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He was arguably the greatest king in Israel’s history, into whose bloodline the King of Kings was born.  He was a shepherd boy, a literal giant-killer, a poet and a songwriter.  This was David.  Perhaps there is no more unlikely character with whom I can identify.  My life looks nothing like his, yet there are repeated examples of how his story is so much like mine.  For as much as God accomplished in his life, David was also a thief, adulterer and murderer.  How could this be so?!  This is a question I so often ask of myself.

There can be little argument about the best compliment ever paid to David.  It came directly from the mouth of God and was recorded in Acts 13:22…

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.’

Could there be any higher honor than to have God himself call you a man or woman after His own heart?  The context for this statement is David being installed by God as the king who would succeed Saul.  David had been on the run from Saul and repeatedly rejected opportunities to take the rightful throne by the force of his own hands.  He could have insisted on his own timing and taken Saul’s life on several occasions, but David insisted on this being in God’s time and by God’s hand.  This was resolve worth emulating.  This was unparalleled submission and strength of character.

And then David went and messed it all up…

In a series of events, which represent one of the most epic train wrecks of all time, David lusted after and took for his own another man’s wife.  He then called that man home from battle in a plan to cover-up his own sin.  When the man (Uriah) refused to be with his wife out of loyalty to David, David issued orders for Uriah to return to the fiercest front, for his fellow soldiers to retreat and leave Uriah perilously exposed.  Uriah would soon die, and his wife would eventually bare King David a son.

Are you at all wondering how I could identify with David?  How in the world could I ever suggest that his story sounds even remotely like my own?!  The answer is quite simple.  A mess is a mess is a mess.  David is no more or less a child of God than I am (or you are), and he is no more or less a sinner.  God chose him for a unique purpose, and He has chosen us as well.  David made disastrous decisions; decisions which he, no doubt, thought would define the remainder of his life.  I have also locked myself in prisons of my own making for sins, which I was convinced could never be fully forgiven, only to experience God’s scandalous and limitless grace and forgiveness.  David’s story is also mine.

I wonder if you feel the same.  I wonder if those “prisons” I just mentioned sound familiar to you.  Who or what is your Bathsheba?

There is consequence for sin, but God is also merciful and gracious.  Our lives in Him are not defined by what we do (whether for His glory or ours) but rather by what He does in and though us.  Cease striving to be who you think you should be and choose instead to be who God created you to be.