(Show clip from The Guardian)

This clip from The Guardian with Kevin Costner and Ashton Kutcher reminds us that we occasionally find ourselves in situations that we did not foresee or plan. Sometimes things get so bad that we find ourselves at the end of our rope and we don't know which way to turn.

If you had a choice, would you rather be on the front porch of a cabin overlooking the Appalachian Mountains or hanging from a breaking cable over a roaring ocean? Would you rather be on the fifty yard line watching the Tigers or Gamecocks or on the phone with a teacher reporting to you your child's failing grades? Would you rather be grilling out steaks with friends or working through red tape to get your aging parent into a nursing facility?

There will be points in our journey that we find ourselves in the wilderness alone and filled with fear and anxiety. There will be times that we find ourselves spiritually dry and far away from God. David experienced the wilderness. Although his circumstances were much different from ours, his story is our story. We can learn a lot from his life.

We continue our series of studies called "Slaying Your Giants." Last week we talked about the giants that deplete us of spiritual energy. We talked about how we need to run toward our giants and to keep our focus on God. Today I want us to talk about wilderness survival. I know that some people have the survivor instinct and the thoughts of being in the wilderness with your equipment is your idea of the best vacation ever. But today I'm talking about life itself and those times we find ourselves surrounded by difficult circumstances and wonder where God fits in.

Mercy Clonts and her team of artists have done a remarkable job of depicting each week's theme. Take a close look at this picture. That's where some of you are living right now. We all go through these wilderness experiences. And we don't have a vote on whether we go through them or not. But how do we survive? How can we come through them better people instead of bitter people and spiritually dead people?

You think you have it bad. Let's look at David's story. To give you a glimpse-most Bibles have headings at the beginning of each chapter. At the beginning of 1 Samuel 18, I read "Saul's Jealousy of David." At the beginning of chapter 19 I read "Saul Tries to Kill David." King Saul has done everything possible to completely isolate David from any semblance of a meaningful life. He tried unsuccessfully six times to assassinate him. He drove a wedge between David and his wife Michal. He tries to find refuge at the home of the prophet Samuel. But someone snitches on him. He goes to his best friend Jonathan, but his hands are tied.

David can hear the twine of his lifeline popping. He has no choice but to run. He's totally disconnected from all relationships. He turns his focus completely away from God. He lies and deceives just to survive. At Nob, he speaks one lie after another to the priest. Then he flees to Gath and hopes to find refuge there. If you remember, Gath was the hometown of Goliath. He actually tries to build an alliance with Gath, but they recognize him. So he does an Oscar-winning performance, acting like a madman wallowing on the ground and foaming at the mouth.

The people of Gath throw him out of town and leave him with nowhere to go. So he goes to the place where no one goes. The place where people go to die. The wilderness. He finds a cave called Adullam that overlooks the Dead Sea. There is no sign of life anywhere around him. But at least he's found a cool, safe spot where he can lay his head. This was day one of ten years of living in the wilderness.

Can you relate to David's story? Have you been cut off from others? In your pain and loneliness have you started doing some things that you know are shady or downright wrong? Are you trying to cover yourself by lying? Maybe you've done nothing wrong at all but still find yourself in a cave overlooking the Dead Sea. Now what?

This story teaches us two very important keys to wilderness survival. The first key is to find refuge in God's presence.

David got out of line. In his desperation he took his focus off God. Running for his life, he even engaged in ungodly behavior. But it was in the cave that his faith was restored. In the cave he rediscovered his courage. In the cave he once again turned his focus to God. And in God he found refuge. Don't miss what I just said. In God David found refuge.

Refuge was a favorite word of David's in many of the psalms he wrote. Check out your concordance and you will see that refuge appears more than forty times in some translations of the Psalms. None of the word's appearances are as powerful as Psalm 57:1. Notice the words in your Bible that introduce the psalm: "A song of David when he fled from Saul in the cave."

Try your best to imagine you're in David's situation. You're in a dimly lit cave. You're probably on your knees or on your face. You're out of options. You can't go home. You certainly can't go anywhere near Saul. You lied through your teeth to God's appointed priest. You faked an epileptic seizure just to keep from getting slaughtered. And now you're in the cave of Adullam, and you're all alone.

