Is 1 Samuel 15:17 a warning that servants of the Lord should stay little in our own eyes and focus on increasing the Lord in our eyes instead?

This text is from a transcript of a talk by David Gooding, entitled ‘The Problems of Becoming and Being a King’ (1990).

Yes, surely. And we should remember perhaps what is to be read in 2 Samuel. When God sent Nathan to rebuke David, he reminded David of his past when he was being persecuted by Saul. In those days he was desperately dependent on God because there was no other hope of survival than to be desperately dependent on God. But alas, David grew to be a powerful monarch, not to say an emperor. And in those days, he forgot, didn't he? He yielded to temptation, because now the power to do what he wanted to do was in his hands as monarch and emperor. All of us can be spoiled by our successes, can't we? All of us can find that in our early days we were dependent on the Lord, and the Lord used us. We got projected into situations of prominence before the public, and to some success. It is desperately easy then for us to fall and go astray, and come to grief, and dishonour the Lord and ourselves and the Lord's people, and be a cause of contention and warfare among them.