By David ReayThursday 21 Apr 2016LifeWords DevotionalsFaithReading Time: 2 minutes
Read Acts 13:21-22
21 Then the people begged for a king, and God gave them Saul son of Kish, a man of the tribe of Benjamin, who reigned for forty years.22 But God removed Saul and replaced him with David, a man about whom God said, ‘I have found David son of Jesse, a man after my own heart. He will do everything I want him to do.’ (NLT)
We might find ourselves wondering why God chooses to work through such unlikely human material. Until we realise he hasn’t got much choice. Whatever human beings he picks as his instruments will be imperfect and disappoint him to some degree.
This excerpt from one of Paul’s sermons tells us that God allowed Saul to be king of Israel. He didn’t turn out well. So God replaced him with David, and we all reckon he was a better king. But note what God said about him: “he will do everything I want him to do”. Not likely! There was, for example, that matter of Bathsheba. Not exactly pleasing to God!
David did not do everything God wanted him to do. And yet he remained a man after God’s heart. There is no contradiction. We can be people after God’s heart and still fail badly. God achieves his great purposes amidst the landscape of deep human imperfection. The defining matter for us is not whether we fail, but whether we repent of the failures. David did so.
We dare not beat ourselves up for being imperfect. We can only bring those imperfections to God and ask for his mercy. And we can at the same time believe that those imperfections will not cause him to turn aside from us and leave us out of his great and good purposes. We may be very raw material, but we serve a very gracious God.
Blessings
David Reay