The Proverbial Three Wishes!

Reading: I Kings 1 - 4
My Verse:  "In Gibeon the LORD appeared to Solomon in a dream by night.  And God said, Ask what I shall give you" (3:5).

This is something we all, especially as children dream of!  We ask each other what would you ask for if you were given three wishes?  Well, here, Solomon is given that very thing!  You, LORD God ask him what he would like You to give him!  Wow!  And the wonderful thing here is that Solomon asked for the best thing, instead of wealth or power, he asked for wisdom.   "So give your servant an understanding mind and a hearing heart to judge Your people, that I may discern between good and bad" (3:9).

And You, LORD God gave him not only that but the wealth and power as well!(I Kings 3:11-13)  How I could learn from this.  Too often I seek after the wrong things, beg You for things that are not Your best for me.  In the Amplified Bible the study note states this.  "Each one's life tells what he has asked for -"in heaven above or in the earth beneath." Which shall it be, God's will and glory, or our own?"

Growing up in a tiny village I always felt that I was so naive.  When I was with friends they would be telling jokes, there would be snickers and this odd laughing that indicated there was more to the joke or story than what I was getting.  If I asked most often I was told I didn't need or want to know.  And I am like but I did want to know - I felt so ignorant!

So, like Solomon, I did not know "how to go out or come in."  Like Solomon I wanted "an understanding mind and a hearing heart."  I too wanted to "discern between good and bad." I prayed to You, LORD God for discernment.

I admit my motives may not have always been correct but I didn't want this discernment just to "get" the bad jokes.  No, I did not want to be lead off on some rabbit trail of some wild philosophical belief.  I wanted to be able to recognize when something wasn't "right."  I wanted You LORD God to keep me from going to the "left or to the right."  And I thank You for keeping me on this path of Yours. 

"Call to me and I will answer you, and tell you great and hidden things that you have not known"

Jeremiah 33:3.

"And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, “This is the way, walk in it,” when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left" Isaiah 30:21

"When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come" John 16:13

So in truth we do, in a sense,  have the proverbial three wishes!  You, LORD God promise us that You will hear us when we cry out to You.  You tell us like you did Solomon to ask you for what we want.  "Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.  For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened" (Matthew 7:7,8).

Ditat Deus - God Enriches!

Blameless Before God!

Reading:  II Samuel 21 - 24
My Verse:  "I was also blameless before Him and kept myself from guilt and iniquity" (22:24).

Having just read the quite incredible story of King David, it really is amazing to read these words of his.  That he was able to say this at the end of his life.  King David was certainly not sinless.  He actually committed another egregious sin shortly after this.  He ordered a census taken, which was against God's commands.  This disobedience caused the death of 70,000 men! (24:15) Yet, King David meant this.  He truly believed that when he confessed his sins You, LORD God forgave him and so he was "blameless before Him."

David speaks of this much in the Psalms.

   "Blessed is he who has forgiveness of his transgression continually exercised upon him, whose sin is covered" (Psalm 32:1).

   "Blessed is the man to whom the LORD imputes no iniquity and in whose spirit there is no deceit" (Psalm 32:2).

   "I acknowledged my sin to You, and my iniquity I did not hide, I said, I will confess my transgressions to the LORD - then You forgave me the guilt and iniquity of my sin. Selah" (Psalms 32:5).

This is not an easy thing to wrap  my mind around.  As you know, LORD God, I struggle mightily with this whole concept of being totally "blameless before You."   And yet I know what scripture says.  "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9).  There it is.  

This is what David is talking about.  He acted on it.  Yes, he went on living and sinning because we are incapable of not sinning.  But, he knew deep deep in his soul that all he needed to do was humbly confess and ask Your forgiveness, and You LORD God would forgive him every time!  That is all You ask of us - to simply believe and act on Your promise to "forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness." 

What a wonderful lesson.  David did live largely, that is for sure.  But he also knew how to live before You.  Help me, LORD God, to simply and humbly allow You to give me that blessed sense of being blameless before You! Help me to live out my life as David did, in this wonderful knowledge that You, by dying on that awful cross forgave my every sin! I, too, can be blameless before You!

Ditat Deus - God Enriches!

Dreadful Consequences of Sin!

Reading:  II Samuel 12 -  20
My Verse:  "Why have you despised the word of the LORD, to do what is evil in his sight? . . .Now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house . . . I will raise up evil against you out of your own house" (12:9-11).

Sin has a way of haunting us.  While our patient and loving LORD God will forgive us our sins, He cannot or will not completely do away with the dreadful consequences. The truly sad thing is that those consequences do not impact the sinner only but the loved ones of that sinner.  David's few moments of pleasure, his following efforts to cover up that lapse resulted in havoc in his family - his children truly reaped the consequences of David's sin.

"Now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house."  First his son Amnon, who raped his own sister, died by the sword when Absalom, his own brother killed him to avenge the rape (13:29).  Then Absalom stole the hearts of the people of Israel from his father the king; tried to steal the kingdom; finally, also dying by the sword (18:15).  Adonijah, David's eldest died by the sword when plotting to take the kingdom away from his brother Solomon (I Kings 2:25).