But something clicked with him and he knew he was not alone. There in the cave in the very presence of God he cries out, "Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me, for in you my soul takes refuge. I will take refuge in the shadow of your wings until the disaster has passed" (Psalm 57:1).

Are you in the wilderness? If you want to survive, you must make God your refuge. Up to this point, you've sought refuge in everything but God. You've tried everything humanly possible. That's the problem. You've sought refuge in humans. It's time to seek refuge in the one who can and will see you through. I can't promise you how long you will be in the wilderness. But you must resolve to be like David: "I will take refuge in the shadow of your wings UNTIL the disaster has passed." Don't give up on God. He will see you through.

In the wilderness, not only do you need to find refuge in God's presence. Second, you need to find comfort in God's family. Too many people try to survive the wilderness completely on their own. They say, "I'll tough it out. I don't need to bother anyone. I'll be okay. No, don't tell anybody." If that's your attitude, you will remain in the wilderness longer than you should.

Notice what happens in David's story. "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 leader. About four hundred men were with him" (1 Samuel 22:1-2).

It probably wasn't funny to David, but this scene is actually comical. Here he is, living in a cave. Stressed out and not a clue what his next steps would be. At least he has turned his focus to God. But in the distance he sees about 400 people coming in his direction. As they get closer he sees that they are his friends and relatives. But notice how the Bible describes them. They were in distress or in debt or discontented. Talk about misery loves company. This wasn't the cavalry coming to the rescue. Nor was it a group of counselors and social workers coming to get David out of this mess.

In our church we have a Sunday School class that calls themselves The Misfits. They have this false sense of humility, claiming that their class is made up of dropouts and rejects and losers. Actually it is a very strong class. But this class of 400 that showed up at David's cave could have accurately been called The Misfits. The Message Bible says, "All who were down on their luck came around."

You might think, "Man, that's all David needs right now." Have you ever had a stressed filled day, one of those days when nothing was going right? You just want to be by yourself. The phone rings. It is your uncle/cousin/whatever. The weird one. He's passing through town and wants to bless you with his presence. That's the picture I see here with David, except in his case, 400 showed up.

But think about this scene. Is that not a true picture of the church, a body of believers made up of cave dwellers and former cave dwellers? That's what Chapin Baptist is like. Our family here is filled with folks who've spend many a day in the cave. People who've filed bankruptcy, people who've been in jail, drunks, drug addicts, dropouts, suicidals, and loners.

Paul captured a great picture of the church in his first letter to the Corinthians. He said, "Take a good look, friends, at who you were when you got called into this life. I don't see many of ‘the brightest and the best' among you, not many influential, not many from high-society families. Isn't it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these ‘nobodies' to expose the hollow pretensions of the ‘somebodies'?" (1 Corinthians 1:21-22, Msg).

What was David supposed to do? Turn these rejects away? Who was he to think he was better than they? After all, he fit in pretty good with them. He himself hadn't been a Mother Teresa over the last few weeks. So what does he do? He plants a church and calls it the Adullam Community Church of Misfits. Actually, if you read this story in the 1 Chronicles 12, you will see that through time David transformed this group into a mighty army.

Some of you are living in the wilderness right now. You're on the run. Running from God. Running from your family. Running from life itself. What it was that put you on the run—I don't know. You know. God knows. Some of you are in the wilderness because you've stopped spending time alone with Jesus. Spiritually, you're as dry as you have been in a long, long time.

Some of you are in the wilderness because you've chosen a lifestyle that's got your life all in a mess. You've not managed your money well and now you're in a financial mess. You've gone deeper into drug or alcohol use than you ever planned. And now your family and your career are in a mess.

Some of you students and young adults want to get serious with God, but you've allowed the temptations of following the crowd overtake your desires to follow Christ. And now you find yourself spiritually empty, convicted, and in a spiritual cave in Adullam.

You may be living in the wilderness right now. But let me tell you something. The fact that you are here in church this morning means there is hope. I hope your wilderness experience is very brief. But whether it is short or long, don't forget these two survival skills. Find refuge in the presence of God. Focus on Him. Don't revert to ungodly attitudes and lifestyles. And find comfort in the family of God. You can find some level of comfort in a large gathering like this. But you need a smaller group of Christian friends, other misfits, who will walk with you and pray with you and love you through your wilderness experience.