Where He Leads I Will Follow: A Tale of Two Kings

 

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.’  Acts 13:22

 “Let it be done according to God’s will.” We say it, but do we mean it? When it comes down to the wire, when things don’t look like they are going to turn out the way we hoped, does our tune change? Today we look at two different kings who had two different answers to this question.

 Saul, Israel’s first king, had his share of idiosyncrasies. To start with, he was exactly what Israel wanted in a king. He was tall and handsome and strong. He was charismatic and drew people to himself. Shortly after being anointed king, Saul set out to defeat Israel’s enemies that had attacked and shamed his countrymen in Jabesh Gilead (1 Samuel 11). The country fell in behind him and they saw success because the Spirit of the LORD was upon him (1 Samuel 11:6). But it didn’t take long before Saul started writing checks his army couldn’t cash. He upset the Philistines and they assembled against him, with soldiers as numerous as the sand on the seashore (1 Samuel 13:5) against his two or three thousand men. They panicked and started deserting him. This was Saul’s moment of truth. Would he stand firm, believing what God had said that He would be with them? Saul knew he needed God on their side, but I think he felt even more that he wanted his men to believe it. When he saw them scattering, rather than holding out for Samuel to arrive, rather than speaking to the people and urging them to be patient, he went ahead and did the sacrifice himself. This was directly against the clear directions God had given the Israelites that only the priests were to sacrifice on the people’s behalf. Saul had stood on the precipice, faced up to great pressure, and he caved. Because of this choice, his throne was lost. It didn’t happen right away, but it was at that point that his fate was sealed.

 David, on the other hand, had a different reaction to the 11^th hour of need. Was he perfect? Not by any means! In fact, it was through some pretty terrible sins on his part that he ended up where he was. Let me back up and tell the story, but I’ll keep it brief. Feel free to read it all right here. David, in a season of poor choices, committed adultery with the wife of one of his soldiers and then had him murdered to cover it up. When he was confronted with his sin by Nathan the prophet, he was told that the punishment for it would be that his son, the result of his adulterous act, would die. David felt desperately awful about this and he fasted and spent the nights lying in sackcloth on the ground. He anxiously sought the LORD, hoping that perhaps God would relent and change His mind, but He did not and the child died. Once God’s will was clear, David got up, got dressed, and ate. He accepted God’s decision and moved on, but here’s the key difference, he waited. Saul panicked and took matters into his own hands. David waited on God and trusted Him, even if it meant not getting what he wanted, what he thought he desperately needed. David was a man after God’s own heart.

 Saul was afraid of what might happen if Samuel showed up too late. David knew that he had messed up and that someone else, his beloved son, would have to pay the price for it, but he hoped that it could be changed. The difference? David trusted that God’s way was best and His timing was perfect and Saul thought things were getting out of God’s control.

Here’s the Thing: I have a brain tumor. Yes, it’s a benign tumor, but benign doesn’t mean fine. It simply means that, in its current form, it isn’t likely to spread to other parts of my body. It’s still growing and it is currently about twice the size of the small space it is taking up, completely blocking my 4^th ventricle and pressing on my brain stem and cerebellum. Left to continue its growth, it would continue to debilitate my life, knocking out more and more bodily functions, before eventually killing me. So, with God’s clear direction, we chose to pursue radiation therapy in hopes of stalling its progress. That doesn’t mean that God has guaranteed me a cure or obliterated my tumor. It is still very much there as my daily scans show. It doesn’t mean that it won’t spread, in fact the radiation therapy dramatically increases the chances of that. So, what does it mean for me to be a woman after God’s own heart in this situation? If I look to the examples placed before me in the story today, I think it means to trust God for His best, even if it doesn’t look like what I want or desire, all the way to the end. I don’t panic and take a different route when things aren’t going well, when vertigo from the treatment takes over and I end up sitting down in Walmart groping for an emesis bag I don’t cancel my future appointments and throw in the towel. This is the path God has shown me, “The Way” He has pointed me down, and I will stay on it until HE makes it clear I should do otherwise.