How y’all doing? Was that good? How was that? That’s the best that I’ll do for the rest of the day. I think you’ll catch where my accent really is from in a very short amount of time.
Well, good morning, everyone. It’s a blessing to be with you all—many faces that I know, and some that I haven’t had the opportunity to get to know but look forward to knowing over the course of this weekend.
Let’s turn to our theme verse in Acts 13:22.
And when He had removed him, He raised up for them David to be their king; to whom also He bare witness and said,
I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after My heart,
who shall do all My will.
If that is the positive side of looking at this topic, let’s look at the negative side by turning to 1 Samuel 13:14, which is where that phrase comes from.
But now thy kingdom shall not continue:
the Lord hath sought Him a man after His own heart.
And then I’ll also read Psalm 89:20:
I have found David My servant;
with My holy oil have I anointed him.
Let’s have a word of prayer.
Lord, we’re so thankful that we can come before You. What a joy it is to present ourselves before You this morning, to seek out Your face. Lord, we just cling to You today. We pray for this time around Your Word, that You would really open it up to our hearts. We want to see You more today, Lord. We pray that You would reveal Yourself to us as we seek You out and consider our brother David. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
Why was David blessed with such a title: “My servant David”? Why was David the one of whom the Lord said, “I have found David, the son of Jesse, a man after My own heart, who will do all My will”? What a blessed title.
When we think about the day when we meet our Lord, there are many ways that He can refer to us. But I think one of the special things that we see throughout the Word is that certain people in the Bible were blessed with a title while they were here. David had that title: My servant. Later on, Daniel was considered “my beloved.” There are very few in the Word who are referred to with these special titles.
What I would like to do over the two sessions that I have—this morning and tomorrow morning—is consider David as a man after God’s heart in his early years. There are three main themes that we see in those years:
This morning, we will probably get through the first point: David had a searching heart. Tomorrow, if the Lord wills, we will go through the second and third points: David had a pure heart and a trusting heart. These are three things that we see in David’s early years, and they are a foundation for why David was a man after God’s heart.
By way of introduction, it would be good to have a little background in David’s life. I think many of us are familiar with David’s life, but it would be helpful to go through some of his background.
David, as we know, was a shepherd. Shepherding was probably one of the humblest occupations there could be. The last time we had a gathering of people around our age was back in Memphis, as far as I know—maybe six years ago, in 2010. There was a young-adult conference in Memphis, and what I shared there was about seeing the Lord and hearing His voice as a shepherd and sheep, and that relationship.
There is something so precious in God’s Word about the relationship between the shepherd and the sheep. David was this shepherd who was so humble. If you think about sheep, sheep are dumb animals. That is such a good description of us: dumb, helpless, and in utter need—totally helpless. They like to stay together. I see different flocks of sheep here in the room. We like to bundle up close with one another, and we need guidance. We are totally lost apart from the Lord.
There are many lessons gleaned from David’s early years as a shepherd. From that humble point of being a shepherd, he also had great revelation. If you look, for instance, at Psalm 22, we know it is a Messianic psalm, where David saw this deep revelation of Jesus as the Messiah. This came from a humble shepherd. As we think about David as a man after God’s heart, we have to consider that he came from very humble beginnings.
David had various stages in life. He had his early years as a shepherd. He was anointed king, and then, as soon as he was anointed king, he was basically on the run for a long time. Then he had his prosperous reign, more flight from Absalom, and then a slow, quiet end to his life. There were many stages in his life, and throughout the course of it, he wrote many psalms.
David wrote in the range of forty-five to seventy-three psalms. At the beginning of a psalm, many times it gives authorship: “A Psalm of the sons of Korah,” or “A Psalm of David.” There are only a limited number that specifically bear David’s name. But many scholars believe that psalms following one that has a title, but having no title of their own, are usually attributed to the last person named. For instance, Psalm 90 is a psalm of Moses, and several psalms follow before the next psalm is given a title. Most scholars believe those following psalms are Moses’ psalms.
As we go through the early part of David’s life, we can consider some of his earliest psalms. Most likely, these are his earliest because they are free of trouble. David had much trouble in his life—enemies from outside, enemies within his own family, and enemies all around him. But the earliest psalms make no mention of enemies. You see a real intimacy between David and the Lord.
