That is very instructive to us, because we can take a wrong turning. It doesn't mean we are severed from the will of God; it doesn't mean that we are out of his blessing, as some people suggest. You were at a crossroads of life. You should have sought the Lord in prayer, and sought his direction, his guidance in some form. What for? Well, at the very least, he would have sharpened your own sense and judgement, and helped you to weigh the pros and cons, and he would have helped you to put selfish considerations of your own out of the reckoning, and to make yourself available to God. As you prayed to him, you would have been guided in your thinking and your deliberations without doubt. But you didn’t do that. You made a decision and it was a wrong decision; you took the wrong job; you went to the wrong location; you did entirely the wrong thing. But you are never out of God's will. If you are his, then that he will continue to bless you and deal with you. But maybe you will have a measure of hardship, because of that wrong decision that you wouldn't otherwise have had. Perhaps, if David had stuck to 1 Samuel 22:5, he wouldn't have had half the upsets that he had in the next four chapters. So you are never out of the will of God; he will use even your wrong decision in his purposes of sanctifying you. But of course it is best to be always available to him, and to pray for everything, and not to listen to those preachers – however sound and helpful they may be in many things – who are telling you, ‘There is no such thing as Christian guidance. Take your own decisions, as long as you take them morally and ethically.’ That is wrong. The teaching of the Scripture is that we are always available to the Lord, and all major matters of roads and routes are brought to him in earnest prayer and taken very seriously. If we don't, there will be many wrong turnings, and there will be difficulties we might not have encountered otherwise.
What is the chronology of these events? David was born in 1041 BC, or thereabouts, which was 10 years after the beginning of the reign of Saul, so Saul was quite an experienced ruler at David's birth. Of course, Saul didn’t know anything about David's birth. But when the situation arose that Saul, responding to the command of God through Samuel, went against the Amalekites, and when he disobeyed the commands of God – interpreted them very broadly, conducted the campaign his own way, let so many of the Amalekites survive, and in fact took spoil and all sorts of other things – he was challenged by Samuel and he made light of the charges. That was the moment that God rejected him from being king, and Samuel, was called to anoint David. How old was David at his anointing? Let us suppose he was seventeen, so Saul would have been reigning twenty-seven years by then. He had had plenty of opportunity to obey God and demonstrate his worth, but he was condemned. Then begins the long wait on the part of David. David is at court with Saul. Then for some reason or other he leaves court and returns home, and later, when there is the Philistine threat and the challenge of Goliath, David appears again, and he becomes famous as the hero of Israel and is known for this great triumph of his faith. How old was he then? Well probably Saul had been raining something like 31 years by that time. He reigned altogether 41 years, so there was maybe another decade to go. But his fanatical jealousy against David meant that David was exiled from court, and on the run, and all Saul's murderous instincts were directed at him. Time after time, he pursued him, having tried to take his life even while he was back in court. So David was regarded as Saul’s enemy, and was cast out of court and begins his ‘period of exile’, and that goes on for a whole decade. As we read through the accounts in 1 Samuel it seems to happen so quickly; the narrative runs so smoothly, but it is something that actually took place over a number of years, so David required great patience.