Be Like David

I've always admired and esteemed David - a man after God's own heart. I've wanted to be like him, know God the way he knew Him. In reading the Psalms we get a beautiful picture of David's intimacy with God. David pours out his heart to God in every circumstance. He is honest and authentic in how he relates to God and about how he experiences life on earth. His transparency may seem disrespectful to some as he does not hold back his anger from God; but in every Psalm where anger is expressed, David submits himself in praise and worship, too.

Something that stood out to me today as I read Psalm 118 is that David "called on the Lord in distress" (v5). Now, this is nothing new to me, and he writes this in many of his Psalms; but today as I was reading it, it was like God said "this is how you get close with me." We all know the stories of how badly David messed up - adultery, murder, pride, covetousness - and it doesn't always make sense how a guy who has done all that can still be called a man after God's own heart. Cue the beauty of agape love. God's love transcends all of this sin and keeps us in right-standing with Him. It's not about all of the bad things David did or the depression and oppression he experienced in his life. It's about how he responded to those things. David called on the Lord.

In my own life, I have found that the way I respond to sin, hurt, disappointment, or depression can have two resulting effects:
          1. It can bring me closer to God and let me know Him deeper
or       2. It can push me away from Him to the point that I'm too ashamed to try to come back.
Obviously, I prefer the first result, so I must learn to respond accordingly. My response is a choice. And oftentimes it's a hard one - in the midst of that sin or hurt or depression, it feels a whole lot easier to react with my emotions, wallow in my sorrows, and pity myself. In the moment, that feels amazing. But later on it feels utterly miserable. In that moment of making the choice of how I am going to respond, I have to remind myself what the long-term result will be.

In following David's example, moments of sin and pain are meant to be opportunities to call on God. It takes humility to acknowledge sin or hurt and allow someone else to fix it ~ praise the Lord that Christ made it possible to be fixed! When we take up that humility and call on the Lord, it gives God the opportunity to exalt us, heal us, and make us whole again. If I really want to know God the way that David did, I must intentionally choose to let Him know me and heal me and restore me instead of running and hiding from Him.