The Power Of Inquiring Of The Lord: The Habit That Recovered Everything David Lost

Ziklag was still smoking when David and his six hundred men came over the last rise and saw it. The walls were black. The houses were gone. And when they ran through the gates shouting for their wives and children, nobody answered them.

They wept until they could not weep any more. That is not a figure of speech, it is what the verse says. And while David stood there with his own two wives taken and his own house burned, the men who had followed him through years of running from Saul started talking about stoning him.

He had no army he could trust, no city to go back to, and no plan. What he did next is the reason we are still reading about him. Before David drew a sword, he asked God a question.

What It Means To Inquire Of The Lord

To inquire of the Lord means to bring God a real question and wait for a real answer before you act. Scripture treats it as something people actually did, over and over, and it records both the questions they asked and the answers they got back.

David did it at Ziklag. Rebekah did it when the pregnancy she had prayed for turned into something she did not understand. Moses said the people came to him for this very reason. Kings did it before going to war, and at least one king died because he would not.

The practice runs from Genesis to the New Testament, and it survives the change of covenant. What changed was the way the question travels. What did not change is that God still lets himself be asked.

Inquiring Of The Lord Is Not The Same As Praying

Most of what we call prayer covers a lot of ground. Worship, confession, thanksgiving, asking God to move in situations we cannot reach. All of it is prayer and all of it matters.

Inquiry is the narrower thing inside that. It is asking God a directional question so that his answer decides your next step. You are not informing him or petitioning him. You are asking him to rule on something, and you are asking as someone who intends to do what he says.

That is the difference the average believer feels but cannot name. You can pray about a decision for weeks and never once actually ask God to make it.

The Hebrew Behind The Word: To Ask, And To Search Out

Two Hebrew words sit behind the English. Sha’al means to ask, to request, to enquire of someone. Darash means to seek, to search out, to consult, to go after.

Put together they describe a man who does more than raise a question in passing. He goes after the answer the way you go after something you have lost in the house. The asking and the seeking are the same act.

That is worth knowing because it rules out the casual version. A prayer tossed up on the way out the door is not what the Bible is describing.

Why Your KJV Reads “Enquired At The LORD”

If you read 1 Samuel 30:8 in the King James Bible, it says David “enquired at the LORD.” The spelling looks wrong to modern eyes, and readers ask about it constantly.

Inquire and enquire come from the same Latin root meaning to seek. The older British spelling is what the King James translators used, and newer English Bibles print it as inquire. Same word, same act, no difference in meaning.

So if you have heard a preacher say “enquire of the Lord” and read “inquire of the Lord” in your study Bible, you are looking at one practice, not two.

Read also: How To Hear Gods Voice In The Silence

The Day David Came Home To Ashes (1 Samuel 30:1-5)

David and his men had been marching for three days. They came back to Ziklag expecting the ordinary relief of coming home, and found the city smitten and burned with fire.

The Amalekites had raided while every fighting man was away. They took the women, the sons and the daughters, and they took the livestock and the goods, “and went on their way” as though it cost them nothing.

One detail changes the weight of the whole scene. Verse 2 says “they slew not any, either great or small.” Every wife and child was alive somewhere out in the desert, in the hands of raiders, moving further away with every hour David stood there.

The Grief That Wept Until They Had No More Power To Weep

“Then David and the people that were with him lifted up their voice and wept, until they had no more power to weep” (1 Samuel 30:4).

Six hundred hardened men who had lived rough in caves for years cried until their bodies gave out. God put that verse in the Bible on purpose, and it is there before anything else happens.

Nothing in this chapter asks you to be stronger than that. David did not skip the grief to get to the faith. He went through it, and then he did what came next.

How David Came To Be Living In Ziklag At All

Ziklag was not David’s inheritance. It was a gift from Achish, the Philistine king, given to David during the sixteen months he spent living among Israel’s enemies (1 Samuel 27:1-12).

He had gone there after telling himself he would one day perish by the hand of Saul. While he was there he raided one set of people and told Achish he had raided another, and he left no survivors who could contradict the story.

That is the man standing in the ashes, and it is worth remembering when we get to the end of the chapter.

David Encouraged Himself In The LORD His God

“And David was greatly distressed; for the people spake of stoning him, because the soul of all the people was grieved, every man for his sons and for his daughters: but David encouraged himself in the LORD his God” (1 Samuel 30:6).

