Letting Go

If I was to say in my wife’s presence that I have trouble letting go, she would tell you that is a huge understatement. I don’t mean to say that I am a control freak; I’m saying I have trouble letting God be God and take what comes from His hand without stressing out or complaining. Our current life situation has made me think about this again as things have not gone as we had planned for the summer. (That too is an understatement.) Then my Bible reading program led me to Psalm 131 this morning:

¹ O Yahweh, my heart is not haughty nor my eyes arrogant.

And I do not concern myself with things too great and difficult for me.

² Rather I have soothed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother,

like the weaned child is my soul with me.

 

I cannot honestly repeat the first couple lines as my own, especially the part about not concerning myself with things. I am often concerned with way too many things. And my inability to speak the second verse honestly is what really struck me this morning. Rather than soothing my soul lately, I have been obsessing over things I cannot change. David’s analogy hit me: “Like a weaned child is my soul within me.” The Faithlife Study Bible says of this verse: “The psalmist uses a description that describes increasing maturity; the child no longer needs the mother’s milk and shows maturity in its ability to wait.” The ability to wait is what escapes me. It is humbling to realize that at my age I still lack maturity.

For several months my daily prayer has been from Colossians 3:12: “Lord help me to be compassionate and humble and to be kind, gentle and patient with others.” I think what I need most right now is to be patient with myself. That weaned child maturity that I am lacking should cause me to rest in God’s care: let go and let God. I certainly have reason to trust Him. A couple other Psalms from today’s reading reminded me of this. “And to me, how precious are your thoughts, O God; how vast is their sum.” (139:17) And another: “The Lord is righteous in everything he does; he is filled with kindness.” (145:17) The word “kindness” is often translated mercy or love; it is the Hebrew word that signifies God’s covenant love for His people. His precious, loving thoughts for me should cause me to relax, or as another psalm says, “Be still and know that I am God.” (46:10)

The fact that I cannot seem to be still reveals my subconscious belief that God is not “righteous in everything He does.” To be righteous means to do the right thing. Surely, I am not doubting that what God does is always the right thing. Or am I? Some time ago I wrote that the often-quoted phrase in Romans 8:28, “all things work together for good,” does not mean everything that happens to me will seem good at the time. The good to which the verse refers to is God’s good plan for His creation which includes me as a tiny part of the larger whole. The Bible is full of examples of not-good things happening to people that ultimately had good results. Joseph a slave in Egypt, David hiding in a cave, Paul imprisoned in Rome, these things were not happy times for the participants, but they resulted in the accomplishment of God’s good plan.

In Psalm 139, David invites God to search his heart to see, “if there be any hurtful way in me.” (139:24 NASV) In my case, I am hurting myself needlessly by failing to trust God’s goodness to me. I know I am not alone in this kind of thinking. David said, “For the enemy has pursued my soul; he has crushed my life to the ground. He has made me dwell in dark places like those long dead. And so, my spirit grows faint within me; my heart within me is desolate.” (143:3-4) He may have been thinking about King Saul’s pursuit, but I’m quite sure that David knew the real enemy was not Saul but Satan. Notice it was his spirit and heart that was affected. Yet somehow David managed to overcome the enemy’s pursuit of his soul.

Peter reminds us that the enemy of our souls prowls around looking for someone to devour. (1Pet. 5:8) Jesus said the evil one comes to kill, steal, and destroy. (Jn. 10:10) In my case he is killing my joy, stealing my peace, and destroying my faith in God’s goodness. I need to find that place that David found when he wrote, “Let me hear Your lovingkindness in the morning; For I trust in You; Teach me the way in which I should walk; For to You I lift up my soul. Deliver me, O Lord, from my enemies; I take refuge in You.” (143:7-9) As James said: “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” (4:7) I need to resist and take refuge. I need to let go. Can you feel me?

David Stayed in Jerusalem

This may be one of the saddest verses in the Bible. Instead of doing what kings are supposed to do in the spring – go to war with his troops – David stayed behind. He must have had a good reason to remain in Jerusalem, especially since the battle was against the Ammonites who had rejected David’s peace envoy. It would seem that he could have had a personal stake in the outcome of the battle. There may have been other royal duties that caused him to stay home, but one thing is sure: he found something to do that ruined his life.

Because David wasn’t out avenging his shamed emissaries, he had occasion to be on his rooftop one night when his neighbor’s wife, Bathsheba, was bathing on her roof. This is when the second saddest verse comes to play: “He saw a woman bathing.” Actually, it wasn’t what he saw that got him in trouble; it was what followed his look: lust. James puts it like this: “Each one is tempted when he is dragged away and enticed by his own desires. Then desire, after it has conceived, gives birth to sin, and sin when it is brought to completion, gives birth to death.”

If you know the story, you remember that literal death soon followed as David arranged for the murder of Bathsheba’s husband when the king’s attempt to cover her pregnancy with a conjugal visit by her husband failed. A few months later, the child of the illicit affair died. More death visited David’s family when his second-born, Amnon committed incest with his half-sister and her brother Absolom had him killed. Several years later, Absolom was tragically killed during his attempt to usurp his father’s throne. This was all predicted by the prophet, Nathan, after he confronted David with his adultery. The Lord said, “Because you have despised me and taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife, …I am going to raise up evil against you from within your own house.”

There is an important lesson to be learned by watching what happens after Nathan confronts David. Two things are worth noting. First, David immediately admitted that he had sinned, and he begged for forgiveness from God. Read Psalm 51; David penned the psalm in the aftermath of his affair. He expresses repentance and contrition, and he asks God to purify him – maybe to help him handle his lustful thoughts. David’s attitude is exactly what God requires when we sin. The word confess means to agree with God concerning our sinfulness; David did that, “Against Thee only have I sinned.” Uriah might have felt differently had he lived, but David was correct in placing the focus on his relationship with God.

