If you haven’t checked out Part 1, Part 2 or Part 3 you should start there.

The Third D: The State of Discontentment

Some of the men who met David at the cave were in debt and some were distressed. But probably all of them were discontented. The Hebrew word for discontent is mar, which means “to make bitter”; it also describes “the heart-crushing experience of family turmoil, impending death, or an unfulfilled death wish.” This kind of discontentment reaches right into the very soul of a man and wrenches him in his guts.

Interestingly, this meaning paints quite a picture of the person experiencing discontentment. David’s guys fit every aspect of this definition. They really had no future within their culture. They were bitter. They owed vast amounts of money to people who sought to collect their payment in property or in flesh. With a growing list of failures, these guys might have left behind families who were frustrated and actually thankful for their absence. Some might have left out of disdain for the evil monarch who was chasing David, and they wanted to go down fighting on the side of the giant killer in hiding.

Just Hanging On

These men were hanging on by their fingernails. They ran to hide, to collect their thoughts, to write their wills, and to do whatever desperate men do before life as they know it comes to an end. All in all, these guys had decided that if they were going to go down, they were going to go down swinging with David, their leader and “commander”:

All those who were in distress or in debt or discontented gathered around him, and he became their commander. About four hundred men were with him (1 Samuel 22:2).

The word for commander in 1 Samuel is an interesting term because it carries with it a sense of royalty or nobility. The word means much more than they took a vote and made him their leader. It means that they saw something in him. They sensed something on him.

I’m sure many had heard about Samuel anointing David years before. Others had seen him kill Goliath and knew that he had an uncanny and supernatural presence about him. And some might have just sensed that David was different. But these men realized they were at a crossroads in their lives. In the midst of all of their Ds—because of all their Ds—they had to be with this guy.

Real King. Real God.

David was their king. They were in the right cave, no doubt about it. He had followed the leading of his God, in spite of his brokenness, to a place of hiding and darkness.

At this point in history, the worship of Yahweh had grown cold, and David’s relationship with Him was unique. David knew God. David walked with God in a place of powerful fire, passionate tears, and relentless love. This must have been something that at the very least incited a deep curiosity in the 400. When they came to a place of despondency, they were drawn to the real king who had the real fire given to him by God.

Perhaps the real king would hear from God and save them from the assaults being waged upon them. The feeling that they got in their despondent and wrenched guts was that this was the right commander and the right cave. As David followed his Commander to the cave, these men followed theirs.

Real God. Real cave. Safe cave. It had to be, or they were dead men—401 dead men.

Editor’s Note: Read a FREE Preview of CAVETIME by Jeff Voth here: Cavetime Free Preview

If you haven’t checked out Part 1 or Part 2, you should start there.

This week we are looking at the Second D that describes those who have run to the wrong cave: The State of Debt.

The Second D: The State of Debt

The average debt in most American homes accumulates with interest rates so exorbitant that the sum will never be repaid. This ugly financial heap looms like a mountain on the horizon. And it is so imposing that bankruptcies occur at an alarming rate. This is exemplified by the following report, which cites rising bankruptcy filings from 2006-2010. With the current economic straits, there seems to be no end in sight:

Personal bankruptcy filings rose to their highest levels on record, with estimates in excess of 2 million filings. According to Lundquist Consulting, a research company based in California, there were 115,000 bankruptcy filings in November 2010. Year-to-date, there were 9 percent more bankruptcy filings by November 2010 compared to that same timeframe a year earlier. Nationally, there were roughly 6,000 bankruptcy filings per million individuals, or 1 in every 160 people.

This is staggering. Not only does this type of debt leave people’s bank accounts in poor health, it can adversely affect both physical and mental health as well. Depression, anxiety, digestive tract issues, migraine headaches, and ulcers are just some of the confirmed effects of adverse stress-related issues caused as a result of debt. Piling on, nearly one-third of states now allow creditors to sue individuals for defaulting on their debts, sending them to prison if they can’t pay. While debtor’s prison was officially outlawed in 1833, this is certainly a modern-day form of it and can bring a huge amount of stress to bear on any man who is trying to provide for and be a wall to his family.

