Adullam... a cave that David, a man after God’s own heart, ran to when life stopped making sense.
He had already been anointed king. God had already spoken over his life. But instead of a crown, David found himself hiding in a dark cave, running for his life from Saul. Can you imagine? He was no doubt tired, confused, and probably wondering how the promise and the pain could exist at the same time.
And then something happened, in only a way that God could have moved. People came to him. The people who came to David there were not polished. Scripture says they were distressed, in debt, and discontented. Basically… broken people. Frustrated people. People carrying baggage and disappointment. But Adullam became the place where God changed them.
The cave was not comfortable, but it was honest. Nobody had a reputation to protect there. Nobody was pretending everything was fine. It was a place where weakness was exposed and where dependence on God became real.
That is why Adullam mattered enough to be recorded in Scripture. That and maybe because sometimes God does His greatest work in the seasons we would have never chosen for ourselves or to put ourselves through.
Most people want the platform, but God is interested in the process.
We want immediate answers, but God often develops people in hidden places first.
David walked into Adullam as a fugitive. He walked out as a leader.
The men who entered that cave broken eventually became mighty men, which is the encouragement in this God-story.
If you are in a season that feels hidden, painful, lonely, or confusing, it does not automatically mean God is absent. Some of the deepest growth happens in the caves of life; the places where pride dies; the places where prayer becomes real; the places where God strips away who we pretended to be and begins building who we actually are.
Adullam, while entered into out of fear, confusion, and the unknown, was not the end of David’s story. Not even remotely close!
It was the place of making. And the beginning of what God truly had in store for him.
Have you experienced Adullam... your place of making?
Read more here: 1 Samuel 22, 2 Samuel 23:13–17, Micah 1:15.
~Devin
Devin Osborne
The Early Church
