In God's Time

As I have mentioned, my wife and I are reading a devotional by Jon Nielson called The Story. Related to the reading of 1 Samuel 24, Nielson describes how David - while ordained by God to be the future king of Israel - waited patiently for his time to succeed Saul. This wasn't easy. Saul was hunting David with the intent to kill him. For many of us, it would have seemed easier for David just to kill Saul and take his place on the throne. But David was a man after God's own heart and he knew it was not his time yet. Nielson writes:

By the time the events of 1 Samuel 24 take place, it has been many years since Samuel's covert anointing of David as the king of Israel. David - wanted by King Saul - is a man on the run. Surely there were times when David was tempted to hurry things up a bit in terms of God's plan for him. If ever there was a chance - and seemingly a God-given chance - for David to bump off Saul, and take over the kingdom, it was now!

Nielson recounts the scene where David could have killed Saul in a cave, but instead just cuts off a piece of his robe:

Even after merely cutting a bit off Saul's robe, in fact, David is stricken with remorse. He wishes he could take back even that small action - that tiny affront to the king who had been once anointed by God through the prophet Samuel. This is the rightful king, the man after God's own heart, the man who will not grab for himself the crown, but will wait for his God to deliver it to him in his time and in his way.

Patience. Waiting on the Lord. Most of us are not good at this. We want to get married (or want our kids to find wives); we want the next best job or the next best place to live; we want that illness to subside or that virus to disappear; we long for the parent, son, daughter, aunt, uncle, sister, brother, niece or nephew to know God. Sometimes we want these things so badly, we act in less than righteous ways to try to make them happen. We want to move things along. When our hearts are like this, we would have killed Saul instead of cutting off a piece of his robe.

For believers, waiting on the Lord can be excruciatingly difficult. At the moments when we just can't seem to wait any longer, we risk exchanging God's will for our own. We proclaim in our hearts, "God, you don't know what you are doing."

But through the mercy of the Holy Spirit, we can stand down and recall His promises:

Likewise, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. - Romans 8:26-28

Nielson ends his devotional with this; good words to live by in impatient times:
"Pray today that your heart would be like David's heart. Pray that you would trust God to work his will in your life, in his time and way. Pray that you would work with all your strength for the cause of Jesus Christ, trusting that his power will accomplish his purposes as he has planned it."