Currently many men in our society can’t pay their debts and don’t know what to do. They might run to the wrong caves or maybe they just try to run aimlessly and not pay. They constantly look over their shoulder for the repo man and dodge phone calls because of the debt collectors’ repeated calls.

Assaulted and chased. I’m sure that these men could commiserate with David’s 400 as they escaped the debt collectors’ henchmen and hid deep in the cave at Adullam.

Sean, Linda, and the absence of a Fairy Tale

Sean was a guy who came to me and was living out the story of the men who showed up at the cave, running from their debts. He was a recovering addict who had met his wife, Linda, while they were both in the same recovery program. Both of them had found the Lord while they were in treatment, and the structure, transparency, and accountability offered in recovery was ideal for them.

They married soon after their graduation ceremony and started what they hoped would be a happy and peaceful life together. In addition to being a talented computer programmer, Sean was very entrepreneurial. Linda got pregnant with their first son soon after the wedding, and Sean got busy starting his first company. As the Internet continued to explode, Sean dreamed about and developed new products, and the money began to flow. Within another year, Linda was pregnant with their second son. Sean began to feel the pressures of a rapidly growing business, family, and the need to perform to keep up with the demands coming at him from every direction.

Knowing Where to Escape

Sean had the same root addiction that I had, the need to perform. But as a recovering addict, he also had some other addictions as well. Addictions to cocaine and prostitution had plagued him in the past, and with the demands in his life, he found himself beginning to wrestle with them again. As the pressure began to assault and chase him, Sean had no frame of reference for how or where to escape and hide so that he might hear from God. He didn’t know that God was with him, ready at any instant to pounce on him and smother him with grace.

When I met Sean, I had no idea all of this was going on in his life. He and Linda had recently come to our church and were referred to me for counseling by another pastor on staff. I invited Sean to come to a CaveTime that I was having at my house. He began to show up and just “be” with a band of men who would be his brothers, sharing his story of addiction with them and not being judged.

There’s no judgment in the cave—only accountability, grace, and more grace. Our motto is:

“What’s said in the cave stays in the cave.”

Sean certainly needed transparency with the security of confidentiality. He began to listen to the Scriptures we read together, with men worshipping quietly and then praying for each other’s stuff. He also began to hear those same men pray for their wives and their children, and his wife and his children, and whatever else needed to be given to God there in the cave.

I wish that I could say that everything got better and that we all lived happily ever after. But that’s not what happened. The guys in the cave were unaware, but in addition to his being assaulted by addiction, Sean had incurred some debts that were almost insurmountable. He was being chased by debt collectors, clients he wasn’t servicing, and some unsavory characters who wanted to do him some great bodily harm. He began running to the wrong caves, ones that were familiar to him. He ran to other women to try and ease the pain. He ran to cocaine to try and get a quick buzz that might help him forget. And he began to drink pretty heavily, too.

While Sean was running and trying to hide, Linda was at home with two sons and pregnant with a third. She had no food, no diapers, and no money to pay the bills. Sean would leave for days at a time and not tell anyone.

On one occasion, when he did come home, he was rightfully questioned rather passionately by Linda. Her questions angered Sean, he got physical with her, and the police were called. Because Sean had been in trouble before and was a convicted felon, he was taken to jail. He and I had CaveTime there, except this time he was wearing an orange jumpsuit and there was a glass window in between us. Yet God was there with us.

The Power of Fear and Debt

I read Sean Scripture over the telephone receiver, prayed for him— and then I got in his face. I told him that he wasn’t being a wall for his wife and his sons, and he was in jeopardy of losing them and everything that he loved. I asked him why he allowed himself to get to this point and he said, “I just didn’t know what to do as the debts mounted. I didn’t want to upset the guys in the cave, and I was being chased by all kinds of folks who wanted their money and the services that they had paid for. I wasn’t able to pay them, so I ran to what I had known in the past.”

