The Heart's Cry: Psalm 31

Psalm 31

It's interesting to me sometimes that we call David a man after God's own heart. I know that in 1 Samuel 13:14 Samuel tells Saul that God has found a man after God's heart, which is David, but that is a very young David and one could well argue that the man that David does become is one very much less after God's own heart. After all David becomes a man who first watches a naked woman from afar and then takes [read rapes] her. He gets her pregnant and then to try to hide his sin he calls her husband, one of his soldier's, from the lines to come and bed her. Uriah is a man of conviction and so he cannot sleep with his wife while his friends are still in battle, so David has him sent to the front to die. That is not the workings of a man after God's own heart.

So, there are times when David has no glimmer of God's heart. Then again there are times through David's story and through his Psalms where we see God's heart shining through. Which leads me to the realization that David was just a man, just a human. He had successes and failures, like I and you do, and while we should not attempt to follow his example completely, we should try to follow the positive aspects of his character. For instance in this Psalm David says that God is his rock and fortress, that what keeps him safe is not armor, not soldiers, not weapons, but God. Now David often relied on those other things and lost sight of the protection of God, but we should focus on the fact that God will protect us if we trust God to.

The Psalm ends with a statement about how God preserves the faithful but "repays the one who acts haughtily." This is a statement that we in the church really need to remember, because all too often we can become haughty, acting holier than thou, acting like the grace that God has shown us makes us better than others, this could not be further from the truth. Way way back in Genesis God told Abram that God would bless him so that others would be blessed. All these years later that is still the case, we in the church are blessed so that we can be a blessing to others, not a hinderance, not a stumbling block, a blessing. We must reclaim our humility and grace and show the world that there is another way to walk on this floating blue ball.

+ How is David a man after God's own heart? How is he not?

+ In what ways can you rely on God for your daily protection?

+ What one thing can you begin doing to be a blessing to others?