And the LORD struck the
child that Uriah’s wife bore to David, and it became ill. David therefore
pleaded with God for the child, and David fasted and went in and lay all night
on the ground.
So the elders of his house arose and went to him, to
raise him up from the ground. But he would not, nor did he eat food with them.
Then on the seventh day it came to pass that the child died. And the servants
of David were afraid to tell him that the child was dead. For they said, “Indeed,
while the child was alive, we spoke to him, and he would not heed our voice,.
How can we tell him that the child is dead? He may do some harm!”
When David saw that his servants were whispering, David
perceived that the child was dead. Therefore David said to his servants, “Is
the child dead?” And they said, “He is dead.”
So David arose from the ground, washed and anointed
himself, and changed his clothes; and he went into the house of the LORD and
worshiped. Then he went to his own house; and when he requested, they set food
before him, and he ate.
Then his servants said to him, “What is this that you
have done? You fast and wept for the child while he was alive, but when the
child died, you arose and ate food.”
And he said, “While the child was alive, I fasted and
wept; for I said, ‘Who can tell whether the LORD will be gracious to me, that
the child may live?’
“But now he is dead; why should I fast? Can I bring him
back again? I shall go to him, but he shall not return unto me.” 2 Samuel 15-23
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Amazing, isn’t it? How did David do that?
Having lost a child at birth, I’ve
always wondered how David could arise, freshen himself up, go to the temple
specifically to worship the LORD, have a meal and resume life so seamlessly
after learning that his child had died. I didn’t want to do most of those
things, for weeks, or months!
The passage doesn’t say that his
heart still didn’t hurt, so we shouldn’t assume he wasn’t internally wounded
and sorrowful. But he rises up with a confident assurance 1) that his baby’s
spirit had entered into the presence of God—and; 2) that he, David, would one
day join him there.
For six days David lay prostrate
before God, begging for his newborn baby’s life. But when God said no, David
accepted that answer without rebellion, without anger, without excuses, without
questions, and without doubt.
In spite of his pain, he chose to focus on something else:
living, promises, hopes and dreams.
How could David do that?
Well, you could logically argue that
David may have felt like he deserved it because the child was a product of his
dangerous, selfish, adulterous liaison with Bathsheba that produced the child.
His actions may indeed, have been driven by those feelings, or the feeling of
guilt David had for purposefully getting Bathsheba’s husband killed to cover up
the illicit affair.
But it’s more than that. So much more.
David knows God. David has trusted Him since he was a boy; he and God already
had a long history together. David really knows God’s character, His unwavering
faithfulness, His promises, His word. His perfect
love. And David expects God to fulfill the promises He’s made about the
future, like He always has. No questions; no doubt.
David is deeply spiritual about his
response because he has a deep, loving, abiding relationship with God, his
heavenly Father.
And he knew that even when the
outcome is bad, God is always good.
Always.
David had faith, and he demonstrated
it perfectly by his actions. He trusted God and His bigger, unseen plan.
(In case you didn’t know it, “faith”
and “hope” are action verbs, not passive, wait-around-to-see-what-happens kind
of words.)
Do you have that kind of faith, or
any faith at all? Do your actions demonstrate it?
Consider the following thoughts of
Christyn, who was expecting her fourth child amidst beyond-difficult circumstances:
Her seven-year-old daughter had been hospitalized for six months and endured six
surgeries for a disease of the pancreas. Her husband had lost his job. Several
family members had recently died, and another had been diagnosed with brain
cancer. She wrote in her blog:
“I held to the faith that God works
for good, and though I did not necessarily
understand the trials, I trust God’s
bigger, unseen plan.
God and I had a deal—I would endure
the trials that came my way as long as
He acknowledged my stopping point.
He knew where my line had been drawn,
and I knew in my heart He would
never cross it.
He did. I delivered a stillborn baby
girl. With my daughter Rebecca still at home
on a feeding tube and her future
health completely unknown, it was a foregone
conclusion that this baby we so
wanted and loved would be saved. She wasn’t.
My line in the sand was crossed. My
one-way deal with God was shattered.
Everything changed in that moment.
Fear set in, and my faith began to crumble.
My “safety zone” with God was no
longer safe. If this could happen in the
midst of our greatest struggles,
then anything was fair game. For the first time
in my life, anxiety began to
overwhelm me.”
Oh, how I can relate to Christyn!
After Victoria’s death—God’s “no” to me and my beseeching heart—I realized that
anything is fair game. And I think
that’s why it bothers me so much when I hear people blithely say, “Oh, everything will be all right.”
I always think to myself, Will it? I don’t know that. I know what life
is like, and I know what God is capable of asking, what he might expect of me
again. I know things won’t always go the way I want them to go, and that’s
what sometimes scares me.
As Max Lucado says in his book, you’ll get through this: hope and help for
your turbulent times, “Most, if not
all of us, have a contractual agreement with God. The fact that He hasn’t signed it doesn’t keep us from believing
it. I pledge to be a good, decent person, and in return
God will…save my child, heal my wife, protect my
job. (Fill in the blank.)
“Only fair, right? Yet when God fails to
meet our bottom-line expectations, we are
left spinning in a tornado of questions.”
I’m sure you have your own
questions, probably a multitude of them jumbled with bewilderment, doubts,
anger, and confused interpretations.