When Lori and I moved away from that city, Sean was still running to the wrong caves, and Linda was in the process of trying to start a new life without him.

I know this isn’t a success story. But it does show the power of fear and debt, the relentless pursuit of a nasty enemy, and the danger of hiding in the wrong caves.

The guys hiding with David in the cave must have had some pretty significant debts to cause them to flee as they did. In David’s day, many people incurred debts, just as people do today. But the Hebrew word describing these men referred to a bad debt—one that was very late and was in serious default. This was the kind of debt that prompted someone to try to collect their money, or goods, or something—and it was going to happen today!

During David’s era, those who owed debt were also likely to receive all kinds of punishment from their creditors. A creditor could take property, family members, or even inflict severe bodily harm. Some of us know the pressure of collection calls, but thankfully we don’t live in a culture where one of our offspring could be taken as payment on a debt.

No One is Immune

Maybe you’re a young man and think you are immune to incurring such a deep level of indebtedness. Think again. The debt load carried by many college students is staggering. Currently, two-thirds of all college students carry some type of debt to finance their education, with the total amount borrowed in 2008-2009 being $75.1 billion. This was a dramatic 25 percent increase over the amount in the previous year. These types of debt loads make it almost impossible for many young men to finish their education and make ends meet. It has become such a problem that an increasing number of students are leaving the country and/or just not paying back their loans. As if student loan debt isn’t bad enough, in addition to these mounting debts, the average college-aged undergraduate is also amassing a sizable credit card balance that has increased 41 percent in the last seven years to $3,200.

Student loan and credit card debt plague and assault many young men with a pressure that is sizable and stressful. The pressure can drive them to the wrong caves. Young men, middle-aged men, and older men all have their own types of financial struggles and assaults that weigh on them and cause stress. Stress can make men of any age want to run! It can make us want to hide and feel as if we must escape to someplace.

Escape to the Right Cave

Broken and fearful. Ragged and torn. God is calling all men, in all conditions, to escape. Escape to the right cave, where He will be with you.

Last week, I gave you an introduction on Running to the Wrong Cave, if you missed it you can check it out here: Stop Running to the Wrong Cave – Part 1. This week we are looking at the first of what I call the Three D’s.

The First D: The State of Distress

The English dictionary defines distress as “a feeling of great pain, anxiety, or sorrow. Acute physical or mental suffering. Affliction. Trouble.” However, many Bible commentators agree that the Hebrew term used in 1 Samuel 22 carries an even more acute sense of dire straits, particularly as a result of poverty. This sense of distress would have wide-ranging effects, such as the selling of family members into slavery, the taking of goods and property, and in some extreme cases the taking of a life.

The narrative describes the first portion of David’s renegade horde as those who were in distress. Author Cliff Graham describes them as

“disgruntled outcasts, emerging from an era in Hebrew history where the worship of Yahweh was almost non-existent.”

Graham gives us a bit of insight about why these men might have been expe- riencing extreme distress. They might have been disgruntled warriors who sensed something in David that they respected, believed in, and wanted to follow.

Perhaps they were disgruntled at the fact that the state of their nation was in doubt and God didn’t seem to be with them. The mili- tary was likely in some sort of disarray as David, one of the most popular commanders ever, had left under a dark cloud.

Saul and David

Many of these men saw Saul as a coward; he had hidden from Goliath. The Spirit of the Lord had left Saul. He possessed no anointing from God, and he wasn’t able to lead them bravely in his flesh. Saul’s confidence and passion were gone, and his only weapons were fear and intimidation. If a man was disloyal to Saul, he faced certain death. This madman had tried to kill his most trusted bodyguard, David, at least three times; he even tried to take out his own loyal son, Jonathan, once. He certainly wouldn’t hesitate to skewer someone else.

Saul was most certainly a demon-possessed coward—a spiritually depraved man. This depraved state made him someone to be feared and fled from. Of course this situation was distressing to these men.