Everything in that verse is pressure until you hit the word but. His own loss, his men’s grief turning toward violence, and no one anywhere on earth to steady him.

Then the verse turns. He encouraged himself in the LORD his God, and one verse later he is calling for the priest.

What It Means To Strengthen Yourself In God

The Hebrew word here is chazaq, to be strong, to take firm hold of something. It is a word about grip more than mood.

David did not talk himself into feeling better about a burned city. He took hold of what he already knew was true: God had anointed him when he was still the youngest son out with the sheep, God had kept him alive through years of being hunted, and none of that had changed in the last three days.

The verse also puts a possessive in that David could have dropped. He encouraged himself in the LORD his God. Under the worst pressure of his life he was still claiming God as his own, and by then it was the last thing he had left to stand on.

Why This Comes Before He Calls For The Ephod

There is an order running through this chapter. Grief in verse 4. Pressure in verse 6. Strengthening himself in God at the end of verse 6. Calling for the ephod in verse 7. Asking his question in verse 8. Marching in verse 9. Recovering everything by verse 19.

Each step makes the next one possible. Verse 8 does not happen without the second half of verse 6, and it is easy to see why. A man who cannot say “my God” is not going to ask him anything.

If you have ever been in trouble and found you could not pray, that may be the reason. The problem was not that you had no words. The grip had gone, and it has to be taken hold of again before the asking makes any sense.

The Same Crisis, Two Different Men

Saul had faced something close to this. The Philistines were massed against him, the future was black, and God was not speaking. What Saul did was go and find a woman with a familiar spirit at Endor (1 Samuel 28:6-7).

David lost his city, his family and the loyalty of his men on the same afternoon, and called for a priest.

Two men, comparable pressure, opposite directions. That fork does not belong only to kings. It shows up in the first twenty minutes after bad news lands, and what a person reaches for in those twenty minutes tends to shape everything that follows.

Read also: Why Was King David so Special to God

Bring Me Hither The Ephod: How David Inquired Of The Lord

“And David said to Abiathar the priest, Ahimelech’s son, I pray thee, bring me hither the ephod. And Abiathar brought thither the ephod to David” (1 Samuel 30:7).

David’s first move after taking hold of God was to send for the means God had appointed. He did not wait for a feeling or a sign in the sky. He used what God had already provided.

What The Ephod Was

The ephod was a garment the high priest wore, described in Exodus 28. Attached to the front of it was a breastplate of judgment set with twelve stones, one for each tribe of Israel.

It was not a magic object. It was the appointed place where a man could bring a question to God under that covenant, the way an embassy is the appointed place to bring certain business.

The Urim And The Thummim, And What We Honestly Do Not Know

Inside that breastplate went the Urim and the Thummim. “And thou shalt put in the breastplate of judgment the Urim and the Thummim; and they shall be upon Aaron’s heart, when he goeth in before the LORD” (Exodus 28:30).

Scripture tells us they existed, where they were kept, and what they were for. It never tells us what they were made of or how they worked.

Many scholars believe they were a pair of marked stones used to give a yes or no answer, and the way the answers come back in these accounts fits a question that can be answered that way. That is a reasonable reading of the evidence rather than something the Bible states, and it is worth holding it as loosely as Scripture holds it. What the text does say plainly is that God answered.

Abiathar, And Why David Needed A Priest

Abiathar was the son of Ahimelech, and the only priest who escaped when Saul slaughtered the priests at Nob. He ran to David carrying the ephod and had been with him ever since (1 Samuel 22:20-23).

Under that covenant the question went up through a priest. An ordinary Israelite could not raise the matter with God on his own, which is worth holding against what changed at the cross.

The Two Questions David Asked, And The Answer He Did Not Ask For

“And David enquired at the LORD, saying, Shall I pursue after this troop? shall I overtake them? And he answered him, Pursue: for thou shalt surely overtake them, and without fail recover all” (1 Samuel 30:8).

A Question God Can Answer

Look at what David actually asked. Shall I pursue? Shall I overtake? Two short questions, both answerable, both about what to do next.

He did not ask God to explain why the raid was allowed, or to justify himself, or to account for the sixteen months that had put him in that city. Any of those questions would have been understandable. None of them would have got his family back that week.

