Praying God's Wisdom: Becoming

 

He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.  Ecclesiastes 3:11

 Have you ever been sure that God is doing a thing, but you can’t quite see it yet? Does everything just look like an impossible mess around you, but you’re absolutely certain that God’s going to work it out somehow? Take heart, He absolutely will! Today’s verse promises us that God will put everything together just right in His perfect timing. If things aren’t right yet, God’s not finished yet.

 You know who had to live this out in a very challenging way? David. He had a wild youth serving as his family’s designated shepherd, watching over the flocks and keeping them safe, but this was not seen as an important or valuable job in his day. In fact, as the eighth and youngest son in the family, he wasn’t even invited to dinner when Samuel the prophet came for a visit. The family didn’t know that Samuel had come to anoint the next king of Israel according to God’s command, but had they known I don’t think they would have made sure David was present. They didn’t think of much of him, he didn’t hold a lot of value or importance to them. But he did to God! After looking over the first seven of Jesse, David’s dad’s, sons, God indicated to Samuel that none of them were the one that he had been sent to anoint and Samuel asked Jesse, “Are these all the sons you have?” Jesse mentions that he has one more but he’s off tending the sheep. Samuel has him sent for right away, and when he comes in the LORD said to Samuel, “Rise and anoint him; this is the one.” (1 Samuel 16:1-13).

 But David didn’t immediately become king. There was already a king over Israel, Saul, and David’s time hadn’t come yet. In fact, David ended up serving Saul. The Spirit of God had left Saul because of his choices and an evil spirit would come upon him and torment him. The only relief Saul could find was when David would come and play his lyre, a small, u-shaped harp. Here David was the anointed king, unbeknownst to Saul or he would have been in a great deal of danger, and he was serving the acting king. What a strange situation that must have been for him! In fact, David was so overlooked and unnoticed that when he had killed Goliath, Saul asked his general, Abner, who David was. David had been playing his lyre to sooth Saul’s fits, and Saul hadn’t even paid attention to who he was (1 Samuel 17:55-58).

 David continued in Saul’s service, both as his lyre player and as a soldier and general in Saul’s army, but Saul became increasingly afraid and suspicious of David. He knew that the Spirit of God had departed from him and he could see that God’s Spirit was with David. He was jealous of how the people of Israel, his people, were praising David and his exploits more highly than Saul. He kept seeking out tricky ways to get rid of David, and sometimes he was pretty overt, even going to far as to throw spears at him while he was playing music trying to pin him to the wall! He became fast friends with Saul’s son, Jonathan, and though Jonathan didn’t want to believe it, he came to be aware that Saul was indeed committed to killing David, so he warned him and sent him on his way.

 David lived outside of Israel for quite some time, sometimes in cities and sometimes in caves. He gathered many loyal followers and had all sorts of adventures. More than once, he and his men encountered Saul out seeking to kill David and they evaded or defeated them in different ways. But here’s what I’m getting at, David had been anointed king by God through His prophet Samuel, but he was not yet king. For nearly seven years this kept up until finally the tribe of Judah, only one of the twelve tribes of Israel, recognized David and anointed him as their king. It took nearly seven and a half more years before David became king over all of Israel.

 So why, if God had said that David was to be king, didn’t it happen right away? Why the fourteen-year delay? I’m not God and I can’t answer that definitively, but my guess is that David wasn’t ready yet. When he was first anointed, he was a youth, young and inexperienced. Yes, he had fought a lion and a bear and won, but there is so much more to being king than bravery and strength. David had to learn tough life lessons about loyalty and leadership, trusting God and learning to read people. He needed to gather about him sound advisors and trustworthy friends. He needed to grow and develop into the king that his people needed. That couldn’t happen all at once, and that’s why him becoming king took so long.

 So, what are you becoming? What has God anointed you for that has not taken place yet? What are you learning and growing in that will come to fruition one day? Maybe we don’t even know yet, but I love how today’s verse points out that God has, “set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” We have an inkling of what God is doing, a hope, a sense, but we don’t fully know. You know what we do know though? God is good. He has a plan. He has perfect timing.

Here’s the Thing: We don’t know God’s full plans, we just don’t. In the NET version, today’s verse reads, “God has made everything fit beautifully in its appropriate time, but he has also placed ignorance in the human heart so that people cannot discover what God has ordained, from the beginning to the end of their lives.”  We cannot know it all, and that’s where trust comes in. We have to trust God that He is in control, and He knows what He is doing. We have to trust Him to work out all the details and overcome the challenges. And in that trusting, we will be becoming the person He intended all along. It all works together!