"I will raise up evil against you out of your own house."    This is particularly poignant.  We so want our sin to remain secret.  David tried to hide his sin.  "For you did it secretly" (12:12).  But You, LORD God told David that the evil done against him, David, would be done openly.  And so it was.  Absalom, his son, openly before all Israel, went into David's concubines.  "So they pitched a tent for Absalom on the roof.  And Absalom went in to his father's concubines in the sight of all Israel" (16:22).

All this awfulness resulting from David's one adulterous act and his efforts to hide it!  Throughout scripture we are warned against this sin.  "Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul.” (1 Peter 2:11)

You, LORD God even warn us to avoid all appearances of such sin. “Now we exhort you, brethren, . . . Abstain from all appearance of evil” (1 Thessalonians 5:14, 22).

We can be so thankful that we do not need to be chained down by any sin.  You, LORD God can give us the victory, the freedom that we all desire.   

"But thanks [be] to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." 1 Corinthians 15:57  "Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us." Romans 8:37

Our motto should ever be - coram deo!  According to wikipedia the definition is "in the presence of God."  R.C. Sproul goes on to say, "To live in the presence of God is to understand that whatever we are doing and wherever we are doing it, we are acting under the gaze of God.  God is omnipresent.  There is no place so remote that we can escape His penetrating gaze."

I am comforted by this, especially when things are not going so well.  I know I am not immune to sin or the sins of those around me.  But I know, too, I can lift up my arms and ask You, LORD God to carry me through the dreadful consequences of sin.

Ditat Deus - God Enriches!



 

But . . . David Remained In Jerusalem.

Reading:  2 Samuel 7 - 11
My Verse:  "In the spring, when kings go forth to battle, David sent Joab with his servants and all Israel, and they ravaged the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah.  But David remained in Jerusalem" (11:1).

I never tire of reading the story of David.  Something different always seems to rise up out of the story for me to ponder, to wonder at.  "But" has an ominous sense here.  It points towards something not good, not right appearing on the horizon. There is something wrong.

LORD God, you did not tell us the reason why David did not go.  We are left to ponder and wonder at this seemingly incongruous behavior of David.  While his entire army is at battle, he is at leisure.

The sentence starts off  "In the spring, when kings go forth . . ."  This was what happened in the spring.  David was a king, he should have been going forth to battle.  Yet he sent his army forth and "remained in Jerusalem."

Psalms 1:1 states.  "Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scoffers . . "  Sin is a progressive thing.  Rarely does one sin "out of the blue" so to speak.  As Psalms 1:1 indicates, first we walk or go toward that direction, then we hang out there - thinking more about it, finally we sit amidst or engage in the sin.

David's seemingly harmless decision leads to more  and more seriously bad decisions.  They eventually lead to adultery and murder.  This was King David, considered one of the greatest men of You, our LORD God.  Yet, he too was a fallible man, as capable of the foulest sin as any man.

A phrase supposedly coined by a John Bradford in the mid-sixteenth century comes to mind here. "There but for the grace of God go I."  Meaning we are all of us capable of going down that road.  We are all of us capable of the foulest sin.  Paul says it in Romans 3:23 "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."  Isaiah 53:6 says it as well.  "All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned-everyone-to his own way. . ."

So, yes, Kind David was a great man, a man after Your own heart LORD God.(Acts 13:22)  Yet, here You show him at his worst.  Why do You do this?  Why do you let us see that even such a man as David could crash and burn?  I need to remember that You tell us that all men sin - "for all have sinned" and "All we like sheep have gone astray."  It is only through You that I am able stay on my feet in the midst of the worst.  And David does get back up, but only after repenting.  He penned that most beautiful of Psalms!  Psalms 51.

     "Have mercy on me, Oh God,
       according to your steadfast love;
     according to your abundant mercy
       blot out my transgressions.

     Was me thoroughly from my iniquity,
       and cleanse me from my sin! 

     For I know my transgressions,
       and my sin is ever before me.

     Against You, You only, have I sinned
       and done what is evil in Your sight . . ."






David got it so right here, all sin is against You, LORD God, isn't it?  Yes, we hurt others in the process but ultimately we are rebelling against You, against Your precepts.

Thank you for this lesson.  How we need to guard our hearts against evil!
 
"Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it"(Proverbs 4:23 NIV).

Ditat Deus - God Enriches!

Michal's Focus on Mere Appearances!

Reading II Samuel 1 - 6
My Verse:  "As the ark of the LORD came into the city of David, Michal, Saul's daughter [David's wife], looked out of the window and saw King David leaping and dancing before the LORD, and she despised him in her heart" (II Samuel 6:16).