Psalm 8, Psalm 11, and Psalm 19 are a few that were most likely among the earliest psalms he wrote.
When we think about David, we see one who wrote these psalms and who really was a poet. When you read through the Psalms, I cannot think of any poet better than David. He had such a way with words—using so few words, yet having such great meaning behind them.
Yet, on the other hand, he was such a warrior. One of my good friends growing up in the Lord, when I was back in law school, described the ideal man as a “lumberjack poet.” Someone who is a real man’s man on the one hand, but really sensitive on the other hand. Every woman is looking for a lumberjack poet—at least that is what my friend said to me.
I do not know how I fall into that, because I got married. I do not know if my wife was looking for a lumberjack poet. I think she was not, but she got me.
But David really was this lumberjack poet. What a man: slaying Goliath without even batting an eye, going out to battle with one enemy after another falling before him, and then writing these most precious, intimate words concerning the Lord and the relationship that he had with Him. What a full picture of a man we see in David—one equally able to handle the sling, the scepter, the harp, and the sword.
Through all these stages of life and all these different occupations, so to speak, David always had a heart after the Lord.
Let’s take up this first point about David’s searching heart. Before we get into it, it would be good to consider a New Testament parallel to this idea.
We see it in the Beatitudes, in Matthew 5:6:
Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness:
for they shall be filled.
David was one who had a hunger and thirst for the Lord. He had that searching heart that was always after Him. And he was filled as he continued to search out the Lord’s heart.
We are familiar with Psalm 27. We even sing the song, “Seek My face.” Let’s turn there for a second.
Psalm 27:8 says:
When Thou saidst, Seek ye My face;
my heart said unto Thee, Thy face, Lord, will I seek.
David is saying what the Lord said to him. When we look at this, “Seek My face” and “Thy face, Lord, will I seek” are in quotation marks. Usually, when we see something in quotes, we expect it to be coming from somewhere else. Often in Scripture, a quotation is hearkening back to the Old Testament, or something in the Law. But this is not attributed to any prior Scripture.
This is something that the Lord and David had in intimate communion with one another. The Lord said to him, “Seek My face.” This is on the Lord’s heart. The Lord’s heart is for us to seek His face, to seek His heart, to have that searching that draws near to Him.
David’s response was not merely from his mouth. It was not a simple reaction. It was a heart response: “My heart said unto Thee, Thy face, Lord, will I seek.” This is deep calling unto deep. David saw that the Lord wanted a man who was seeking His heart, and David’s heart response was in kind: “Thy face, Lord, will I seek.”
Often in our Christian lives, we understand what the end goals are. We consider this from week to week when we have various conferences. We are always looking at the end goal. We understand that we are to be prepared for the Lord’s return. We know the Lord is returning; it is near to our heart. We sense that we are living in the last days and that time is short.
We see the end goal of being ready for the Lord as individuals, but also as a body—a corporate body, a bride prepared for her Groom. But we have to realize that most of life happens between point A and point B. The process between point A and point B is what shapes us, molds us, and prepares us for that end goal.
Maybe an even better way than looking at it as a process is looking at the movement from point A to point B as a pursuit. It is this pursuit that David was really after in his early years, and it prepared him to see so much of the Lord as he continued to walk with Him.
When I think about a pursuit, please forgive me, but the best pursuit I can think of in my own life is the pursuit of a spouse. I will probably embarrass Eunice a little bit, but I have to talk about this because it makes it very real to me.
When I first met my future wife, I set my eyes on the goal. Eunice was the goal. The first day I met her, there was something about her that attracted me. As I got to know her in a very short amount of time, I saw her heart for the Lord. I knew the end goal was to get married. The pursuit was focused on getting married to Eunice.
When you begin a pursuit, you begin by gathering facts. You want to know about the person. I wanted to know, “What does Eunice like? Does she like strawberries?” You start by trying to gain facts. You talk a little, try to draw facts out, and perhaps ask people close to the person. I asked her brother many times what she was interested in.
I love my brother-in-law, but he was not much help to me. I was trying to gain facts about her and, in many clandestine and surreptitious ways, trying to spend time with her to learn those facts.
The parallel in our lives is probably what is happening downstairs with our children in Sunday school. When you first start walking with the Lord, you gain facts about Him. You start learning about Him. We go through different stories, and our five-year-old daughter and our son, who turns three in February, are at a stage where they are learning facts.
