Did you know that David, as in “David and Bathsheba,” is called a man after God’s own heart? I had a hard time grabbing on to this truth. It seemed to me he could be called “the one who after a season of sin was forgiven,” or “a man who after a huge mess made some better choices.”
But see two places where God uses the same phrase to forever characterize David:
“But now your [speaking to King Saul] kingdom will not endure; the LORD has sought out a man after his own heart and appointed him leader of his people, because you have not kept the LORD's command." (1 Samuel 13:14)
After removing Saul, he made David their king. He 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.” (Acts 13:22)
How does a man who went all the way to rock bottom following his own heart become known as a man after God’s own heart?
God had the final word over David’s story. What's amazing is that God declared the words in 1 Samuel 13:14 before He had even anointed David as king! God knew that David's heart would ultimately be His completely. Sure, there were other messes, slip ups, and sins he would have to confess, but God knew His chosen and anointed one would repent and follow the path of righteousness. God knew the whole story.
God had a plan for impacting the world which saw far beyond one night of sexual sin. God could redeem that night. God by His grace could redeem them and their story. And that redeemed story was woven into God’s greatest plan of redemption—the gift of His own Son Jesus. (See Matt. 1:6)
Sometimes we can get so stuck in one section of our story that we forget God knows the end. We think our hearts have determined a course for us that is irrevocable. We have gone down the wrong path, and there is little hope for us now. We'll just try harder and hope to look a bit better, but deep down we wonder if God can ever make us anything more or new or different than we are. Honestly, because we know good Christian phrases, we'll even say “He makes all things new,” or “He's the God of second chances.” But it’s hard to imagine that our stories could be redeemed like David’s was. What’s more, we wonder if we can we really be called “women after God's own heart” after our own hearts have been led astray.
What does it mean to be “after God’s own heart”?
After God's heart means desiring God, pursuing God, depending on God, loyal to God, loving what He loves, and finding full satisfaction in Him.
Look at how Psalm 73:25-26 expresses this.
As you read it, consider where our desires are for God and where our hearts are after God's.
What do these verses say to you about God? About yourself?
The desires of our hearts and bodies can fail and make a mess; and they surely won't sustain us. But when God is the focus of our hope and desires, He will bring strength to our hearts and satisfaction that is full and ongoing, forever. That's a promise.
Psalm 37:4 is another of God’s promises through the pen of David. Look at this verse below.
What is your calling here?
What is God's promise?
Who is at the center of this verse?
To be after God's heart, we have to delight in our relationship with Him. When we do, He promises to put His desires in our hearts. This means we will have such a close relationship that His desires will be our hearts' desires. Our hearts will be after His heart, and He will make sure those desires are satisfied in Him and through Him. He will be enough.
(That’s not a lame Christian way of settling for a vanilla kind of life that you’re supposed to think is good, because that’s the holier mindset. If that’s our thought, we don’t know the Bible. Our God is a God of adventure, unpredictable turns, fire, wind, parting waters, starting storms, shaking the earth, sailing the seas. He is a God of touching the untouchable, loving the discarded, vast compassion, unquenchable love, uncontainable grace, unending faithfulness, unimaginable futures. And in all that, He is at the center and He is enough.)
Being after God’s heart, David was able to say, “If I only have God then I will be strong, deeply satisfied, fulfilled, content, never alone, and the king that I am supposed to be.” Deep dissatisfaction and lust were gone (click for more on David's heart issue with lust), and David delighted himself in the LORD, living (and returning again and again to) the truth that nothing this earth could hold would satisfy his heart more than God Himself.
So, can you be a woman after God’s own heart? The fact that you’re on this journey to living beyond your past says that you are pursuing His heart. Keep taking steps; this is part of a life long journey of delighting in Him. Keep depending on Him and He’ll take you even further on a journey that includes heights of love, satisfaction, and intimately knowing Him. Yes, a woman after God's own heart.
Just another seed of my faith,
Ginny
I’ve listened to a few graduations speeches again this year, and one leader’s theme was regret. He impressed upon students embarking on a new journey to live a life without regret. He eloquently shared that a synonym of regret was repentance.
That hit my filter. Regret and repentance are not the same. Regret is to look back and wish that things had been different, that you would have made another choice, seized a different opportunity. Regret marks your memory with a sad kind of wonder—“if only I’d…”
As we explored in our last step together, repentance is not wishing things had been different, it’s a change in our god that results in a change in our behavior.
I come back to this again and again (because daily I need it and) because wading in the truth about sin, confession, forgiveness, and repentance is where I began to understand what it means to be washed clean, and it’s where God invited me to leave my past behind and walk with Him beyond it.
Like Naaman in the Old Testament, covered in rot from the inside out, it seemed fairly simple—like dipping in a river. Confession, forgiveness, repentance. Simple, with profound effects. And as his story goes, I also wasn’t told to stay “in the river” forever examining and wallowing in what was washed off. I came out clean, new, and got to live a new life!