I’m sure many warriors in Saul’s kingdom wanted to follow a passionate leader and a giant killer—not someone who had skulked away from a giant. David had shown passion and fearlessness and possessed a magnetism that was otherworldly.

Saul was no real leader at all, but David was. Without a doubt, David was God’s man in their eyes.

But now he was gone, and he had left under a cloud of suspicion. Panic, anxiety, and the effects of distress set in for some of these warriors as they realized that there was no leader for them to follow. And the one they would follow had either been chased out of town or had fled—they didn’t know for sure.

Just as I experienced in my time of distress, the sweating and nausea would come in waves during the daytime, and their minds would be hounded by visions of impending death at night. This meant little or no sleep.

They needed a leader to show them the way out of this anguish. Their panic assaulted them in their minds so vividly that their bodies felt as if it were real. They needed a real leader, and the man for the job was David. But he had escaped and was now in hiding.

The answer? These men decided to escape and hide with him. He would know how to lead them.

Reed, Sarah, and the Wrong Cave

Reed was a good man. He’d been faithful to his wife, Sarah, and was a committed father to his three sons.

Reed had worked quietly at the same job for twenty-five years, but his company was going bankrupt. He was in jeopardy of losing his retire- ment and everything he’d worked for. He was also becoming distant and short-tempered with Sarah and the boys. During this time, Sarah called me and said,

“Pastor Jeff, Reed is drawing away from me and I feel as if I am losing him. He won’t talk to me. He won’t open up anymore and he’s distant. I even think that there might be someone else.”

When I asked why she thought Reed was interested in another woman, she said that she’d caught him on the computer on a social networking site. He was reading a personal message he’d received from a former girlfriend. The letter was about a project taking place to benefit their old high school, sponsored by alumni who used to be student council members with Reed. The woman said because they had been student council members together, she thought he might want to get involved in the project. The words that alarmed Sarah were: “It could be like old times.”

Whether or not Reed was really thinking of cheating on Sarah, I’m glad she caught him. At the very least, Reed was contemplating going to the wrong cave.

What’s the wrong cave?

The wrong cave is a place where we try to escape everything that is actually happening in our lives.

We just hide. In the wrong cave, there’s no focus on being with God and getting the hole inside us filled by Him. In the wrong cave, we just try to hide and we attempt to fill the hole with something or someone else other than God.

When David escaped to the cave, he wanted to get out of Saul’s target range and hear from his close and personal God about what he should do. However, Reed was contemplating helping his old girl- friend, and he had even responded back to her a couple of times to inquire in more detail about the project. Reed was running to the wrong cave because he was hiding something questionable. This kind of hiding has nothing to do with God. Wrong cave. Wrong motive.

In fact, Reed later admitted to me that when he did interact with this old girlfriend, he felt a slight sense of excitement whenever he clicked the send button on the computer screen. They’d had a great relationship in high school, and by the look of her picture on her profile, she’d aged quite well.

He also felt strangely excited that Sarah didn’t know what he was doing. For that matter, he technically wasn’t doing anything wrong. It was all innocent and platonic, he thought. But Reed was at least approaching the entrance of the wrong cave. He was thinking about hiding in the wrong cave of an old relationship that made him feel young again. But any cave that would lead to spending time alone with a woman other than his wife was definitely the wrong cave.

As Reed and I talked about this situation, I learned that he was distressed about his job being terminated. He also hadn’t been feeling very fulfilled in his life lately. He was feeling old, worn out, and not passionate about much in his life. While he might not have used this language, he had a hole inside of him that he was trying to fill with another person and a fantasy of what once was. The old flame contacting him was an invitation, he thought, to feel some passion again and be pursued.

This cave seemed to offer the allure of the old feelings of youth, and it was a welcome distraction from the reality of what seemed like a dull and monotonous life. However, in reality, this cave offered to Reed the potential of an emotional affair and possibly a full-blown adulterous rendezvous. I thank God that Reed got caught heading toward the wrong cave.

A Bright Future

I’m happy to report that Reed and Sarah had a deep talk, shed a few tears together, and their hearts began to be pointed back toward each other.