Do they really understand the depths behind the Bible stories they are reading? Probably not. Maybe they catch things every once in a while. You see glimpses of worship or some measure of understanding. But at first, it is just gathering facts. That is how pursuit starts.
We are all in this room because we are pursuing the Lord. There is some level of pursuit in all of us as we come before Him this morning. But first we begin in this foundational way of pursuing the Lord: gathering facts.
What happens is that we become unsatisfied with just facts. Learning about the Lord is not enough. We can spend our entire Christian lives gaining knowledge, and it gets us nowhere with the Lord. We can become scholars of the Bible. Is that not what the Pharisees were? They knew all the facts. They knew what the Old Testament said, but they did not see the Lord in it.
I am a prosecutor, so I deal with criminal cases. Part of my job, basically, is to gather facts. But I can gather all these facts and present them before a jury, yet unless I translate them into what they mean—how they come together, what they speak to, who did it, and why the person should be found guilty—they mean nothing. They fall on deaf ears because all the jury hears are facts.
It is so easy for us to gain facts. Think about how many messages we have heard in our lives. Many of us grew up as Christians, and we have spent years—years—learning things about the Lord. But do we know what is behind it? Who is behind that Word? Do we really understand His heart behind it? It has to be more than just facts.
As that pursuit continues, and we become unsatisfied with merely learning facts, we want to go from the what to the why. Why does Eunice like strawberries? Why does she like dark chocolate and not milk chocolate? What is it about this woman? There must be a reason behind it.
Why does she set up chairs before our Bible study and prayer meeting? What is on her heart? She wants to serve, not merely out of duty, but because she has a heart to love the saints by doing these simple, menial things.
As I started to learn not merely what she did but the motivation behind it, I began to see more clearly how much I wanted to pursue deeper. In relationships, we may initially be attracted to someone physically, but we realize that is the most base and unimportant level. Then we get to know someone in a soulish way—in emotions, mind, and will. But the deepest level of communication and relationship is in the spirit. It takes searching to get there.
Most relationships in the world are very surface-level. There is not much depth, and that is why they falter so easily. But when we search and get to that deep part, there is real life. That is when it becomes satisfying. We understand the why. It is the why that we must get to in our pursuit of the Lord.
My nephews are obsessed with video games. They see them as a pursuit, trying to reach some end goal. I tried, in a small way, to explain to them the adventure of walking with the Lord. Certainly, if there is an adventure, it is walking with the Lord. If you walk with the Lord for a long time, you know that it is an exciting adventure and pursuit, because He shows you things along the way, and then you want more of Him as you continue to search Him out.
What a blessing it is when we realize that He wants to reveal Himself to us. There is that gem of a verse in Amos. How many people would honestly say Amos is their favorite book in the Bible? I do not think anyone—wait, we have a brother back here. Yes? Okay, wow.
Amos 3:7 says:
Surely the Lord God will do nothing,
but He revealeth His secret unto His servants the prophets.
He has a heart to reveal Himself to us, but He reveals Himself as we search after Him.
My children like to play hide-and-seek sometimes, but it becomes very boring when they tell me where they are going to hide. My daughter says, “I’m going to hide over here,” and literally walks into her room. We have a one-bedroom apartment. There are four of us in six hundred square feet. There are not many places to hide. When she tells me where she is going to hide, it makes it obvious.
She does not realize that it is no fun for me to find her that way. The joy comes in the pursuit. It is like a struggle to learn more about someone, but it is not a struggle at all.
It is like Jacob serving to get his wife. Genesis 29:20 says:
And Jacob served seven years for Rachel;
and they seemed unto him but a few days, for the love he had to her.
Think about that. We will spend our entire lives searching after the Lord. But when we see the joy of the One we are searching after, it seems but a few days. There is no work involved in the search for the Lord. It is all joy—even the trials and tribulations.
Along that pursuit, there is opposition. Our initial fleshly reaction to opposition is that we do not want it. We set up our lives to avoid all problems. We want the safest car, the safest circumstances, and whatever else will help us avoid trouble.
But trouble is not a bad thing in our Christian lives. Why? Because when we have opposition, it presses us into the Lord. It makes us cling to Him and rely on Him.