He also asked as a man already willing to go either way. Nothing in his wording is angling for the answer he wanted.

If your own asking has been more like a complaint with a question mark on the end, that is worth knowing rather than feeling bad about. Most of us learn to ask well by first noticing that we have not been.

God Answered More Than David Asked

David asked two things. God answered three.

Pursue, yes. You shall surely overtake, yes. And then something David never raised: “without fail recover all.”

That third clause was a gift, and it tells you something true about God. He is not grudging with people who come and ask him, and he often gives beyond the question. What it is not is a formula where two questions purchase a third answer.

What David Did With The Answer

The answer was where the work started. God said pursue, and David still had to go and get his family back.

There is a version of faith that hears a promise and sits down. This chapter does not support it. God’s promise did not remove David’s obedience, it called for it.

He Marched With A Third Of His Army Left Behind

Six hundred men set out. At the brook Besor two hundred of them were “so faint that they could not go over,” and David went on with four hundred (1 Samuel 30:9-10).

He had a word from God and a third of his force gone in the first few miles. He did not stop to ask whether the promise still applied at reduced strength.

Obedience rarely waits for conditions to improve. Most of the time you go with what you have.

The Answer Arrived Through A Dying Stranger

Out in the field they found an Egyptian, collapsed, three days and three nights without food or water. He was a slave the Amalekites had abandoned when he fell sick, which tells you exactly what he was worth to the men who had burned Ziklag.

David’s men gave him bread and water, figs and raisins, “and when he had eaten, his spirit came again to him” (1 Samuel 30:12). Only after that did they find out who he was. They fed an enemy’s discarded servant before they had any idea he was useful.

That man led them to the camp. God had said pursue, but God had not said how they would ever find raiders who had a three day head start in open desert. The direction David asked for came to him through a person nobody would have looked at twice, and it came because his men stopped for someone who could do nothing for them.

Nothing Lacking: David Recovered All

They found the Amalekites spread out over the ground, eating and drinking and dancing over the spoil. David struck them from twilight until the evening of the next day, and four hundred young men on camels were all that got away.

Then verse 19 stacks it up on purpose: “And there was nothing lacking to them, neither small nor great, neither sons nor daughters, neither spoil, nor any thing that they had taken to them: David recovered all.”

Nothing lacking. Small or great. Sons and daughters. The verse keeps counting because the point is the completeness of it.

What “Recover All” Does And Does Not Promise You

This is the verse people carry out of 1 Samuel 30, and it is worth handling with care, because a lot of hope has been built on it and some of that hope has been built badly.

Start with what God actually said. It was a word to one man, about one raid, in answer to one question, on one afternoon. That is what the text records, and the text records it because it happened.

Some of it carries straight over to you, and it is not small. God hears people who come and ask him. God is able to restore what has been taken. And God gave David more than he requested, which tells you something about how he deals with those who ask.

What cannot be claimed from this verse is a guarantee that every believer gets every loss back in this life. Scripture itself will not let us say that. Paul asked three times for his thorn to be removed and was told “my grace is sufficient for thee” (2 Corinthians 12:7-9).

Hebrews 11 lists people who were tortured, stoned, sawn asunder and left destitute, “of whom the world was not worthy,” and then says plainly that they did not receive the promise in this life (Hebrews 11:35-39).

So when someone stands over a grieving family and guarantees them the marriage back, the money back, the child back, on the strength of 1 Samuel 30:8, they have gone further than the verse goes. God may well restore. Scripture is full of restoration and you are right to ask for it and to hope for it. What no one can do is promise it on God’s behalf in a particular case.

The recovery that is certain for every believer is larger than Ziklag, and it is not a consolation prize handed to people whose real hopes fell through. Every tear wiped away, death itself finished, all things made new (Revelation 21:4). Paul weighed the sufferings of this present time against the glory that shall be revealed and said they do not compare (Romans 8:18). David’s day of recovery was a small picture of something that will be total.

Read also: What Does It Mean to Wait on the Lord

David Inquired Of The Lord All His Life, Not Just At Ziklag

Ziklag was not the one time David remembered to ask. It was a habit he had built long before the day he needed it most.

