Daily Devotional
How Do You Behave?

November 11, 2021

Ponder This

Here is Saul. He comes into this cave. He cannot see. He is completely and totally defenseless. David’s men said, “This is it, David. What an opportunity. Look, God has delivered him into your hand. This is God’s promise to you. This is the day that you’re going to do him in. David, this is doubtless from God. Do it, David. Kill him, David.” Just one stroke of that dagger and David would have been free. No longer suffering. Farewell to poverty. Farewell to persecution. Farewell to reproach. Farewell to sneers. Hello to triumph. Hello to riches. Hello to power. Hello to praise. All he had to do was plant that dagger in the back of King Saul, and he would have been automatically king, for he had already been anointed to be king. But had he done that, he’d have lost his song, and we’d not know him as a man after God’s own heart. We would not know him as the sweet singer of Israel.

Here is the point: We should be cautious of operating on appearances rather than principle. It appeared to everybody that this was of God. And the average person would have said, “Look what God has done,” and would've taken advantage of it. But the thing that kept David from getting into deep trouble was that he understood principle. We should learn to live by principle and not by appearance.

• When was a time obedience to God meant doing something other than what seemed best to many others?
• How has it cost you to live according to God’s principles over those of man?

Practice This

Make a list of the world’s principles today and a list of God’s principles. How do the two compare? Commit yourself to living according to God’s principles