Think about the times you have had the deepest fellowship with the Lord. For me, often it has been in the most difficult times of my life. I grew up in a very volatile household where my parents had a tumultuous relationship. I remember that in the most difficult times, the Lord really drew me to Himself, and I learned so much of His heart when I pressed into Him during those times.
As we go on with the Lord, when we see difficulty around us, it should turn us to Him and make us press deeper into Him. That is part of the pursuit.
Let us consider more of David’s life. When he became king over all Judah and Israel, David was thirty years old. Thirty is pretty young. I remember when I was thirty. Things start slowing down a little bit after thirty.
There is a young man in the fellowship in New York who plays basketball. I feel like he rolls his ankle every week. The next thing I know, he is wrapped up and out of commission, and the day after that he is playing basketball again. I guess that is what happens when you are eighteen years old. That does not happen anymore.
David was thirty years old when he became king. But do you realize how old he was when Samuel anointed him? It does not say specifically. But if you work backward from when he was thirty to the point when he was anointed, he was probably about fifteen or sixteen years old.
Just think about that. At fifteen or sixteen, he was anointed as king. Can anyone in this room say that at fifteen or sixteen they had accomplished anything of importance in their life? I will say that even at this point in my life, have I accomplished anything of real importance? Barely, no.
At fifteen or sixteen, David had accomplished nothing. He was a shepherd boy. He had done nothing to merit anything special. However, his heart was after the Lord. This speaks volumes to us: at the point in his life when he was anointed as king, it was all about his heart. It had nothing to do with what he had done.
David could have made so many excuses for why he was not a man after God’s heart. David was the son of Jesse, one of eight brothers. If you read between the lines, Jesse seems to have had some measure of contempt toward David. When Samuel came and asked to see all Jesse’s sons, David was not even invited into the picture. Seven sons were there; David was out feeding the flock.
Let us look at 1 Samuel 16:11:
And Samuel said unto Jesse, Are here all thy children?
And he said, There remaineth yet the youngest, and, behold, he keepeth the sheep.
Sometimes we read the Bible monotonously, but there are punctuation marks. When I read a story to my children, I try to change voices when I go from one character to another. When I read the Bible, I sometimes try to think, “How would Jesse be saying this?” I picture him saying, “Well, there remains yet the youngest. There he is, keeping the sheep.”
Then Samuel says:
Send and fetch him: for we will not sit down till he come hither.
Then, right off the bat:
Arise, anoint him: for this is he.
Jesse seemed to have at least a low esteem of David. David was just the shepherd boy. Jesse’s family does not seem to have had much wealth. Jesse’s grandfather was Boaz, a man of wealth, but by the time we get to Jesse, it does not appear the family had servants. David seemed to be the one doing the menial tasks.
His brothers had contempt toward him, ridiculed him, and treated him almost like garbage. By the time David was fifteen years old, he could have had an angry heart or been jealous of his brothers. They were probably the ones getting credit, sitting at the table, and receiving favor from their father. Eliab, the oldest, may have been the favorite child and the heir. David received the least attention.
Think of how many excuses David could have made for why he did not walk after the Lord or serve Him with his whole heart, even as a young person. Think about how many excuses we make for why we cannot serve the Lord.
As a young person, because of my family life, I could easily have made excuses and blamed God for my parents’ problems becoming my problems. “Lord, if this is the Christian life, I do not want any part of it. Why do I not just live like my friends, whose parents seem to get along?” It seems easier.
You can fill in the blank with excuses the enemy has whispered in your ear over the years of your walk with the Lord—excuses for why you do not press on with Him. It is so easy to live a life of excuses for why we do not have that searching heart after His heart.
But David did not. David was one whose whole heart was for the Lord. Though he had zero accomplishments, he had a whole heart for the Lord.
This is an important part of the theme verse in Acts 13:22:
I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after My heart,
who will do all My will.
One who does all of God’s will is one who has a whole heart for the Lord. David’s searching heart was wholly directed toward the Lord. It was an undistracted heart.
If David was the unlikely candidate because he had no accomplishments, Saul was the likely candidate. Saul was tall, dark, and handsome—maybe not dark—but tall and handsome. He stood head and shoulders above everyone else.