When the Philistines were fighting against Keilah, David asked whether he should go, and when his men were afraid he asked a second time (1 Samuel 23:2-4). When he heard Saul was coming down after him he asked twice more, whether Saul would come and whether the men of Keilah would hand him over (1 Samuel 23:10-12).

After Saul died he asked whether he should go up into any of the cities of Judah, and where (2 Samuel 2:1). When the Philistines came against him as king he asked again (2 Samuel 5:19). And when a famine ran three years he asked why, and got an answer that reached back a generation (2 Samuel 21:1).

That is a man for whom asking God was ordinary. The reason he knew what to do on the worst day of his life is that he had been doing it on ordinary days for years.

The Same Enemy, A Different Instruction

The clearest lesson in the whole pattern is in 2 Samuel 5. The Philistines came up and spread out in the valley of Rephaim, David asked, and God said go up, I will deliver them. He went, and won.

Then they came back. Same enemy, same valley, and David had a proven strategy in his pocket. He asked again anyway. This time God said do not go straight up, circle round behind them, and wait until you hear a sound of going in the tops of the mulberry trees (2 Samuel 5:22-24).

If he had run yesterday’s answer at today’s problem he would have marched straight into a battle God had told him to fight from another direction. A word from God about one situation is not a standing licence for the next one. And if you have wondered whether it is wrong to bring God the same question twice, David did it repeatedly and God kept answering.

He Was Not The Only One Who Asked

Rebekah went to enquire of the LORD when the pregnancy she had waited for became something she could not understand (Genesis 25:22). Moses told his father in law that the people came to him “to enquire of God” (Exodus 18:15). Jehoshaphat, standing with a war already agreed, wanted to know whether there was a prophet of the LORD to ask first (2 Chronicles 18:4-7).

Josiah sent men to enquire when the book of the law was found and he realised how far the nation had drifted (2 Kings 22:13). Ezra “prepared his heart to seek the law of the LORD, and to do it” before he ever taught it (Ezra 7:10).

And the Lord Jesus himself spent a whole night in prayer before he chose the twelve (Luke 6:12-13), and said that the Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do (John 5:19).

Read also: Prayer Life of Jesus

What It Costs Not To Inquire Of The Lord

Scripture does not only show us people who asked. It shows us what happened to people who did not, and it is blunt about it.

Joshua And The Gibeonites: The Decision That Looked Small

The Gibeonites came to Israel with mouldy bread, cracked wineskins and patched shoes, claiming they had travelled from a far country. The story held together. The evidence was right there in their hands.

“And the men took of their victuals, and asked not counsel at the mouth of the LORD” (Joshua 9:14). Israel made a league with them and swore to it, and were bound to that treaty for generations.

Nobody was rebelling. They looked at the evidence, drew the obvious conclusion, and moved. The decisions we do not think are worth asking about are often the ones that cost the most, because they never feel like decisions at the time.

Saul: The Man Who Would Not Ask

First Chronicles gives the verdict on Saul’s whole life in two verses. “So Saul died for his transgression which he committed against the LORD, even against the word of the LORD, which he kept not, and also for asking counsel of one that had a familiar spirit, to enquire of it; and enquired not of the LORD” (1 Chronicles 10:13-14).

Saul had technically asked. First Samuel 28:6 says he enquired of the LORD and got nothing back. Yet Scripture still charges him with not enquiring of the LORD, because the charge is about a life and not a single afternoon.

That is a sobering thing to read and it is meant to be. A man can ask once in an emergency and still have lived a life with God shut out of it.

The Shepherds Who Have Not Sought The Lord

“For the pastors are become brutish, and have not sought the LORD: therefore they shall not prosper, and all their flocks shall be scattered” (Jeremiah 10:21).

The verse is about leaders in Israel, and it applies to anyone carrying weight for other people. Whoever is following your decisions, whether that is a household, a team, a class or one younger believer who watches how you live, inherits the direction you took.

Read also: Benefits and Consequences of Prayerlessness

The Deadly Substitute: Inquiring Of Other Gods

There is another kind of inquiry running through the Old Testament, and God treats it as one of the most serious sins in the book. It is going to some other source for the answers only he can give.

