Fear Not

The Mirror of Love

Chapter 35

December 11

1 Samuel 22:23

Stay with me; don't be afraid. The man who wants to kill you is trying to kill me too. You will be safe with me.

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Preface

We're familiar with the concept of "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." Today's verse reflects a situation for which this idea perfectly applies. But too it leads to the example of friendship that David set, not only for his fellow persecuted, Abiathar, but also for their persecutor, Saul.

King Saul, through the filter of fear, saw enemies where there were none. Saul saw David and Abiathar as threats, and fear's corruption of Saul's mind led him to believe that the only option he had to neutralize the perceived threat was to murder David and Abiathar.

Saul was like someone playing a video game via a VR headset while wielding a real gun. He couldn't discriminate between what was real and what wasn't.

There's what we interpret a thing to be and then there's what a thing is. When fear's involved, the interpretation never matches the reality. At best it's an approximation of reality. At worst it gets into wars with delusions, innocent people made to unnecessarily suffer.

The important thing we're able to learn from how David deals with Saul is that we don't want other people's fear-inspired misinterpretations of us to become an excuse to respond with a fear reaction of our own. To personalize an attack is to misinterpret it, making it about one's own ego. Then we're just doing the same thing they are, which then removes our credibility, along with it any chance at helping them break free from the fear that's controlling them.

We don't want to use other people's errors as excuses to make us into mirror reflections of them. A state of faith opens our heart to outpour love toward freeing them from their deluded state. This isn't passive. It's not allowance nor acceptance. It's assertive without aggression.

When we enter a room, flip on the light switch, the light doesn't have to be violent and angry in order to change the darkness to light.

David maintained an uninterrupted position of loving support for Saul, David being able to do so from his absolute sense of security in God, faithfully trusting in God's promise to make David king.

David responded to Saul's fear with faith. He shined light at the attacking dark. And this resulted in chasing Saul's fears away, softening his heart, helping him realize his error. It would have been like seeing a fog of madness clearing from behind a person's eyes.

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In today's verse, David is speaking to Abiathar. And the man who wants to kill them both is King Saul.

A well-known maxim says, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." Who or what is our enemy? God continuously reveals that when we're with Him, He's with us. Our enemies are His enemies, and He's the best friend we could ever have. But when we allow our minds to be taken captive by fear's imaginings run wild, we separate ourselves from God. We become our own worst enemy, our fear attracting others in similar states to attack us.

David wasn't an enemy of Saul; in fact, he highly respected Saul as God's anointed king (24:6, 9-11). But Saul was a common enemy to both David and Abiathar, trying to hunt down and kill them both.

Saul saw David as a threat and reacted with fear and loathing. David saw Saul as God's anointed king and responded with faith and love.

Whenever we find ourselves under attack without cause, this speaks more about the attacker than it does about us. Whether they realize it or not, they're trying to tell us something about themselves. They're trying to communicate their pain the only way that fear allows. It's also one of the most common "tests" that God sends our way for us to determine where we are in our faith/fear development. Our response let's us know by what we're most dominated.