Continuing on in 2nd Samuel 19 that we started in the last post – here we see that David is in fellowship with the Lord. Look at verse 8 and following: 8 So the king arose and sat in the gate. When they told all the people, saying, “Behold, the king is sitting in the gate,” then all the people came before the king. Now Israel had fled, each to his tent. 9 All the people were quarreling throughout all the tribes of Israel, saying, “The king delivered us from the hand of our enemies and saved us from the hand of the Philistines, but now he has fled out of the land from Absalom. 10 However, Absalom, whom we anointed over us, has died in battle. Now then, why are you silent about bringing the king back?”
In the last chapter David says, “I’ll go fight with you” and his troops respond by saying, “You better stay here and don’t go.” Then David says, “Whatever you say I’ll do it.” That was David’s teachable moment and it is what happening again. You can tell when a man or woman is in fellowship with the Lord because they are sensitive to the godly counsel of others and they are teachable. What we see again is that David is teachable. He was humble enough to know that he needed to listen to what Joab was telling him. He needed to get out and get with the people and encourage them for their bravery and courageous fighting.
I am sure David did not feel like doing this. His feelings most likely told him to keep mourning and remember all he had lost. Yet David let his understanding of what was right be bigger than what he felt. Feelings make a great caboose but make a terrible engine. Never let how you feel, keep you from doing what is the right thing to do. The teachable person knows this and lives it out. Do you allow your feels to drive your life? Allow what is right to drive you!
Judah is David’s home tribe but here in these verses it is Israel in the north that is talking and they are talking about bringing David back as king. There is a movement throughout the land as we see in these verses to put David on the thrown again. Here is something interesting and that is that David does not immediately march back to Jerusalem because he preferred to wait until he had been invited back to the throne from which he had been driven away from.
I believe that in David’s life he has learned many lessons and here is a great lesson that David has learned and is now living out. That is; when you hurry and take matters into your hands you always harm and hamper God’s ultimate purpose for your life. When you are most eager to act is when you are going to make the dumbest mistakes. So David does what we need to do sometimes and that is: just wait. Remember that most of the time, time is on your side, so do not rush. Whether it is making some major decision with regard to business, life, parenting, school, or whatever the decisions maybe; stop, think, pray and wait to make sure of what you are to do. When you were under stress and you make a whole bunch of decisions all at once, what happens? For me, the decisions are mostly made in the flesh and they are wrong creating painful consequences for me. Be teachable in life and pray and wait on the Lord.
David has learned his lesson of trying to do things on his own. We do not see him make too many mistakes in his life from this point forward because he becomes much more patient with himself and with others and listens to God. Instead of trying to make things happen, David is now waiting for God to have things to happen. He has learned to be teachable. Have you learned this lesson? Have you learned that forcing things to happen creates more struggles than it helps? Be teachable, be patient, and wait on the Lord as Psalm 37 says!
We see here that the people in all of the tribes of Israel were in a quandary after the death of Absalom. They had supported the rebellion against David however their rebellion had been squashed when Absalom died and now what do they do? They know now that the Lord was not in this rebellion and they cannot undo the decisions that had been made and what had been done, so where do they go from here? Here is the thing, in their hearts, the people realized now that all along David had been the king that the Lord had placed over them. However, they had offended David chasing him into exile. How could they ever get their rightful king back after all that had transpired?
Think about this, they only seemed to want David back after the false king Absalom failed. We often only decide to bring back Jesus into our lives when we fail at life on our own. We get full of pride and think we know it all and go off our way and make ourselves the king of our life and when we do – we mess things up. When we make a big mess, we then say – I guess now that there is a mess I should run back and put Jesus on the throne of my life again. I understand it is normal in our flesh to do that but how much easier would life be if we just simply allowed Jesus to rule and sit on the thrown all the time instead of going off and putting ourselves there? Let us learn to keep Jesus where he is supposed to be, in the driver seat of our lives with us in the backseat.
How are you at having your feelings as the caboose rather than the engine? Have you ever gotten in a hurry and hampered God’s ultimate purpose? Anything else in this post that you want to comment on?