Instead of running to the wrong cave, Reed stepped into his masculine roles. In Role 1, he went to God alone, asking for help and affirmation that he could only get from His Creator. He allowed God to fill the hole inside. He then stepped into Role 2 as he exercised his masculine presence and took the website off of his computer and took measures to make sure that it would not happen in his home again. He then stepped into Role 3 and entered into community with his wife by being transparent and vulnerable. He also got recommitted to a group of guys who met weekly for CaveTime, telling them of his temptation toward the other cave, asking them to help him stay away from ever going there again.

These men would be a wall for him, and he would once again be a wall for Sarah and his sons.

Are you running to the wrong cave? Have you ever escaped and tried to hide in the wrong cave? I have. In fact, it was the one that landed me in the ER and the ensuing Holy War that I had imagined at the closing table.

For me, the wrong cave was performance. I was addicted to performing and being competitive in most of the areas of my life, and eventually I lost control. I competed for God’s love and acceptance by doing as many religious things as I could—and doing them well, I might add. I was intent on having the most obedient children (and I am sad to say, my motivation was because their behavior was a reflection on whether I was a good parent or not).

Performance

It was all about me. I was also intent on having a great marriage, and if my wife Lori would just fit in and do what a good pastor’s wife was supposed to, people would think well of me—I mean us. Performance, yet again.

Who knows why I ended up this way! But it was all about me, including me heading to the wrong cave. I performed to feel significant and to fill the hole inside with deeds and accomplishments that pointed to me. I was Super Jeff. Well, Super Jeff was in an ER and needed some counseling. But there God was, whispering to me. In my distress, God was calling me to the cave.

When a man wants to know God—and I really did—God won’t let him go on forever in the wrong way, ending up in the wrong cave. Through the darkness and pain, God will draw us to the cave, so that we might hide together with Him.

And yes, assaults will come again and we’ll make mistakes. We will temporarily take other paths again. But once the temporarily misguided man glances back toward the grace-worn path to the cave, even hinting that he wants to come home, God is there.

God reads much into the pained and longing-for-grace-again glances of men. These are glances that motivate Him, faster than the speed of sound, to bum-rush and bowl us over like a grace-filled tsunami—one that’s like Tigger pouncing on Pooh. Like a faithful canine waiting at the front window for his long-gone master to return—kissing him, pouncing on him, and dancing a dance of hope and joy. That giant- killing dance that fills the hole of distress with the hope-giving life of God within a man.

Next week, we’ll look at the Second D: The State of Debt

In the meantime if you need help because you feel you are running to the wrong cave, reach out to me at www.Cavetime.org

EDITOR’S NOTE: Want to learn more about the Three D’s? You can start reading Jeff Voth’s book Cavetime for FREE right here: Cavetime Free Preview or you can pre-order the new book title at:  Amazon • Barnes and Noble • Books-A-Million • ChristianBook.com and other fine bookstores!

I remember exactly where I was when I felt distressed for the first time. In fact, it occurred during the same season of life when I made my visit to the ER.

My panic came in two waves, which both came as we happened to be in the process of buying a house. The first one hit while we were on our way to the closing. As we traveled, I began to feel a sense of panic that I’d never felt before. This wave of emotion was a panic worse than what hit me when I thought I was having a heart attack.

I was convinced that something tragic was going to happen to me.

I began to think that I wouldn’t be able to make a larger house payment. I was sure I was going to lose my job or my ability to work—and it would be soon. I also thought that I might even die before the first payment.

Yes, the payment was going to be larger, but certainly not large enough to kill anyone! However, when you’re distressed, logical thoughts don’t necessarily occur to you.

As my mind raced, my heart started beating faster and faster. Before long, I literally couldn’t move, so I doubled over. I can’t adequately describe the feeling I had as this panic began to mount. But I saw myself vividly having hardship and sickness, and I knew that death would soon come upon me.

