Dry Times part 2

Whit Criswell was raised in a Christian home. As a young man, he served as an officer in a Christian church. But he fell into gambling, daily risking his income on baseball games. He lost more than he won and found himself in desperate debt to his bookie. He decided to embezzle funds from the bank where he worked. Welcome to Gath. It was only a matter of time until the auditors detected a problem and called for an appointment. Criswell knew he’d been caught. The night before the examination he couldn’t sleep. He resolved to take the path of Judas. Leaving his wife a suicide note, he drove outside of town, parked the car, and put the gun to his head. He couldn’t pull the trigger, so he took a practice shot out the car window. He pressed the nose of the barrel back on his forehead and mumbled, “Go ahead and pull the trigger, you no-good slob. This is what you deserve.” But he couldn’t do it. The fear that he might go to hell kept him from taking his life. Finally, at dawn, he went home, a broken man. His wife had found the note and called the police. She embraced him. The officer’s hand-cuffed him and led him away.

He was, at once, humiliated and liberated: humiliated to be arrested in front of family and neighbours, but liberated from the chains of mistruth. He didn’t have to lie anymore. Whit Criswell’s Adullam was a prison cell. In it, he came to his senses; he turned back to his faith. Upon release, he plunged into the work of a local church, doing whatever needed to be done. “You’ll never know that Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you have.”

Are you in the wilderness? Find refuge in God’s presence. Find comfort in his people. Over a period of years, he was added to the staff of the congregation. In 1998 another area church asked him to serve as their senior minister. Another David restored. Are you in the wilderness? Crawl into God the way a fugitive would a cave. Find refuge in God’s presence. Find comfort in his people. Cast your hat in a congregation of folks who are one gift of grace removed from tragedy, addiction, and disaster. Seek community in the church of Adullam. Refuge in God’s presence. Comfort in God’s people. Your keys for wilderness survival. Do this, and, who knows, in the midst of this desert you may write your sweetest psalms.

By the way, God does some of his best work in caves. It was there in the cave of Adullam that David wrote three of his most moving psalms—Psalms 34, 57 & 142:  Have you ever been here? “I cry out to the Lord; I plead for the Lord’s mercy. I pour out my complaints before him and tell him all my troubles. When I am overwhelmed, you alone know the way I should turn. Wherever I go, my enemies have set traps for me. I look for someone to come and help me, but no one gives me a passing thought! No one will help me; no one cares a bit what happens to me…” Psalm 142:1-4 NLT.

Except The Lord. Like David you can go from the cave of Abdullum in the dry Dead Sea wilderness, to the throne. You are a child and heir of The Lord Himself.