Worth Repeating - April 1, 2017

I Chronicles 22: 8 “But this word of the Lord came to me: ‘You have shed much blood and have fought many wars! You are not to build a house for my Name.’” (NIV)

God always writes the last chapter.*

Life doesn’t always turn out the way we thought it would. I graduated from Bible college and thought I would spend my life in “full-time Christian ministry.” Didn’t happen. I took a few wrong turns along the way but most of my life has been lived under God’s direction. I have been blessed beyond anything I could have dreamed up on my own - but it wasn’t the life I expected.  

David probably didn’t expect to be a man of war. He was a shepherd, a poet and a musician. But life (and God) took him down a different path. He shed so much blood in his day that God would not allow him to build the temple. He had blood on his hands – and some of it was innocent blood - but David was following God’s direction when he led Israel into battle. Perhaps it wasn’t entirely meant as punishment when God told David that the building of the temple would be his son’s responsibility. Is it possible that God was allowing David to “retire?” After all, he had fought many battles in the name of the Lord and surely deserved to rest. 

God called David, “a man after my own heart.” Wouldn’t we like to hear that as our reward for our years of faithful service, even if our lives didn’t turn out the way we planned?

It’s wrong to idealize biblical characters or to excuse their faults. . . . But it is just as wrong to fail to recognize the fact that in forgiveness, God faces our sin, deals with it, and sends it to oblivion.*