I'm Waiting

Show me Your ways, O LORD;

Teach me Your paths.

Lead me in Your truth and teach me,

For You are the God of my salvation;

On You I will wait all the day.

Psalm 25:4-5, NKJV

Let's face it.  King David had some issues.

Forgotten by his father.  Rejected by his brothers.  Hated by his father-in-law.  In a short period of time, he lost his Spiritual father, his wife, and his position of favor in the kingdom of Israel.  One tradition says he took his parents and brothers to find refuge with a foreign king, who then betrayed David by killing the entire family.  In the darkest days of Israel's struggle with the Philistines, David sought sanctuary among his enemies, but was never trusted.  And when he was sent home from the battle that made him king, he found that his house had been burned, his wives and children carried off, and his 600 loyal followers wanted to stone him to death.  At the age of 30, nothing seemed to be going right in the life of the man after God's own heart.

Even after he became king, he was not without his struggles.  First he had to deal with the loss of his covenant friend Jonathan.  The kingdom was thrust upon him and immediately erupted into civil war.  He repeatedly dealt with treachery from some of his most trusted advisers.  He was beset with enemies on every hand who were constantly trying to kill him...thus so many places where David prayed for God to rise up in defense of him and literally destroy his foes.

And then there were his personal battles with himself.  He was a passionate man, moved by deep rooted passions and emotions.  Violent at times, temperamental, occasionally melancholic.  One moment singing about the righteousness of God, and the next demonstrating the worst qualities a man of God could have.  One of the most unsettling stories in the Bible is the one of David's sin--how he lusted after another man's wife to the point of inviting her for dinner, keeping her until breakfast, and when she informed him of their impending surprise, he engaged in an horrific plot of deception and murder.  The consequences of one night of uncontrolled desire wreaked devastation upon David's family and the kingdom for the last half of his reign.

But one thing I can say about David:  for all his faults and failures and frailties, he had the redeeming quality of knowing how to get it right with God.  Psalm 25 is just one of many examples in the Bible of David throwing himself into the only hands that he could, the loving hands of God.

Remember, O LORD, Your tender mercies and Your lovingkindnesses...

Do not remember the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions;

According to Your mercy remember me...

For Your name's sake, O LORD, pardon my iniquity, for it is great.

Turn Yourself to me, and have mercy on me, for I am desolate and afflicted...

Bring me out of my distresses...

Forgive all my sins...

Keep my soul and deliver me...

Let me not be ashamed, for I put my trust in You...

It was not David's perfection that earned God's approval; it was his penitence.  It was his humility regarding himself and his sin.  It was the turn of his heart toward God that found God's favor.  And when a man's heart is turned toward God, God's heart will be turned toward him.

And God will hear.  And God will act.  God will not let our enemies triumph, nor will he let us be put to shame.  God will show us His ways and teach us His paths.  God will lead us in all truth, and He will save us.  He will remember us in mercy and love.  He will guide us in justice.  He will always forgive.  He will bless and make us prosper, He will give us the earth as an inheritance.  He will reveal to us His secrets and show us His covenant.  He will deliver us from the traps of the enemy.  He will turn to us in our hour of need.  He will see us as we are, and He will deliver us from all our troubles.  God will redeem!