In this final step of exploring confession and repentance with David, I turn again to Psalm 51. It captures the authenticity of his turn away from the god of “himself and his desires” and towards God. It is David’s scripture prayer of confession and repentance.
This psalm is where I come again and again when I’ve sinned. This psalm did and continues to do a washing, healing work in me when I have fallen flat choosing myself and my desires over God and His ways for me.
Grab a Bible and read Psalm 51. Let it be your prayer too.
This psalm shows his radical heart shift towards God. In repenting, or changing his god, he believed and declared the following truths:
God is the only One Who can cleanse us. (v. 1-2, 7, 9)
David had come to the end of himself. He couldn't be God, he couldn’t cover anything or fix anything. He was powerless to save himself. God was the only One Who could offer mercy, Who could blot out transgressions, Who could wash him and make him permanently clean.
God is the only One Who is holy and right. (v. 3-4, 8)
There was no more avoiding sin with more sin or justifying his actions in his mind or blaming others. As he confessed he put God in the right place: holy and righteous upon His throne, right in what He said, right in how He judged, right to bring feelings of being crushed and laid low.
God is the only One Who can do something new here. (v. 6, 8, 10, 12, 15)
In these verses, everything David asked or desired had to come from God. The newness he needed, the restoring and transforming down into the depths of who he was could only come from God.
God is the God Who is here. (v. 11, 16-17)
David had ignored God, set himself on the throne of his life, and quenched the Spirit. But with repentance came a single desire to be with God. David ended his prayer confident that as he offered God his broken, humbled heart, God would fully restore him and be near him.
Through confession and repentance, David showed a change in his god, and a change in his life followed. David would have a life beyond the sin. Life beyond his confession. Life beyond the consequences. Life beyond his past. He would have a full life of following God.
Which verses or phrases in Psalm 51 most deeply resonate with you? Personalize them and share them as your own prayer to the Lord. (To explore a bit more on this Psalm, I’ve shared about feeling forgiven along our journey in David’s story as well.)
Draw near to Him believing He doesn’t change; He is David’s God and your God. Praise Him that what He did for David, He can do for you. Believe Him for it!
Just another seed of my faith,
Ginny
It was a Sunday that we first sang "Blessed Be Your Name" at church. I recall, being serious about praise that comes out of my mouth, that I wasn't sure I could identify with the words, "Blessed be Your Name, on the road marked with suffering, though there's pain in the offering, Blessed be Your Name." How do you actually sing that and mean it? In the midst of praise, I wondered.
I last saw her on a Monday.
My final memory of her is her dropping me off at our apartment and helping me carry our son in his baby carrier into the doorway. I hugged her and can remember what she was wearing as I watched her walk away and get into the car.
It was a Wednesday, at 6 am. My dad called me to tell me that my mom had died. That was eleven years ago today.
In the days and weeks afterwards, my dad began sorting through everything that was my mom's. He came across journals of hers and gave them to me and my sisters. "What a treasure!" And I opened the gift of my mother's spiritual journey, in her own handwriting.
The year in the date of the first entry I dared peer into pierced my heart. I knew it. Awesome, God. I got all the journals from the season where I was wandering down the path of heart led astray. I could barely read her prayers. She cried out to God for me in the midst of her own hurt, helplessness, and utter fear for me. She poured out her heart like water before the Lord on behalf of a rebellious, wayward child. And it broke me. I couldn't handle reading firsthand how much she hurt, how bewildered she was, how she clung to the Only One Who could do something--anything.
Honestly, I have a box with her name on it today, with many pictures, things she made me, things I made her, and those journals--which I have not fully read. I can't.
But I am certain of this, the prayers of my mom were part of the power in places both she and I could not see that drew me to Jesus. Her cries became my freedom. What she pleaded for me was help and healing. And God helped, He saved, He healed, and He made me whole.
On the anniversary of her Glory Day, I want to shout hope!
If you are journeying to live beyond your past, someone prayed for you and is praying for you. And if you think you have no one, Scripture tells us you have Someone Who lives to stand in that in-between place--between heaven and earth, now and later, this step and the next--who is always talking to God about you and for you, to bring His beautiful will from heaven where it's done, to your life, where it will be done. His Name is Jesus and He is Hope.
If you are praying for a friend or a child who is rebellious, wayward, living for their desires and moving farther and farther from God, don't give up. Don't stop. When you don't see results, when nothing changes, when help hasn't come, when the hurt still flows, use the word YET. When the sun rises again tomorrow morning, it means the story is not finished yet. God is not done, and today, even today may be the day of her deliverance. So hang on to Hope.
In deep honor of my mother today...
Bless His Name. There are roads marked with suffering, there is pain in the offering--for the one who prays. Yet in His Name we have Hope.
Bless His Name, you who finally sees the roads trod on your behalf, the selfless offerings poured out before the Lord, for your redemption, your story, your life beyond the mess. For it is there you were given Hope, and the grace to actually bless His Name.
Blessing His Name today for her, her life, her prayers, the life I was given, and the hope of His glorious will still to come,
Ginny
