Welcome to this weekend's In Touch podcast with Charles Stanley.

Admirable character isn't suddenly forged in extreme situations.

It's carefully crafted every day.

The first ten chapters of Second Samuel provide the basis for examining the true test of character.

Second Samuel, chapter one.

And if I should ask you, what is the true test of a person's character? Is it what they do in the midst of a crisis or how they respond to life's situations

continuously? That is, not on a once in a time of crisis kind of response, but the true test of character

is how we respond generally and continuously in little areas of life as well as the major ones.

So that's what I want to talk about tonight, and that is the true test of character.

And what I want us to do, and this sounds is the true test of character, and what I want

us to do, and this sounds like it'll take us a long time, but it won't. I want us to go through

the chapters up until David has a moral relapse in his life. So I want us to go up through

the 10th chapter, and I'm going to do it in a way that if you'll follow me,

it will not take us a long time. And I want to show you something about him as a man.

And yet I want you to get the sweep of what's happening in these first 10 chapters. If you'll

recall in 1st Samuel, we took a 10-year period of his life or thereabout when we were talking

about what is God up to

in David's life, and we saw his relationship to Saul is running continuously and what God was

saying to him.

So in these chapters, I want you to see the character of the man.

So I want us to begin in chapter one, and if you'll just follow me as I refer to some passages and let me show you what's happening.

If you'll recall that now before, in the 31st chapter, Saul was killed in battle or died in battle and also his son, Jonathan.

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