Restrain

Through the study of Ernest walking's life of David in bible study, there are lots of things to learn from it and how God is bringing David through in his life, applies in our life as well

Bears and Lion: test of David's faithfulness to his sheep as his shepherd and his trust in the Lord
Goliath : test of David's faith whether he trusted God more or feared man instead
After Saul turned mad: Test of restrain

David had all the right to kill saul...many many times, but he knew that he must not lay hands on the Lord's anoited. When saul threw the spear at him, he managed to dodge it and he had 2 choice:

1) that crazy guy wants to kill me when i am playing the harp for him? I shall throw the spear back and kill him.

2) run

David chose the latter and he ran off. He did things that normal human wouldnt do.
Saul was the ruler, yet his ruling is not right. David had the right to end this wrong ruling that Saul had. Any normal human being in flesh nature would never want to submit to a ruling that is wrong. They want justification more than anything else in this case. Yet David ran away from Saul twice.

Any supporter of David who witnessed this scene would had though in His mind: "why did you run off? He can kill that saul. Your accuracy is so good that you can nail that Saul like how you hit Goliath in the forehead. yet you ran off?"

3 more times david exercised great restrain. 2 times towards saul when saul was pursing him. Instead of killing Saul, he cut off his robe once and another time took away his spear when he was sleeping. The 3rd time was towards shimei who swore and cursed at him. Even his generals wanted to kill shimei, yet David prevented that from happening

I've typed so much already. Yet am I really able to exercise restrain in life? When things does not happen the way I want. Even when the opposite is in the wrong, will I exercise restrain or just explode out? Sometimes, we all have no restrain over our thoughts. Forget about alcohol, you do not need alcohol to lose ur restrain.

This is why David wrote: Psalm 139:23
Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts

Thoughts leads to actions. If you have no restrain in your thoughts, you have no restrain in your actions.

May the Lord help everyone of us