We're going to have a look at David's promotion. He's in a different place now, a different pay grade, a different season in his life.
1 Samuel 16:14 – “Now the Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and a distressing spirit from the Lord troubled him”
He's demonised. That word distressing is literally ‘to terrify’ - to suddenly come on and fill you with terror. Saul was once a man who walked with God, and was doing what God wanted, partially; but eventually, he lost his position altogether. An evil spirit come around him, and he would be terrified. Every now and then he'd be filled with panic. He had ‘panic-attacks’, and he was very distressed.
1 Samuel 16:15-16 – “And Saul’s servants said to him, “Surely, a distressing spirit from God is troubling you. Let our master now command your servants, who are before you, to seek out a man who is a skillful player on the harp. And it shall be that he will play it with his hand when the distressing spirit from God is upon you, and you shall be well.”
A need arises; this is an amazing thing see! God wanted to train David to become a king, so firstly, he trained him in character, relationship, and courage. Now, he needed to train him in how to be a leader, how to rule. He needs to get him to where he can be trained, so what does He do? He allows there to be a need develop, and there's this tremendous need - the king is having panic attacks! They said: can we find anyone who can help fix this?
I was talking with a young guy from City Harvest Church in Singapore, and he's in the army. They all do military training for two years, and they were in their hut - about 20 guys under him, and then one of them began to massively manifest a demon. Now all these soldiers in training just panicked - didn't have a clue what to do; but this guy knew exactly what to do. He knew exactly how to confront, and deal with the spirit, and that day, the guys actually saw him confront the spirit. It left the man, and he came right. Immediately, his standing in the sight of everyone lifted to a whole new level.
You see, the capacity to meet a need, positions you to be promoted. If you have developed no skills to meet needs, then how can anyone promote you? You must develop something. You need to have some things in your life, that will help people where they're in need, and that will create opportunities for you to go forward in life, because all of life promotion involves people, and how you relate to them, and what you can do for them. If you want to really get ahead somewhere, don't just develop your life with God; develop a deep capacity and passion to help people, and opportunities will emerge.
In a couple of weeks there's a lady going to be speaking at the Miracle Centre, Patricia Green. I remember when she was here years ago, looking after a home for wayward girls. She felt that season was over, of looking after girls in difficulty, not realising that God was preparing her for the next thing. She went to, and got a heart for, Cambodia. Went there, began to work with the kids who were sold into prostitution on the streets. They would be offered and promised things in the villages, that they could come into the city. They got a job alright, working as a prostitute - and this is going on in a massive scale over there. She set up a ministry called Rahab Ministries to reach out to people who are trapped in prostitution, to provide skilled training, because without those skills there's a limitation what they can do. They had to develop; so she set up Rahab Ministries, which was to outreach to these girls, and provide skilled training, so they could earn an income - otherwise they couldn't get out of the cycle that they were in.