The second thing that happened, or perhaps I should say didn’t happen, is that God’s promise to David concerning his royal dynasty was not revoked. Our human sense of justice might cause us to expect that God would have punished David by passing the throne to someone else. That is what He did with King Saul, because he failed to do what David did: Saul did not repent; he pretended righteousness with Samuel and made excuses for his indiscretion. His attitude cost him the throne. God’s covenant with David was secure though, and we now understand why. God planned to bring salvation to the whole earth through the ultimate Son of David, Jesus Christ.

It should give us comfort to know that God doesn’t remove His grace when we sin. Quite the opposite: His grace covers our sin – even sin as grievous as David’s adultery and murder. This is not to say God doesn’t care how we act. He certainly does. What it says is that our salvation is not based on what we do; it’s based on Who we know. Know Jesus; know peace. No Jesus; no peace. Seeking God’s kingdom and His righteousness sets us in good standing with the Giver of all good and perfect gifts. But as we see with David, it doesn’t relieve us of the consequences of our bad behavior.

There is a side issue that I think is worth mentioning. David fell prey to an almost universal weakness of human flesh: lust of the eyes. This is particularly damaging when it involves sexual attraction. Because marriage and its sexual component is elemental to God’s plan for humankind, the enemy loves to play on our weakness. (I have written about this previously.) We can fall into the same trap David did if we stay home in front of the TV or computer instead of going out to do whatever it is God would have us do. We may slip into a bad place if we linger longer than we should in that glance at the attractive person at the next table. Modern society has abandoned many of the conventions that used to help guard against temptation.

We need to listen to the Proverb and keep our hearts with all vigilance and look straight forward with our eyes. As Jesus said, “The eye is the lamp of the body. Therefore, if your eye is sincere, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is evil, your whole body will be dark. Therefore, if the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!” The word Jesus used, sincere, means simple, single, or clear. Looking as David did when he stayed in Jerusalem was anything but “simple.” His life became complicated in the most painful way. Let me rephrase the KISS principle: Keep it simple, servant.

 

Related posts: Christian Cleavage; Women’s Attire Again; What About Men’s Attire; How to Watch TV Part 4; Creating Chaos

Can You Praise God?

We all know someone who is likely to say, “Praise God!” when something good happens. For some it may be a meaningless expression, but for many it is a genuine attribution of praise because they know Who is responsible for all good things. If our minds are set on things above as they should be, thanking and praising the One who rules things above and things below is the correct response. Praise should be our default reaction to the many good things that God provides.

But do we praise God when bad things happen? Here is the true test of where our worldview is rooted. A perfect example is found in the response of Job when his wife and friends recommended that he curse God for what was happening. He wondered why he should accept good from God and not bad. He went so far as to say, “Though He slay me, yet I will trust Him.” Job’s speeches prove that he did not understand why his circumstances were so dreadful, but he refused to abandon his trust in God.

David provides another prime example of praising God in the hard times. After God rejected King Saul for his disobedience, David was anointed king. But it was 15 years before Saul was deposed and David declared king. During the interim, Saul repeatedly tried to kill David, forcing him to run for his life and hide in caves and foreign countries. David had every reason to doubt God at that point, but he did not. Read his Psalms. Many were written between his anointing and his coronation. Yes, he complained and railed against the unfairness of his circumstances, but without fail, David’s closing remarks give praise to God for His enduring faithfulness. In the bad times!

We have no better example of a New Testament saint serving God with all his might than the Apostle Paul. What were Paul’s circumstances after he began his mission as the apostle to the Gentiles? Not always that good. He gives the Corinthians a list of his troublesome experiences: shipwrecked, flogged, stoned to death (nearly), chased by wild beasts (and humans too) and more. How did Paul respond? He told the Philippians that he had learned to be content in whatever circumstances befell him. The Thessalonians were encouraged to follow his example and, “Give thanks in all circumstances.”

In the midst of the COVID outbreak, many Christians had reason to doubt God’s goodness. Many lost elderly family members or dear friends, sickness struck otherwise healthy individuals often with lasting consequences. Businesses that had been in the family for generations were shuttered never to reopen throwing families into financial ruin. The restrictions against public gatherings including church meetings were a source of serious consternation. Did you hear anyone say, “Praise God for COVID? As I wrote in “Finding God in COVID 19,” our human sense of fairness often conflicts with God’s sense of justice. The Psalmist reminds us that God executes His justice perfectly. Like it or not, that is reason to praise Him.

Another of our human weaknesses is to rely too heavily on our feelings. We don’t always “feel like” praising God. Bound as we are to our human frailty, we tend to base our feelings on our circumstances. As I have written previously, happenings produce happiness; faith produces joy as a fruit of the Spirit. The two are not the same despite what some people teach. This being said, faith should lead us to praise God whether we feel like it or not. If we believe that God is working all things together for the good of those who love Him, we don’t need to feel good to praise God for His goodness.

I think what we really need is to believe God is present in our circumstances. We have to remember that He promised to be with us in the flood and through the fire. I once wrote, “I need to believe God is present whether I feel something or don’t. If I rely on my feelings, I am falling prey to a soulish religion that lacks the power to save anyone. My faith can lead to feelings; it is wonderful when it does.” But we cannot rely on our feelings to experience the presence of God. Scripture says we are one with Christ. That is not a feeling; it is a fact. That is something we can praise God for no matter what.

Related posts: Happiness and Joy; Working All Things for Good; The Presence of God; The Goodness of God in the Bad Times;