The posturing that positions us to advance in grace with God and with men always starts when nobody else is watching.
2 Corinthians 2:14-16 NASB [14] But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and manifests through us the sweet aroma of the knowledge of Him in every place. [15] For we are a fragrance of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing; [16] to the one an aroma from death to death, to the other an aroma from life to life. …
Notice that Paul mentions that Christ being manifested through us is first “a fragrance to God.” You’ve heard the statement that ‘we live before an audience of one,’ and that is so true. Being highly esteemed in Heaven, as Daniel was, must be our first priority. What is our spiritual life like when nobody but God is watching? I believe that is at least part of what is means to be someone who is “after God’s heart.” That’s what the Bible says about David, and when God told Saul that the throne was going to be taken away from him, God said that He was looking for someone who was after His heart. When Samuel anointed David to be King in 1 Sam. 16, David had not done one thing publicly. As a matter of fact, when Samuel alerted Jesse that the new King would be selected from his sons, David wasn’t even invited to the selection party. He was such an unlikely pick that Jesse left him out in the fields to care for the sheep. Being selected and anointed king of Israel is pretty heady stuff, but after he was anointed David went back to caring for the sheep, 1Sam. 16:19. Later, when David volunteered to face Goliath he offered his resume to Saul, (who seriously doubted Davids ability to defeat Goliath) as having, while alone tending sheep, seen God deliver him from both lions and bears.
Think about David as a young shepherd tending sheep while no one but God was watching. It was there that he learned to worship God and wrote many of his Psalms. There in that lonely insignificant place, he served God’s heart. Have you learned to serve God and worship Him in the insignificant places where nobody but God is celebrating you? It is on those mountain sides that David learned to trust God for victory in lonely places of conflict. It is there that God prepared him for the public Goliaths he would one day face. There he discovered God as the great Overcomer. If you’ve learned to value the hidden places, where you learned to serve and worship Him alone, and you learned to trust Him in the private battles, then you’ve postured yourself to know an increase in favor that is noticeable to those around you. On the lonely hillside, God prepares a person to have impact one day in the lives of others.