The Cave of Adullam

When the Lord chose to toss me into the deep end with broken hearts, He didn’t ask if I approved.

He allowed a season in my own life that prepared me for it. An otherworldly training class I never expected.

Everything I felt I lacked in my own wilderness season became the launching pad for a ministry I never asked for.

It was a divine unfolding.

When I wrote the song, “What Father Sees,” Christ was showing me the lack in His body, the very church meant to heal the broken-hearted, was neglecting many.

Handling with care broken hearts is not everyone’s calling, specifically. Honestly, much wounding can happen if it’s not where the spout is flowing in your life.

It can be dangerous to enlist yourself in this work. Dangerous for you and dangerous for those in need of help.

Healing is more than a class, a group, or the couple of hours many see a month on our schedule.

It is often a hidden from the public view long-suffering in the sorting of a heart in need of being heard.

How many times I hear, “No one hears me.”

But we cannot hear broken hearts if we are always doing the talking, the teaching, or the preaching.

Those are all wonderful things, and necessary, but they can still be self-focused, not entirely “broken-hearted focused.”

At times, I might be listening for four or so hours. Paying attention to phrases that might seem benign, looking for the emotion trying not to pour out when a certain thing is mentioned, and looking into eyes that have almost lost the light of hope. “Holy Spirit, show me where to go with her.”

This is the most careful work I’ve ever entered in my life and ministry and the Lord has highlighted it to me again as a critical place I am to stay focused on.

While David fled to the cave of Adullam from Saul, he was found gathering the other distressed, indebted, and discontented people.

Adullam means, “Justice for the people.”
And the root word tied to that means “Justice of God.”

Sometimes you will face injustices and seasons that are preparing you for your own cave of Adullam, whereby, you have been commissioned to lead those others now in need of justice.

Amos 5:24
But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

You’ve become a spokesperson appointed by Heaven’s gavel. It wasn’t an earthly commissioning with the applause of man but a baptism of anguish where God walked the wilderness way with you.

You lived the message to deliver the message.

Those David led were in distress, meaning a “narrow” place. A place of “anguish.”

Some were in “debt” and had been “given to usury” outrunning creditors. But they are soon running into the arms of Christ who has paid their debt in full. They become so relieved to know there is a Savior who bore their burdens once and for all and paid their debt in full.

Lastly, many hearts enter healing rooms full of hidden bitterness that has become so heavy for them. Life has been unkind to them, people have abused them, and Jesus intends to introduce Himself to them as Healer.

Where the fountain has ceased to flow out of hurt, Jesus will tenderly, and lovingly, remove the heart blockage of bitter waters.

So, you see, that Cave of Adullam was never meant to kill you. It was meant to position you.

For those who had nowhere else to run.

Steward it well, dear friend of God… for it is a Holy place to His heart.