As Max Lucado goes on to say, “But
we must let God define good. Our definition includes
health, comfort and recognition. His definition? In the case of his son, Jesus Christ, the good life consisted
of struggles, storms and death. But God worked
it all together for the greatest good: His glory and our salvation.
“Our choice comes down to this:
Trust God or turn away. He will cross the line. He
will shatter our expectations. And we will be left to make a
decision.”
And that’s what David was left with:
a decision. And he didn’t flinch when making it. He rose up, washed, worshiped, ate, and
set his face like a flint to move forward amidst the devastating realities of
his life. To move forward, while believing wholeheartedly in God and His
everlasting promises. Not necessarily fully understanding
God, but trusting Him in spite of not having all of the answers.
If you think that David never
suffered abject feelings of defeat or depression, one reading trip through the
Psalms will convince you otherwise. But David learned about God and His
faithfulness from those hard-knock lessons, and he learned to trust Him.
And that is true spirituality! Not thinking deeply about yourself, or
emptying your mind, or trying to cart your spirit off to some higher, invisible
plane where all spirits will eventually congregate and meld into one, big happy
fog.
It’s believing in Someone bigger
than yourself. It’s trusting that Someone for and with your life, for the beginning, the middle, the end. All of it.
Christyn makes her choice and ends
her blog post by saying:
“I have spent weeks trying to figure
out why a God I so love could let this
happen to my family at such a time.
The only conclusion I came to was this:
I have to give up my line in the
sand. I have to offer my entire life, every
minute portion of it, to God’s
control regardless of the outcome.
“My family is in God’s hands. No
lines have been drawn, no deals made. I
have given our lives to the Lord.
Peace has entered where panic once resided,
and calmness settled where anxiety
once rule.”
Now, that, my beloved, is spirituality.
For those of you who remain
skeptical, here are the major reasons I have chosen to believe God and His
word, the Bible:
~ Despite forty
authors, the Bible tells the same story, and it’s backed by archeological
evidence;
evidence;
~ The Bible
contains hundreds of fulfilled prophecies;
~ The Bible has
been confirmed by testimonies of emperors, kings and historians.
~ The Bible is the most preserved ancient record of all
time, perfectly describing
humanity and the human condition.
~ Jesus proclaimed
himself to be the Son of God and the Messiah, and he acted like it, by
healing the blind, lame and sick,
raising the dead, enduring torture, and
deliberately, voluntarily embracing
death and sacrificing Himself on a cruel
Roman
cross, and then rising to life again the third day following His
crucifixion.
That last fact is the ultimate evidence
and proof of his deity.
As C.S. Lewis commented in his book,
Mere Christianity, “I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great
moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be
God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would
not be a great moral teacher. He would either
be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell.
You must make your choice. Either this man
was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit
at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at
his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human
teacher. He has not left that open to us. He
did not intend to.”
As an American
television journalist recently put it, “If Christ did not die on the cross and rise from the dead, it has been the
greatest con job in history.”
Finally, the
most important reason I can give for believing is that I have met Jesus, and I
know, without a shadow of a doubt, that He exists. And if you continue with me
through my story—through my doubt, anxiety, spiritual darkness and attacks, and
the magnificent miracles—you will see and know Him too, and rejoice.
Believing in Christ and His promises is what keeps me going;
it’s what gets me out of bed to face the world on those spiritually and emotionally
dark, oppressive days. It’s what gives me hope for the future, makes me smile
when I least feel like smiling, and lightens my heart when the silent,
inexplicable, intangible burden nears the point of crushing me.
If there is one
thing I’ve learned it is that all of this pain won’t last forever, but I will. And
I’m also convinced that when I finally experience the wonder of heaven, I will
know that it will have all been worth it, and I’ll probably wonder why I did
not graciously withstand more.
As we approach
a fresh start of a New Year, I’d like to leave you with the following truths to
ponder and, hopefully, rejoice over:
“So we’re not
giving up. How could we! Even though on the outside it often looks like things
are falling apart on us, on the inside, where God is making new life, not a day
goes by without his unfolding grace. These hard times are small potatoes
compared to the coming good times, the lavish celebration prepared for us.
There’s far more here than meets the eye. The things we see now are here today,
gone tomorrow. But the things we can’t see now will last forever.” 2
Corinthians 4:16-18, The Message
“That’s why I
don’t think there’s any comparison between the present hard times and the
coming good times. The created world itself can hardly wait for what’s coming
next. Everything in creations is being more or less held back. God reins it in
until both creation and all the creatures are ready and can be released at the
same moment into the glorious times ahead. Meanwhile, the joyful anticipation
deepens.” Romans 8:18-21, The Message
And finally:
“I heard a voice
thunder from the Throne: ‘Look! Look! God has moved into the neighborhood,
making his home with men and women! They’re his people, he’s their God. He’ll
wipe every tear from their eyes. Death is gone for good—tears gone, crying
gone, pain gone—all the first order of things gone.’ The Enthroned continued,
“Look! I’m making everything new…’” Revelation 21: 3-5a, The Message
May you feel Him making everything new in your heart!
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NEXT WEEK: The power of prayer…
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Until next week,
Thanks for joining me, and
Happy New Year!
Blessings,
Andrea