I am very thankful that God does not look at outward appearance but looks at the heart. David was ruddy and good-looking, but Saul was the striking one. Most presidents are tall. Our flesh likes to see someone who appears impressive. It is rare to have somebody short in a position of authority. I am thankful that my wife, in my pursuit, was not looking at outward appearance. I hope she was looking at the heart, because I am short.
Saul appeared to be the likely candidate, but we should look at why his heart was not after the Lord’s heart. In 1 Samuel 13, things began to go downhill for Saul. Samuel basically said, “Wait. I am on my way. I will be there—just wait.” Saul could not wait.
In 1 Samuel 13:12, Saul says:
The Philistines will come down now upon me to Gilgal, and I have not made supplication unto the Lord:
I forced myself therefore, and offered the burnt offering.
Samuel responds:
Thou hast done foolishly:
thou hast not kept the commandment of the Lord thy God, which He commanded thee:
for now would the Lord have established thy kingdom upon Israel for ever.
But now thy kingdom shall not continue:
the Lord hath sought Him a man after His own heart.
Obedience was key to having a heart after the Lord, and Saul disobeyed by taking matters into his own hands.
We see the same heart in 1 Samuel 15, where Saul is rejected as king. Samuel told Saul to go to the Amalekites and destroy them. This is a heavy passage. First Samuel 15:3 says:
Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not;
but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.
That was devastation—utter devastation. Nothing living at all. That was the standard. Saul took matters into his own hands. First Samuel 15:9 says:
But Saul and the people spared Agag, and the best of the sheep, and of the oxen, and of the fatlings, and the lambs, and all that was good, and would not utterly destroy them:
but every thing that was vile and refuse, that they destroyed utterly.
Samuel responds in 1 Samuel 15:22-23:
Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices,
as in obeying the voice of the Lord?
Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice,
and to hearken than the fat of rams.
For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft,
and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry.
Because thou hast rejected the word of the Lord,
He hath also rejected thee from being king.
Brothers and sisters, God has a standard. His standard is something with which we cannot play games. So often, we settle for what is good enough. But the good is the enemy of the best.
God has a standard that is righteous, holy, pure, and perfect. When we allow mixture or compromise to come in, it is disobedience. It is easy to fool ourselves into thinking that we can establish a standard almost like His standard and that it will be acceptable. But it is not.
We should be careful that we do not make a standard in our lives that we think is acceptable when we know the Lord’s standard is something other than that.
If we look at David, we see that he had not accomplished anything, nor had he done anything outwardly that appeared worthy of being anointed king. The world loves to speak to our flesh and distract us by directing us toward outward things.
I often fellowship with brothers and sisters who, in the world’s eyes, are impressive people—smart, capable, and accomplished people. Our flesh feeds into this. Christians should be the best employees wherever they are. Whatever job you have, a Christian should be diligent, caring, thoughtful, a team player, and someone who wants to honor their boss. A Christian should be the model worker.
But the world plays into our desire to be excellent at what we do. We do well at work, then receive more responsibility. We do better, and we get even more responsibility. As we go from stage to stage in our careers, because we are good at what we do, we are called on for more and more.
Then we keep putting the Lord off: “I will serve Him once I get the next promotion.” Or, “I will serve the Lord when I retire.” You may have seen this in your parents. They may have wanted to walk with the Lord and tried to be faithful, but became so committed to work and its responsibilities—something temporal and fleeting.
Please understand the subtle difference: we should be excellent in our jobs. But there is a balance. There is a subtle difference between being a good testimony and being distracted and sucked in by the world, away from going on with the Lord and having a whole heart for Him.
I have been criticized multiple times at my job for being a family man. It happened just last week. A position opened up at my job that, on paper, was a perfect position for me—less pressure, and just a good position. I had a conversation with some executives in my office, and everyone understood that I was the right fit for the job.
But their response was almost a challenge: “Ray, we know you’re a family man. Do you think you could do this?” I have that reputation. I actually like the reputation; I think it is a good one. But it will probably hold me back from advancing in my company. Is it worth it? The answer is yes. It is worth it.
For those of you who have children, we need to realize that the best gift we can give our children is not a monetary inheritance. The best gift we can give them is a healthy relationship with one another and a walk with the Lord. That is the inheritance we give our children: being Christians.
That is what they need to see. They do not need to see us making a million dollars, having a big house, going on fun vacations, or keeping up with everybody else. Our kids need an example, and they are looking to us first.
