The Way of the Warrior: An Ancient Path to Inner Peace

by Erwin Raphael McManus

David understood the way of the warrior. He understood that to serve is the highest honor and that if you are a shepherd, you must aspire to be the greatest shepherd that has ever tended sheep. So he pursued the lion and he pursued the bear, and when they turned on him, he seized them by the hair and struck them and killed them.48 David made being a shepherd look a lot like being a warrior. As a shepherd, he learned the skills that made him a warrior. David redefined what it meant to be a shepherd. Soon he would redefine what it meant to be a warrior. His first battle as a warrior was against a giant. Instead of taking the armor that warriors always wore, he redefined both what a warrior fights with and how a warrior fights. No one had ever gone to battle with just five smooth stones. No warrior had ever gone against a giant with nothing more than a slingshot. No warrior had left behind their armor, leaving themselves completely exposed. No warrior had chosen agility above protection. In the years to come, David would become known across the land as the greatest warrior of his time, yet even as a warrior, David redefined the standards of being a man of war. We need to remember that when David fought Goliath, he was still a shepherd. For him, fighting the giant was like fighting the bear or the lion. He wasn’t fighting for his own glory or his own fame; he was fighting because no one else would and because he understood what was at stake. When he killed the lion and the bea...

David knew that Saul had attempted to assassinate him multiple times and that he was alive simply because the king was unsuccessful. Yet when David had an opportunity to kill King Saul, when he had the support of his men if he had chosen to do so, he established a standard of honor that no one had ever expected. He declared that he would not touch God’s anointed one and that as long as Saul was king, David would not harm him. What we can see without question is that while David was still a warrior, he was already acting like a king.

You might look at David’s life and think there were three different postures. The first, David the shepherd, then David the warrior, then David the king. But David had one role: David the servant. David the servant who served as a shepherd, David the servant who served as a warrior, David the servant who served as king. Servanthood is not a stage of life; it is a posture of the heart.

It is not only true that the warrior is called to serve; it is also equally true that the servant must become a warrior. David was a warrior both when he was a shepherd and when he became a king. As a shepherd, he fought to protect his sheep. As a king, he fought to protect his people. The spirit of a servant is to sacrifice one’s own life for the good of those they serve. Still, David reminds us that there is a difference between the way of the warrior and becoming a man of war. The way of the warrior is always a posture of servanthood. Our strength was never meant to be an act of violence or aggression, yet in David we see glimpses of our most heroic selves. He saved a sheep from the mouth of a lion; he killed Goliath with the swing of a stone; he established a nation; he called the people to love God and serve him only. By any measure, David was a great man. And as we will discover by any measure, he was painfully flawed. This should not discourage us but rather give us hope. We are told that David was a man after God’s own heart. The heart of God is the heart of a servant. This is the heart that David struggled to have formed in himself.