Deuteronomy names the whole category: the diviner, the observer of times, the enchanter, the witch, the charmer, the consulter with familiar spirits, the wizard, the necromancer, “for all that do these things are an abomination unto the LORD” (Deuteronomy 18:10-12). Isaiah asks the question that settles it. When people go to those that have familiar spirits and to wizards, “should not a people seek unto their God?” (Isaiah 8:19).

Ahaziah And The God Of Ekron

Ahaziah king of Israel fell through a lattice in his upper chamber and was badly hurt. He sent messengers to enquire of Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron, whether he would recover.

God stopped the messengers on the road with a question through Elijah: “Is it not because there is not a God in Israel, that ye go to enquire of Baal-zebub the god of Ekron?” (2 Kings 1:3). The king never got off that bed.

The offence was not curiosity about the future. It was walking past the God who was there to ask someone else.

What This Looks Like Now

The old names have gone out of use and the practice has not. There is the man who sells you a word from God for a fee. There is the diviner or native doctor consulted at night when the hospital gives bad news in the morning. There are horoscopes, card readers, and online seers who will tell you your future for the price of a subscription.

None of that is named to accuse anyone, since there is no knowing what any reader has or has not done. The principle is what matters. Anything consulted for direction in God’s place is the same act Scripture forbids, however respectable the packaging or however desperate the situation that drove someone to it.

And Saul’s story shows how people usually get there. He did not set out looking for a medium. He went to Endor because God had gone silent and he could not bear it, which is why the two sections that follow belong together.

How To Inquire Of The Lord Today (Without An Ephod)

There is no ephod now and no need of one. What follows is not a formula, because God has never let himself be worked by one. It is how Scripture shows a believer bringing a question to God, roughly in order of weight.

The Veil Is Torn: You Do Not Need A Priest

David had to send for a priest and a garment. You have a High Priest who has passed into the heavens, who is touched with the feeling of your infirmities, and an open invitation to “come boldly unto the throne of grace” (Hebrews 4:14-16).

The Spirit of God lives in every believer (Romans 8:9). The means changed completely and the practice did not. Whatever David had to arrange for, you already have.

Start With The Scripture You Already Have

The Bible is where you begin, and it governs everything after it. A question God has already answered in his Word is not open for fresh inquiry, and no impression or prophecy or open door can reopen it.

A man does not need direction about whether to leave his wife. A believer does not need a word about whether to be honest in the accounts.

A great deal of what gets called unanswered guidance is instruction already given and not yet obeyed. Most of us have done it at some point, and the fastest way out is usually to go back and do the last thing we already know.

The Leading Of The Spirit, Under The Word

“For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God” (Romans 8:14). Jesus promised the Spirit of truth would guide his people into all truth (John 16:13). The leading is real and it is promised.

An impression can be the Spirit’s leading and it can be your own thinking wearing the same clothes. Scripture is how you tell them apart, which is why it comes first and the Spirit’s leading is never set against it.

Godly Counsel, And Where It Stops

“Where no counsel is, the people fall: but in the multitude of counsellors there is safety” (Proverbs 11:14). Scripture repeatedly shows people bringing questions to God through people. The Israelites came to Moses. Jehoshaphat wanted a prophet in the room.

Counsel is a real channel and refusing it is not spirituality. What counsel cannot do is carry the decision for you, and the temptation is to keep asking until somebody agrees with what you had already chosen.

The honest test is simple. Are you asking people who are free to tell you no, and do you have any intention of listening if they do?

Prayer And Fasting When The Matter Is Weighty

The church at Antioch fasted and prayed before sending Barnabas and Saul (Acts 13:2-3). Ezra proclaimed a fast at the river Ahava to seek of God a right way (Ezra 8:21-23).

Fasting clears the room. It says this matters more to me than the next meal, and it puts the body in agreement with the intention. It is not leverage, and it does not oblige God to speak on your timetable.

Read also: 10 Importance of Fasting and Prayer

How To Ask A Question God Can Answer

Go back to David’s wording. Shall I pursue? Shall I overtake? Short, clear, about the next step, and asked by a man ready to accept either answer.

Try that on whatever you are carrying. Not “God, what do I do with my life,” but “should I take this job.” Not “God, sort out my family,” but “what is the next thing you are asking of me here.” A question narrow enough to have an answer is a question you can recognise the answer to.