You might laugh and say “Come on—it was only a house closing.” But the stress of the events and process of my life had brought me to this point, and these feelings and emotions were absolutely real. They were also totally new to me, and I didn’t know what to do. I had no doubt that we would not be able to move into our new home and be happy there. I was going to die. Tragedy would strike. It was inevitable.

I felt like a weak little man as I sat there incapacitated. I was inadequate and out of control.

That’s when the second wave hit—like a tsunami. Now I began to fret about the home we were selling. I began to feel that something terrible would happen to the people moving into our old home and they would accuse us of hiding it and sue us. They wouldn’t just sue us; they would take further legal action against us. We’d found out that the buyers were a staunch Muslim family, and I was convinced that they were going to turn this issue into the next Christians versus Muslims Holy War and attack us. I believed that they were going to stalk us and maybe kill us. To make matters worse, they were on their way to the closing table.

I needed to escape and hide somewhere.

As a pastor, I’m often called to counsel men who find themselves in fragile and frightening spots. Although their situations aren’t exactly like mine and the Holy War I was distressed about, their times of distress are every bit as real and intimidating. When this kind of panic comes over you, it can be debilitating and stifling to good judgment and clear thinking.

I find that most of these distressed men are good people. Yet for one reason or another, they find themselves in trouble and believe they have nowhere to go. Many guys stumble at this point. They didn’t have an escape plan and have no idea where to hide and collect their thoughts in a healthy fashion.

When we don’t know where to go, we can easily make the mistake of escaping to a counterfeit sanctuary. We are running to the wrong cave!

David’s Mighty Men?

Someone once said that misery loves company. David had a lot of both! He was attacked relentlessly—pursued and assaulted in every relationship and source of security in his life. He was on the run and looking to hide. However, word got out and 400 men joined him in hiding:

David left Gath and escaped to the cave of Adullam. When his brothers and his father’s household heard about it, they went down to him there. All those who were in distress or in debt or discontented gathered around him, and he became their commander. About four hundred men were with him (1 Samuel 22:1-2).

These men were certainly not a group of model citizens. Nor were they a finely tuned army, at least not yet. Commentator F.B. Meyer describes them as:

Those who were sorely pressed by misery, poverty, and bitterness of soul…their faces were like the faces of lions…they were swift as roes upon the mountains; but their tempers were probably turbulent and fierce, requiring all the grace and statesmanship of which the young ruler was capable to reduce them to discipline and order.

Regardless of who these men were and why they came to the cave, they were also under assault. We don’t know specifically what assaults they faced. But the effects were equally as imminent and potentially just as lethal:

All those who were in distress or in debt or discontented gath- ered around him (1 Samuel 22:2).

Author Eugene Peterson describes these men as:

People whose lives were characterized by debt, distress, and discontent—a congregation of runaways and renegades. It isn’t what I would call the cream of the crop of Israelite society. More like dregs from the barrel. Misfits all, it appears. The people who couldn’t make it in regular society. Rejects. Losers. Dropouts.

Wow, what a group of vagrants these guys were. All 401 of them escaping from a myriad of assaults, each having his own story and coming to the cave for different reasons.

Some probably believed that Yahweh was on David’s side, so an army would amass and dethrone Saul in a mutinous coup. Others might have come as mercenaries. Some wanted women. Others might have been jockeying for a royal position when David became king.

Regardless of their reasons, their stories were different from yours and mine, but in some ways very much the same. The same enemy has been assaulting and attacking men since that fateful day in the Garden. He attacked David through Saul and his death squads. He had specific plans for the 400 others, causing them to run for their lives. Their masculine roles were threatened, and their lives were on the line. Each of them arrived at the cave in some particularly rattled state of being,

I call them the three Ds.

And next week, we’ll take a look at the first D: The State of Distress

EDITOR’S NOTE: Want to learn more about the Three D’s? You can start reading Jeff Voth’s book Cavetime for FREE right here: Cavetime Free Preview or you can pre-order the new book title at:  Amazon • Barnes and Noble • Books-A-Million • ChristianBook.com and other fine bookstores!