Ok King David, help us out. What is it going to be? We are looking to you for direction. Are we to be thirsting in the desert or content at a banqueting table? Please tell us. To be people after God’s own heart as you were, are we to anticipate our Christian lives to be a feast or a famine? If we cannot answer this question for ourselves, it is a good chance God has not yet become our God in the fullest possible sense.
God, You are my God; I shall seek You earnestly; My soul thirsts for You, my flesh yearns for You, In a dry and weary land where there is no water. Thus I have seen You in the sanctuary, to see Your power and Your glory. Because Your lovingkindness is better than life, my lips will praise You. So I will bless You as long as I live; I will lift up my hands in Your name. My soul is satisfied as with marrow and fatness, and my mouth offers praises with joyful lips. When I remember You on my bed, I meditate on You in the night watches, For You have been my help, and in the shadow of Your wings I sing for joy. My soul clings to You; Your right hand upholds me.
We are asking you King David, “Are our lives with God to resemble a war or a romance? In behalf of God’s kingdom; if this really is a war, are we to await a rapture so that we can be taken up and equipped in heaven to return one day as those armed with our long awaited and superior new bodies? Or, in Christ, do we have all that we need in this life to defeat the enemy? And David, if you know, could you tell us whether the kingdom is more of a sole proprietorship where God reigns supreme in spite of us -or- is it more like a partnership where its success will come about because of us?
In the mini-kingdom of western culture with its fixation on the black and white and on the right or the wrong, we have little tolerence for things in the grey zones of uncertainty, those arenas of mystery that do not bow the knee, nor yield simple answers, to reason alone. No, we want those facts that will enable us in our goals of getting elected and efficiently producing things. Our titles and how much we have gotten done are undisputed measures of worth in our culture. But what about God’s kingdom. Where do these values fit in with the culture of that kingdom?
Locked inside our western wineskin, we dare not, as Christians acknowledge how little we really know for certain. Can you imagine what it would do to progress if we were to abandon our certainties regarding the black and the white; those things we believe we know for sure about God? But what do we really know for sure about a being of limitless dimension? How much of what we know, for instance, is just our opinions which have evolved into convictions and become, over time, our rigid wineskins, incompatible with the richer, more mysterious flavored wine that God aspires to pour out?
Do we really know enough about God’s ways to divide our selves into Calvinist and Armenian camps? I know people who will die on these fields of battle. There are secessionists mentally locked into battle with continuationists. Are we really that certain about these things? Before a rightfully skeptical world we stand divided – a city set upon a hill for sure, but casting a strange and not so convincing light upon our surroundings. We are a highly visible spectacle but of the wrong sort. Instead of the unity God desires, we portray division. In this condition we are not conveying an accurate picture of God and his love. While we are at odds with each other, we don’t appear to be anything more than another dysfunctional earthly community – hardly the long awaited light of the world.
What can we learn from David then, whose heart seems to so often be schizophrenic and undecided? A great deal I believe. We can hear David’s “Yes.” to our questions; “Yes, life with God is a trek through the desert where hunger and thirst feel as though they will overcome us. Yes, life with God is like a joyous dance in fields ripe for harvest. Yes, life with God is a ferocious battle with much at stake. Yes, This is a partnership and, yes, while it is making no earthly sense to us now, God is the proprietor who is solely and absolutely in control.
What I take away from the man after God’s own heart is that God’s ways are exceedingly higher than mine; that God, in Christ, has set out a banquet for the hungry, right in the very presence of our enemies. Christ’s Spirit is the Living water and Jesus is the Bread of Life. This is true whether we perceive our circumstance as a drought or as a flood; as a dance or as a duel.
I believe the value of mystery, this appreciation of the vast arena of uncertainty, is something David passed down to his son. Solomon, in his wisdom he tells us how we should posture our hearts in the presence of so much glorious unknown…..
Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight. (Proverbs 3:5-6)
God becomes our God in the same way he became David’s. He becomes ours as we learn to trust him in the midst of the mystery of life. It may feel like a battle or a desert when God knocks the props out from things other than himself that are falsely shoring us up. If we are dependent on our understanding, he knows it will ultimately be very costly to us. God becomes ours in the midst of our deserts when we, as partners, place our trust in that which we cannot see or understand.
God becomes ours when we ascend to places with panoramic views where we can look back with thanksgiving on his faithfulness in our driest and hungriest moments. Those who perserve with God, taste of something from another world. They learn, experientially that nothing in this world slakes their thirst or satisfies their hunger other than God alone. In the desert God becomes the pearl and on the mountain we see and give thanks. Both the battles and the feasts are natural and critical in our journey.
Thanks you King David for your transparency. Thank you for modeling gut level emotional and intellectual honesty. Thank you for showing us how your God becomes our God.
God, You are my God; I shall seek You earnestly; My soul thirsts for You, my flesh yearns for You, In a dry and weary land where there is no water. Thus I have seen You in the sanctuary, to see Your power and Your glory. Because Your lovingkindness is better than life, my lips will praise You. So I will bless You as long as I live; I will lift up my hands in Your name. My soul is satisfied as with marrow and fatness, and my mouth offers praises with joyful lips. When I remember You on my bed, I meditate on You in the night watches, For You have been my help, and in the shadow of Your wings I sing for joy. My soul clings to You; Your right hand upholds me.
Father, whatever it takes, knock the props out so that when we stand before you, it will be in Christ alone in whom we have trusted and not someone else’s god and their convictions. May we stand before you not as strangers on that day who followed other’s journeys but those who came to know you personally in the journey we travelled together through all the varied terrain of your kingdom. Amen.