Poor Michal!  Yes, she did have a difficult time of it, and one could see from a worldly point of view that she had some cause to be bitter, confused and focused on the wrong things of life.  And yet, to choose in this case to focus on what she thought was undignified behavior for a king rather than focus on the joy of having the ark of the LORD returning to the City of David was a great lack of spiritual discernment.  This reflected her father, Saul's same lack of spiritual discernment. All she was worried about here was that David might appear foolish to others!

Michal, was given by her father, King Saul, to David as a bride. This was not an arbitrary decision on the part of King Saul for Michal loved David.  "Now Michal, Saul's daughter, loved David; and they told Saul, and it pleased him" (I Sam. 18:20). Even when Saul became obsessed with trying to kill David, Michal helped David to escape. "But Michal, David's wife, told him. If you do not save your life tonight, tomorrow you will be killed.  So Michal let David down through the window, and he fled and escaped" (I Sam. 19:11-12).  Saul then gave Michal to another man as his wife. "Saul had given Michal his daughter, David's wife, to Phalti son of Laish, who was in Gallim"(I Sam. 25:44).  It is unknown why he did this or how Michal felt about this but when David became king he demanded to have her returned to him as his wife.(II Sam. 3:14) An interesting note here was the second husband's response to this.  "But her husband went with her, weeping behind her all the way . . . "  Yes, there is a lot going on here.  From the reading of it things seemed to be a mess for Michal.  While she did not have much say in many of these things, she, like each of us,  does have a decision as to how she will respond to the situation.

It is said that we are not shaped so much by the trials we go through but how we respond to those very trials!  Earlier on we read about Abigail and her difficult situation, her marriage to an awful man, how she dealt with his poor decisions. (I Sam. 25)  Abigail is put up as a person we are to emulate because she dealt with her difficult situation with discernment and wisdom, while Michal is put up as a person not to emulate as she dwelt only on surface things.

Oh, LORD God, thank you for this lesson!  It is easy, like Michal to become focused on the wrong things - surface things that have no real meaning.  It is easy to become immersed in our everyday trials, to focus on the negative things, to put all our energy into whining or being petty or critical.

You want so much more from us and for us.  You want us to live lives that are full and purposeful.  "I have come that they may have life and may have it abundantly"(John 10:10).  You want us to live lives that  lift others up.  "Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise . . ."(Ephesians 5:15).

Help me LORD God, to focus on You and all that You want for me.  Help me to keep my eyes focused on You and Your great purposes for my life and for the lives of my loved ones.

Help me, LORD God, to not be like Michal and obsess about mere appearances!

Ditat Deus - God Enriches!

A Slip of the Tongue?

Reading:  I Samuel 23 - 26
My Verse:  "Then said Saul, . . . Behold I have played the fool and have erred exceedingly" (26:21).

This whole episode of Saul seeking to kill David is rather fascinating in a macabre kind of way.  Saul has gone so far down this path (he just had 85 priests killed!) that it would be difficult for anyone to believe or trust him.  Here he is admitting himself a fool! 

Was this a slip of the tongue?  Was Saul so caught off guard by David's behavior?

I think about where Saul was at one time.  He was God's chosen one.  He had been a humble man. Now he was a murderer.  All he could think of was his need to kill David.  In this moment, this moment of surprise, he says something that must have been gnawing at his conciousness for sometime, "I have played the fool."

Did he come to the end of himself here?  Did the stark contrast of his behavior and that of David cause him to falter? Did he finally allow himself to admit the truth about where he was emotionally and spiritually?   It is like Saul realized finally that yes, he had "erred exceedingly" and David would  "both do mightily and surely prevail."

It is said that in moments of surprise we say what plays the most on our consciousness.  No matter how skillful we may be at deception, at hiding what we are really thinking, eventually our true thoughts come out in moments of stress, surprise - when we are caught off guard. The thoughts will finally blurt out of our mouth! 

I like what J. Sidlow Baxter in the Amplified Bible study notes says about this:  "There is no escape for any man, as long as reason continues, from the naked truth about himself.  He may imagine he has hidden himself from God; but he can never hide himself from himself.  In some moment of stress and strain he says what he has been thinking all the time. . ."

Oh, LORD God, how many are plagued by evil thoughts!  This is where we need You so much!  We need Your healing touch on our thought life.  It is so easy to let thoughts spin out of control, drag us down, and keep us shackeled and weighed down needlessly. This does not need to be.  We can be free of this.

I do have a part to play in this.  You command us in Romans 12:2 to renew our minds. You will help me but I need to take the actual specific steps myself.  This makes me think of Joseph when he ran away from Potiphar's wife.  He took immediate action to remove himself from the situation.  And so I need to take actual steps to keep my thought life free of ugliness.

Your Word is full of promises and guidance.  I need to avail myself of that.  You have given me a "spirit of self-discipline"(2 Tim. 1:7).  Your have promised me "Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness . . ." (John 8:12). And Psalm 119:105 tells me. "Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path."

Oh, LORD God, help me to be free of ugly thoughts so I need not be fearful of having a slip of the tongue.

 "Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart 
    be acceptable in your sight,
   O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer"  (Psalm 19:14)

Ditat Deus - God Enriches!