And ask it with the matter genuinely open. If the will is already fixed, what is being requested is approval, not direction.

How To Tell God’s Direction From Your Own Preference

This is where most people get stuck, and it deserves an honest answer rather than a confident one. Scripture does not promise you an inner signal that removes all risk from every decision. It promises wisdom to the person who asks for it (James 1:5), and it promises a God who is not trying to hide his will from anyone who genuinely wants to do it.

Within that, there are tests worth running. They are tests rather than guarantees, and they work best together.

• Does it agree with Scripture? If it requires disobedience, the question is settled already.
• Does it survive counsel from people who are free to tell you no?
• Does it hold when you stop wanting it, or does the leading fade the moment the appeal does?
• Does it move you toward obedience and the fear of God, or does it mainly serve you?
• Is your will actually surrendered, or are you asking God to sign something already decided?
• Does it stand still under time? Pressure to decide this minute is worth noticing.

None of that removes the need for faith, and it is not supposed to. You will still step out on decisions you cannot prove in advance. What these tests do is strip out most of the ways we fool ourselves, and that is a great deal of the problem.

When You Inquire Of The Lord And Hear Nothing

Some who read this have asked and asked and heard nothing back. That experience is in the Bible, and Scripture does not tidy it up.

The Bible Does Not Hide That This Happens

“And when Saul enquired of the LORD, the LORD answered him not, neither by dreams, nor by Urim, nor by prophets” (1 Samuel 28:6).

Every channel God had given, and silence on all of them. The Bible records it without softening it, which means you are not off the map when it happens to you.

What Scripture Names, And What It Does Not

Scripture does name some reasons. Sin a person is holding onto and will not deal with: “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me” (Psalm 66:18), which is close to the ground of the charge against Saul. Asking with the wrong motive: “ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts” (James 4:3).

Those are worth examining honestly. They are not a verdict on you. Silence is not automatic evidence of sin, and Scripture never gives us a full account of God’s timing. Job got no explanation for a very long time and had done nothing to deserve the silence.

What To Do While You Wait

Obey the last clear instruction you were given. Stay in the Word, where God is already speaking whether or not you feel anything. Keep asking, since Jesus taught that men ought always to pray and not to faint (Luke 18:1). Take counsel from people who know God. And do not force a decision just to end the discomfort of not knowing.

Above all, do not go looking for another voice. A person who cannot bear silence can usually find somebody willing to talk, and the ones who are always willing to talk are rarely the ones God sent.

Read also: Reasons Why Our Prayers Are Not Answered

If You Are The Reason The City Burned

Now go back to how David got to Ziklag.

He was living in Philistine territory because he had decided he would one day die by Saul’s hand. He had spent sixteen months telling Achish one story while doing another. He had marched out with the Philistine army against Israel and was only sent home because their commanders did not trust him. Ziklag was burned while he was on the road back from a battle he should never have been anywhere near.

Then he called for the ephod, and God answered him that same day. No waiting period. No probation. No demand that he first earn back the right to be heard.

Some who read this are carrying losses that came out of their own choices, and have long since assumed that this puts them outside the range of asking God anything. This chapter says otherwise, and it says so about a man whose situation was entirely of his own making.

Both things are true in the chapter and neither cancels the other. Grace was there the moment he asked, and the wandering had still cost him a burned city, a terrified family and a march he would not otherwise have had to make. God answering him was never the same as God approving the sixteen months.

If that is where you are, the door is not the problem. Ask.

Read also: Am I Beyond Repentance

Frequently Asked Questions

Related Articles to Read Next

• How To Hear Gods Voice In The Silence
• What Does It Mean to Wait on the Lord
• Why Was King David so Special to God
• Reasons Why Our Prayers Are Not Answered
• The Book of 1 Samuel Summary by Chapter
• Am I Beyond Repentance
• 10 Importance of Fasting and Prayer

The city was still burning when David asked his question. He did not have his family back, he did not have his men behind him, and he did not have a single reason on the ground to believe the day could turn.

What he had was a God who could be asked, and a habit of asking that he had built on ordinary days long before this one.

That is what is being held out to you here. A God who lets himself be asked, by people whose own choices burned the city down, on the worst afternoon of their lives. He is worth more than any technique for getting answers, and he is better than a guarantee about how your own situation will end.

Ask him.