Today’s reading: Psalms 52-54; Revelation 14
Reading these three Psalms back-to-back got me thinking about just how much David was forced to rely on God after he was anointed king, but before he took the throne, and I wonder if that was by design from God.
Clearly David had a heart of trust and faith in the Lord from the beginning, 1 Samuel tells us as much, but how long would that trust last if he was thrust into the kingship so young? How easy is it, once we start gaining competence in something, to lean on that competence rather than on the Lord? It is easy to pray faithfully and rely on the Lord when starting a new career, or first having children, or first starting anything, but then as you get your feet under you, how much do you still feel that need of His hand day by day, hour by hour, or minute by minute? Competence can kill faithful reliance on the Lord, but having the knowledge ahead of time that your competence is not sufficient can be a strong guard against this.
For me, the most obvious example is in teaching the Bible. Teaching the Word has always come relatively easily for me, so I am very grateful for an experience I had early on in my Christian life. I was in a house church at the time, and one Saturday morning I was talking to the leader of the group about the teaching from the previous Thursday night. It had been a fun, engaging teaching, but he asked me what I got out of it, and what the teacher’s main point was. As I thought about it, I didn’t really have an answer. He pointed out that that particular teacher in our home church was a very gifted teacher, but that they had the tendency to rely on that gifting rather than putting in the time and prayer before the Lord in preparation. The result was engaging, but relatively empty.
Those words and that experience stuck with me, and the Holy Spirit has used them many times as I have been putting together teachings out of competence rather than by faith. Times when He brings to my attention that I have spent time studying and thinking about what I want to teach out of a passage, but I have never actually actively invited Him into the process. I may be able to operate under my own power, but why would I want to? He knows His Word infinitely better than I do, He knows the people who will be sitting under that teaching perfectly, and He knows, in a way I never could, what He wants communicated to that particular group out of that particular passage. So competent or not, I need to continue leaning on Him to lead the way and carry me through what He has called and equipped me to do.
And how much more so would this have been true with David? David was clearly a great military leader and strategist, and he was surrounded by a group of incredible warriors. What need would David have to seek and rely on the Lord for wisdom and deliverance? And yet, time and again, as he is fleeing from Saul, David is forced to rely on the Lord and to see Him come through every time. David is forced to rely on the One that is so far beyond his own competence, and gets the chance, over and over, to see that He is faithful and good. So when it comes time for David to actually take the throne, he is coming out of a place where he has just spent years of his life, operating within his competency, but still needing to rely heavily on the Lord.
God could clearly have removed Saul at any point, and sovereignly placed David on the throne, but I wonder if part of the reason He didn’t was to prepare David to be the kind of king He wanted to have on the throne, who would continue to rely on Him rather than on his own abilities and wisdom.
No comments:
Post a Comment