christian life is a continual crucifixion. And Christ brings into our life the trials and the tribulations that we need to continually conform us to Jesus.

Listening for Extraordinary Messages from God

Now, I want to take you down a little road this morning. And I'm trusting that the Spirit of God will open up to you what he wants you to see. You may have to stop your car. If you're driving, you may have to shut off whatever's going on around you.

If you have ears to hear and the Spirit of God is saying to you, this is the message I want you to hear, then you better listen. Don't miss it. There are some days that are extraordinary days. There are some messages that are extraordinary messages.

There are some times in the stillness and the silence of our storm, God comes and he speaks. There was a day when David went through his valley of humiliation. And he made a choice that day to go through the valley of shame.

And he came out victorious. The Scripture said in 2 Samuel 16, 9,. Then said Abishai, the son of Zerui, of the king, Why should this dead dog curse my lord the king? Let me go over, I pray thee, and take off his head.

And the king said, What have I to do with you, ye sons of Uriah? So let him curse, because the Lord had said to him, Curse David, who shall then say, Wherefore hast thou done so? And David said to Abishai and to all his servants, Behold, my son, which came forth of my bowels, seeketh my life.

How much more now may this Benjamite do it? Let him alone, and let him curse, for the Lord hath bidden him. It may be that the Lord will look on mine affliction, that the Lord will requite me good for his cursing this day.

And as David and his men went by the way, Shimei went along on the hillside, over against him, and cursed as he went, and threw stones at him, and cast dust. And the king and all the people that were with him came weary, and refreshed themselves there.

Now I want you to listen to this. You may come weary, but there will be a point to where you will refresh yourself there. When God meets you there, you will be refreshed, anointed with fresh oil of the Holy Spirit, and you will be a new person.

Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless the teaching and preaching of your word today, in Jesus' name. There is an old preacher by the name of Raymond Edmond, who shared a message on the discipline of defamation.

Enduring Wrongful Suffering Under God’s Discipline

And he said it's understandable that we should take patiently and graciously whatever correction we need, and to take rebuke for our errors. But, as the scripture says, if when you do well and suffer for it, you take it patiently, this is acceptable with God.

David was going through a school of God's own special choosing, just like Job. And so when you come to the point when you go through your trial and you want to answer back, you want to return the abuse, or you have someone hanging around you that says, why don't you go take off his head?

You've got the authority, you're the king. And God says, no, you go through this trial. You see, I think a lot of us have wanted the shortcuts. We've wanted the easy way out. And we've not been willing to sit still and let God finish it.

And we've jumped in and tried to do it ourselves, and we've messed it up. Some of us have gone through our whole life messing up things. We've not learned to enter into His rest and be still, and let God be God in our lives.

We haven't figured it out that He is a sovereign God. No devil will touch you unless he wants Him. No trial will come into your life unless God wants it to come in there. Some of you, maybe less than a day, you've been running from God for a long time.

And it's God that's been chasing you down, trying to get you to Jesus, to trust Him as your Savior. And some of you have trusted Jesus as your Savior, trusted Him to be the one that covered your sins.

And then you try to go on and live the Christian life, and you can't do it. That's the most frustrating thing in the world, to try to live the Christian life. The Christian life is not you living a Christian life.

It's Jesus living His life through you, as you're led day by day by His Spirit. You check with the Spirit on everything you do, every place you go, everything you say. That's the Spirit-filled life. And that's living in the will of God.

The Spirit-Filled Life and Surrendering Control

And if you want to get confused, you just try not living in the Spirit. When God commanded us to live in the Spirit, Ephesians 5 .18, that's not an option for our Christian life. It is an essential, vital.

Walking in the Spirit is just as vital for you as breathing. You can't have the Spirit-filled life without the Holy Spirit correcting and guiding and directing and choosing for you, and you talking and fellowshipping with Him.

And so when you come along and you hit your day, when a shimmy-eye comes along, the reason you get bent out of shape and you get bitter and angry is because you're in control. And the sad thing about it is you can go through your whole life that way.

Erdman said, When we want to answer back, to return the rebukes that we have received with interest added to defend ourselves and our actions, where motives and methods were above reproach, then we're to remember.

For this is thankworthy, if a man for conscience toward God endured grief, suffering wrongfully. For even here and too were you called because Christ also suffered for us. Leaving us an example that you should follow His steps.

Who when He was reviled, reviled not again. When He suffered, He threatened not. Now listen to this. But committed Himself to Him that judges righteously. How often do you do that? You do that every day.

Loving Enemies as Evidence of Sonship

He said, This is a deep discipline of the soul. This evidence of our true sonship with God as described by our Lord Jesus Christ. But I say unto you, Love your enemies. Bless them that curse you. Do good to them that hate you.

And pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you, that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven. For He maketh His Son to rise on the evil and on the good and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust.

The thing that will make you stand out and be different will be the fact that God is in your life. And my friend, you can't love your enemies. That's not humanly possible. But it is supernaturally possible under the enabling of the Holy Spirit.

So David's conduct before Shimei illustrates really the excellent discipline that he had learned in his desert. He had learned that in those moments when he was under trial, when he was blasphemed and cursed and had stones and dust thrown at him, he had learned to give it to God.

Vengeance is mine, says the Scripture. And if you don't think it was just a little trial, I want you to think about this. David was well advanced in years. His own son, Rebellious Absalom, whom he really loved, dearly loved, deeply loved, had kicked him out of his own palace.

And now you have this old Benjamite out there doing all this to him with these stinging insults and lies and accusations, going along with the heartache of his own son's rebellion. My friend, he knew what a broken heart was.

And if anyone had the power to turn and take that man's head off, it was him. He had the power and the authority to resist and fight Absalom. He was the king. But he loved and knew and walked with God so close that he knew that God was in this.

And that's where you and I miss it many times. We don't recognize that God is in it. Many times we think it's the devil fighting against us. We've got demons hounding us. But if you get to the bottom of it, it's God.

You know, the Scripture says that He'll turn the tormentors against you. Even Malachi says that you'll have all kinds of financial disasters if you don't give God your heart and evidence it by your giving.

You can't beat Him. Don't be deceived. God won't be mocked. So upon the bleeding heart of an old father was he, the invictive, Come out, come out, thou bloody man, and thou man of Belial. You don't think that he knew what pain was.

He did. But he was also a type of Jesus. As flawed as he was with his life, we have the suffering of David showing us our Jesus. And the cursing of Shimei was just almost too much for David's friends.

Trusting God When Friends Misunderstand Your Obedience

You ever gone through a trial? Matter of fact, if you don't respond many times to the way your friends think you should respond to your trial, they'll write you off. I know men that God has called them into the revival ministry, and revival ministry is not what you always think it is.

God may call you into a life of prayer where you have to seemingly do things that are unusual and maybe seemingly neglect your family to do what God has told you to do. And friends will call you different things and write you off.

Or God has called you to resign your ministry and to drop everything and to do something different. And you know that he's done it. But they don't think that you're doing what God has called you to do.

And they'll write you off. They'll think you're a fanatic, you've flipped your lid, you've gone crazy. That may have been the way it was with David. And it was almost too much for his mighty army men.

Man, they could pick off a flea at 50 yards with a spear. They were warriors. Excellent craftsmen in the art of warfare. And this dead dog over there doing that. David's response, Erdman says, was touching in its expression of tenderness towards a misguided man.

Think about that. And of trust toward Almighty God. You'll never get to the depth and the heart of the love of God till you get to the point where you can love your enemies. And the evidence that you're in a spirit of self and selfishness and self-will and rebellion and you haven't dealt with the root of sin in your life is that you have a bitter attitude towards those that come your way.

And it's God all the time letting that Shimei come into your life. And He will take you from one thing to another, from one job to another. You can't get away from Him. He will keep bringing you to it until you actually just destroy yourself, your life, your own family till you get to God.

David's response was one of love of God. He said, it may be that the Lord will look on my affliction. Long before, many times he'd faced similar circumstances. And he had learned to commit his cause unto Him that judges righteously.

If you think back into his youth when he had lost his temper and he almost, because of some gross ingratitude towards him, he almost killed Nabal. God in His graciousness, in His providence, spared him.

How many times can you look back to where God spared you from destroying yourself in a terrible way? And so, as the Scripture says, that this shall be no grief unto thee, nor offense of heart unto my Lord, either that thou hast shed blood causeless, or that my Lord hath avenged Himself.

Think about it. Nabal's wife, this woman, came out and said these words to David that struck his heart. And on that occasion, he turned and he said, Okay, God, You take care of it. You know, the Psalms reveals the heart of a man seeking after God.

David’s Psalms of Suffering and Compassion

And this lesson is written in the Psalms. It's there. If you go back to Psalms 12, 1, 2, and 5, you'll find David said, For the oppression of the poor, for the sighing of the needy, now will I arise, said the Lord, I will set him in safety from him that puffeth at him.

He cried out, False witnesses did rise up, but they laid to my charge things that I knew not. They rewarded me evil for good, to the spoiling of my soul. But as for me, when they were sick, my clothing was sackcloth.

