The Secret to King David's Greatness - Part 2

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Thursday, April 14, 2016

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Teach me your decrees, O Lord; I will keep them to the end.
Give me understanding and I will obey your instructions; I will put them into practice with all my heart.
Make me walk along the path of your commands, for that is where my happiness is found.  Give me an eagerness for your laws rather than a love for money!  Turn my eyes from worthless things, and give me life through your word.
Reassure me of your promise, made to those who fear you.  Help me abandon my shameful ways; for your regulations are good.  I long to obey your commandments!  Renew my life with your goodness.          

Psalm 119:33-40 ^(NLT)

We are looking at a few of the keys found in the heart of King David which transform human nature into Godly nature – turning the heart towards God’s will.  The first noticeable one is that David was teachable; his prayer was:

Teach me your decrees, O Lord; I will keep them to the end.
Give me understanding and I will obey your instructions; I will put them into practice with all my heart.

Next we discover that:

David wanted a Pro-active Faith

Make me walk along the path of your commands, for that is where my happiness is found.

One of the reasons God gave his people the law through Moses was so they could make positive steps towards God.  Unfortunately many people never grow out of the childish notion that the only reason we have God’s law is because the Lord is always angry and wants to find new ways to punish us.  And we, poor frail humans, can’t possibly keep up with all the do’s and don’ts of the Ten Commandments.

But that isn’t the case; God gave the law as a gift, a helpful instructor to show us how impossible life is on our own, and as an invitation to trust his grace.

A passive walk with God, (which is the child’s here I am, feed me, clothe me, soothe me and never let me be unhappy posture) would be a contradiction; passive and active are opposites.  Even though the commandments are written mostly in the negative sense, (don’t steal, lie, kill, etc.), they do not imply simply DOING NOTHING.  To the contrary, the commands, by excluding evil, demand movement towards good…which is movement towards God. 

For instance, in this way:

·       don’t lie means live in truth

·       don’t steal commands, learn to be generous 

·       don’t kill means preserve and promote life.

The movement from negative to positive is seen in David’s life.  When he was being hounded by King Saul, David had the perfect opportunity to take-out his persecutor.  Saul rested in a dark cave during the pursuit; he just didn’t know David was already there, and as David stood over the unprotected king, a simple thrust of the sword could have ended all his problems…at least from a human standpoint…vengeance!  But David moved to the higher ground of a proactive stance of leaving vengeance to God.

Jesus told the story of a woman who swept her house clean and then made the analogy of getting rid of bad stuff (don’t lie, steal, kill).  The problem, Jesus taught, was that as soon as you evict these bad friends, if you don’t fill the space with good, proactive steps, the bad will gather seven-fold their original number and move back into your house.

Just like nature abhors a vacuum, so an empty space in your spiritual walk will be filled with something.   In his life David (mostly) chose proactive steps of moving towards God.  He put into practice the positive side of God’s law, promoting life, truth, honesty and generosity.

For You Today

So…go ahead and explore Exodus 20 today; pick one of those commandments and figure out how to read the negative and receive the positive.  And then, like King David, put it into proactive practice…wholeheartedly!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road today…and have a blessed day!

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[1] Title Image:   By Jastrow, via Wikimedia Commons