David: A Man of Passion and Destiny

Enjoyed reading through the expansive volume, David: A Man of Passion and Destiny, by Charles Swindoll.  It is a part of his series, Great Lives from God’s Word.

I am preparing to preach a sermon series on the life of David entitled, “After God’s Own Heart.”  I have always loved Swindoll’s scriptural insights and this book was a great companion as I read through 1-2 Samuel.

Favorite Quotes

  1. Men and women of God, servant-leaders in the making, are first unknown, unseen, unappreciated, and unapplauded (10).
  2. God can draw what may seem to be a most insignificant part of your past and put you in exactly the right place to use that particular gift or skill (30).
  3. What works for one person will not necessarily work for someone else (44).
  4. God is good not to show us tomorrow (51).
  5. Being stripped of all substitutes is the most painful experience of earth…So relieve yourselves of them before He has to take them away (70).
  6. When the sovereign God brings us to nothing, it is to reroute our lives, not to end them (73).
  7. You’re responsible for telling a person the truth, but it is impossible to make him change his opinion (90).
  8. When you do what is right, without tiring of it, God takes care of the impossible things (105).
  9. Gross sin is a culmination of a process, not a sudden act (141).
  10. If the Lord cared enough to write it and cared enough to preserve it, He cares enough about the details to have you and me pull it off precisely His way (152).
  11. When God says “not,” it means He has a better way, and He expects me to support it (165).
  12. God has taken us from where we were and brought us to where He is – to a place of fellowship with Him (177).
  13. Our greatest battles don’t usually come when we’re working hard; they come when we have some leisure, when we’ve got time on our hands, when we’re bored (183).
  14. Unaccountability is common among those in command (196).

Book Description

David, unlike any Bible character before him, had the charisma to inspire a great nation. Yet in other ways he was a most ordinary man-often gripped by destructive passion, rocked by personal tragedy, and motivated by political gain. Yet, he is the one character the Bible describes as a “man after God’s own heart.” In this first volume of the “Great Lives” series Charles Swindoll shows how David proved his love for God many times over in an extraordinary life that left an enduring legacy of faith.