When it comes to loving the Lord, in the bible, king David is my model. I do not know anyone else that had such a deep love for the Father as David had. No wonder he was called a man after God’s own heart. What always impressed me with David is how unsatisfied he would get when he was not in the presence of the Lord (Psalm 42:1-2). Many of the Psalms David wrote attest to this. David always wanted more of God, he never got enough of Him. There was always something new to discover and to stand in awe of. Truly, David gives us a blueprint of what true worship is like. The worship David leads us to includes all aspects of our lives and it focuses on God. Today, I want to stir our hearts to worship and love our Lord more by looking at the example of David in various Psalms.
The bible does not really tell us when David became so enthralled with God. We do not have detailed information about the habits he made that grew his love for the Lord but we do know that he was a shepherd boy (1 Samuel 16:11), he was not always loved and probably lived a lonely life (think about the fact that he was always in the field and easily forgotten by his own family members), I also get the sense that David’s life was very instrumental to his family yet they never recognised it. For as long as David was around taking care of the sheep, no one had to worry about those but often times, when you do such a good job, people tend to assume it is not a difficult task you’re doing, they take it for granted. However, David handled very well what was entrusted to him. This alone is already a quality that is noteworthy and one that honours the Lord – the Most Excellent One. In this aspect, David was a true image-bearer of the Lord. When no one was seeing David, he knew God was seeing him. Like he wrote in Psalm 139, “where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there” (Psalm 139:7-8). This means, David did all that he did knowing that the Maker of Heaven and Earth was seeing him. He did not care about what others would think of his work but rather, he did it because he wanted the Father to be pleased. Such an attitude caused David to be chosen by God to become king over Israel! The verse in Hebrews that says “without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and the he rewards those who earnestly seek him” (Hebrews 11:6, emphasis mine) is true when you look at the life of David. He was indeed rewarded for earnestly seeking God and he pleased God because he had faith in God. To get a sense of how deep David’s love for the Lord was, you see it in every Psalm. There is not one Psalm that does not focus on or brings your attention to God. Irrespective of what David was going through, his mindset by default was “let me bring this before the Lord”. Even when David was anointed king of Israel, while Saul was still king, David never took matters in his own hands by deciding to take the throne by himself because after all he was “anointed”. No, David waited upon the Lord, his delight was on the law of the Lord and on it he meditated day and night. David teaches us that in every circumstance, our default mechanism must be to turn our attention away from our problems and towards God. God is the same, His love never changes, His omniscience never diminishes, He is constant, His power remains and He is infinite. Rather than focusing on the situation or the problem that we cannot fix, David tells us to draw our attention to the Lord. This week, as I read Isaiah 31, I was struck afresh by the truth that God sees the end of things and not the beginning like we do and because He has that complete knowledge, we can rest assure that He will act in justice. Therefore, we must remain still and let Him handle our situations because He will. Salvation belongs to the Lord for a reason! He has His appointed time for salvation. So, wait for it.
Another aspect, I want to highlight from the life of David and his love for the Lord is that, life’s circumstances did not stop him from seeking the Lord and wanting to be in His presence. One of the verses from this week on the YouVersion bible app was taken from Psalm 27 and it says “One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple” (Psalm 27:4). An entire sermon can be preached on that verse alone but what I want to draw your attention to in this verse is that David begins the Psalm with reminding himself of who the Lord is for him (his salvation, a safe refuge, etc.). It can be easily inferred from the first three verses of that Psalm that David was in a difficult situation; danger was around him; he was not in a happy state where all was bliss, no his life was in turmoil but this did not stop him from turning his eyes away from his situation and towards God. If David, who did not have the privilege of the Holy Spirit in him was able to do it, we too, being filled with the Holy Spirit certainly can. If anything, David proves to us that God can be included in every area of our life and that is precisely what He wants.
One final observation with David and his love for the Lord is that, sin would not stop his diligence in seeking the Lord. David was well aware that “he who has clean hands and a pure heart” (Psalm 24:3-4) is the one who can come into the presence of the Lord, yet as we see in 2 Samuel, when he fell into sin (doing the census God had commanded him not to do, or committing adultery and murder against Uriah the husband of Bathsheba), he still went into a place of seeking the Lord. There, he learnt about the merciful God and wrote us the beautiful Psalm 51 which speaks loudly about repentance and mercy. Without even knowing it, David’s life attested to a saying of Paul in Romans “for I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39). If David did not let sin separate him from the love of God, we too, cannot let shame, guilt and failure keep us from seeking the Lord.
Like David, let us draw near to our God and Father diligently irrespective of the difficulties we are going through for He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. Moreover, He loves us first, so, the love we have for Him today comes from the love He has for us. Let us not stop pressing on, sometimes, it might feel lonely, like David we might be in the fields on our own, there might not be anyone to validate our diligence in seeking the Lord but that is not important because God himself is pleased with us when we seek Him above all things. This is not an easy exercise to do because it includes laying ourselves aside and focusing only on what the Lord requires. The more we seek to be in the presence of God, the more we realize our insignificance. God wants us to know Him, He wants us to be in His presence constantly because there we have victory, we have peace, we have true life. I pray the Lord awakens us to the reality of who He is. Amen!
A Word Aptly Spoken 