S21P18 – Portraits of faith: David
Acts 13:22
After removing Saul, he made David their king. God testified concerning him: ‘I have found David son of Jesse, a man after my own heart; he will do everything I want him to do.”
We cannot deny that David was a man of passion. Sometimes that passion led him toward God, other times it led him away from God. It is easy to focus on the ways in which David fell and dishonored God through his actions. But here we have God himself testifying about David, and that testimony is something I am sure we each would like to hear God say about us. Regardless of how David looks through our eyes, he was faithful in God’s eyes. A man cannot get there without faith.
It is faith that makes a man crawl back to God after a long fall. It is faith that responds to the call from God to return and be renewed. It is faith that sustains him when the world is on his heels ready to strike the death blow. It is faith that gives him the fearlessness to face a giant with nothing but a sling and a stone. It is faith that gives him the confidence to lead the nation of God’s holy people. This is what God sees in David. He sees someone who returns to him in repentance and asks what more he can do for the Father. He sees someone who truly desires to please God even if there is much stumbling along the way. David may have done some things that were unholy and unjust, but he completed all the work God laid out for him.
I am sure we have no trouble seeing ourselves in David’s faults. The question is whether we see ourselves in David’s triumphs and in God’s testimony of him. Faith should lead us to desire God’s perspective of us. That introspection is necessary to know whether we are after God’s own heart. If we are not, we must have the faith that God can turn things around for us and draw us deeper into the well. Through God we can accomplish all that He asks. Father, give us a desire to be people after your own heart as David was, always confident to seek to You despite our failures, desiring to see ourselves as You see us.