I humbled my soul with fasting. I behaved myself as though He had been my friend or brother. But in my adversity, they rejoice. They deter me and cease not. You see, if you're going to be like Jesus, and you want to be like Jesus, and you say, I'm a Christian, I love Jesus, then don't think it's strange if testings and trials come your way that's going to draw out of you a response that you don't have to give that will draw them to Jesus or show others that there's something different.

You don't have it and God is letting it come so that you'll turn to Him and say, Oh God, will you produce through me the love for that one that hates me, that one that's hurting me? And God in His supernatural power will fill you with the Spirit and out of you will flow love instead of hate and revenge.

It may be that the Spirit of God this morning, today, tonight, whenever you're hearing this message is convicting you that your life has not been one of response of the Spirit of God, but it's been one of the response of self.

And you wonder why your friends have turned away from you. Much less your enemies. It's because they haven't seen Jesus, they've seen you. They don't need to see you, they don't need to see me. You know, I've been thinking lately, boy, I'd like to get down there and have a meeting with you folks and have a gathering, get together and see you face to face.

And the last time we was coming through the area we got together as many as we could on a one-on-one basis and we got to share a little bit in a church. But I'd like to just get together with you and see you.

And I'm talking to God about it. I need a place and I need permission from Him to do it. But face to face communication and contact is the closest, the clearest, the strongest that people can see Jesus in you and me.

Becoming a Vessel for God’s Message

You hear my voice, but there's just something different when you're face to face. And you know what? God loved this world so much that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

And so He came down and He died on the cross. He was crucified, He was buried, and then He rose again and then He went to Heaven. And then He sent the Holy Spirit back to indwell us so that people all over this world could see Jesus in us.

What a responsibility, what a privilege that God can speak to my neighbor, can speak to that person in the grocery store, can speak to someone in this community or in another state or wherever through me.

I can be what they need, but I can blow it if I fail to reckon myself dead to sin and self. A powerful lesson, a powerful lesson. Oh, David, he determined by God's help, he said, I will take heed to my ways that I sin not with my tongue.

I will keep my mouth with a bridle while the wicked is before me. You know, he had observed, he said, I've seen the wicked in great power and spreading himself like a green bay tree. Yet he passed away.

And lo, he was not. Yea, I sought him, but he could not be found. Could it be that the Spirit of God could put into your heart some compassion and love for those people around you? You go out to the mall, if you can stand it, there in Joplin or any big city, and you just watch people.

They're empty. The kids drive up and down the streets in their vehicles, souped up cars, pickups, or whatever. But their hearts are empty. They need Jesus. Who is willing to put their all on the altar?

Giving Our Isaac Fully to God

As Abraham did when God came down and said, Now put now thy son, thine only son, whom thou lovest, put him on the altar and sacrifice him. You know, you'll never really get to the heart of the cross until you give your Isaac to Jesus.

He gave His all. God gave His all to us. But if you withhold one thing, you have an idol in your life. And so David, he could testify out of his deep and his hurtful experiences, Oh, how great is thy goodness, which thou hast laid up for them that fear thee, which thou hast wrought for them that trust in thee, before the sons of men, that thou shalt hide them in the secret of thy presence from the pride of men.

Thou shalt keep them secretly in a pavilion from the strife of tongues. Blessed be the Lord, for He has showed me His marvelous kindness in a strong city. You see, the fruit of the Spirit is love. And out of that love comes the joy and the peace and the long-suffering and the gentleness and the kindness and the goodness.

All of those things come out of the love of the Spirit. The bitterness, the hatred, the reviling, the strife, the tension, that comes from the flesh. What's God speaking to you about today? We've got so many programs, we've got so many plans, and what we need to do is have a good old-fashioned revival where we fall on our face before God, right where you're at, and say, Oh God, I have been the problem.

It's not my brother or my sister, but it's me, oh Lord, standing in the need of prayer. Where are you at, my friend? Are you living in victory? You know, the Proverbs says we speak words of life or death.

God may be hounding and pounding on you, because out of your mouth has been coming words of death, and you're a detriment to Him and not an asset. And He loves you too much to let you keep on doing that.

And all the misery and the grief that this old selfish heart can produce, and remember, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. All these things, God wants to get rid of, and all He wants there is Jesus.

Just sweet Jesus, filled with the Spirit, living His life through us. Well, I trust God has been speaking to you today. I'm going to continue on this next week, if the Lord wills, and finish up this. I have something to share with you about Jesus, in concluding this message.

I have a burn in my heart to share with you on Revival, but I'm going to have to hold off until God will release me from this. Until next time, I trust that God will richly bless you, and remember, that Jesus Christ is all you need, but if you got to the point in your life to where He's all you want.

Until next time, may God richly bless you, my friend.