Some people here are not yet at the stage of having children, but you may get to that point someday. I pray that you would see now that the most important thing you can give your spouse and your children is your walk with the Lord. That is what has value.
The world and the enemy want to distract us from that because it is so important to the Lord’s heart.
It is easy to live a dichotomous Christian life: faithful from meeting to meeting—Bible study, prayer meeting, Lord’s table, meeting to meeting. But where is that whole heart for the Lord in every part of our life?
I have heard it said that women are like spaghetti and men are like waffles in the way they think. I think the waffle is a good description of me. A waffle has all these different sections. When I eat one, I like to put different things on each section: Greek yogurt on one, perhaps maple syrup on another, and one section left plain so I can just appreciate the waffle.
That is how I operate. I like a to-do list because I understand the expectations and want to check things off. Boom—this is the waffle. These are the different areas of my life.
But our Christianity cannot be a waffle Christianity. We cannot have separate areas: “This is our Christian life. This is our work life. This is our family life.” David’s searching heart permeated every bit of his life. Every part of his life was a search for the Lord.
I picture David out in the fields, tending his sheep but searching for the Lord.
Sometimes, even in our Christian life, we seek outward blessing or recognition. Shame on us if we as Christians ever look for anything outward. It becomes a danger, especially as we walk with the Lord longer and are given more responsibility.
There are temptations in the world, but there are temptations in church life too. Sometimes it is praise from people. Someone comes up and says, “I really appreciated that sharing you had in Bible study,” and inwardly you think, “You know what? It was pretty good. He did not say that; I said that. I started a little extra. I put a little more time into it. That is why.”
It happens subtly in the Christian life, where we look for something outward. It is more subtle than in the world, but perhaps even more dangerous.
Should there be outward fruit from a searching heart? Of course. There should be an outflow of service. We should serve. But we do not serve looking for recognition, benefit, or something from it. We serve out of the outflow of a heart after His heart. Then there are all different kinds of fruit.
If you have ever been on a search, you know it takes time. I do not hunt, though my dad hunts, and I grew up eating venison. I love a good venison tenderloin. But I have been hunting with him. One of the great spiritual lessons in hunting is that it takes time. You do not just go into the woods and shoot a deer.
You sit there for hours—sometimes day after day, for hours—alone in the woods. It takes time.
In my pursuit of Eunice, it took time. It was not love at first sight for her. In fact, I know it was not, because she had a totally different picture of what she expected her lumberjack poet to be. I was not in that picture. It was an investment of time.
Time is such a crucial part of a searching heart. What is the most valuable resource in our lives? Without question, it is time. The things that are most rare have the most value. Platinum has more value than silver because platinum is rarer. We have a limited amount of time.
If we sleep one-third of the day, work or attend school for one-third, and spend another large portion eating and traveling, there is not much time left. I was thinking about David’s life and the psalms he wrote, and I thought about the difference between spending time with the Lord and wasting time with the Lord.
To write a psalm, it does not just happen. A little thought pricks your heart, then you meditate on it. If you have written a song, a poem, or anything like that, you know it begins as a small thought. Then it comes from an overflowing heart in fellowship and communion with the Lord. But it takes time.
I picture David not merely spending time with the Lord, but wasting time with the Lord. He saw that it was not a waste of time at all. In fact, it was the most valuable time.
It is easy in our Christian lives to measure our time with the Lord. We set aside fifteen minutes in the morning, read three chapters, and check it off for the day: “I spent my time with the Lord.” That is a good thing, of course. We should spend time with the Lord.
But it is easy to make our time with the Lord measured. David did not measure his time with the Lord. He wasted time with the Lord—and saw that it was the most valuable time.
Consider Psalm 8, one of the psalms that speaks of seeing God in nature:
O Lord, our Lord,
how excellent is Thy name in all the earth!
who hast set Thy glory above the heavens.
When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers,
the moon and the stars, which Thou hast ordained;
What is man, that Thou art mindful of him?
and the son of man, that Thou visitest him?
For Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels,
and hast crowned him with glory and honour.
Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of Thy hands;
Thou hast put all things under his feet:
All sheep and oxen,
yea, and the beasts of the field;
The fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea,
and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas.
O Lord our Lord,
how excellent is Thy name in all the earth!
What does it take to get to the point where we really see God in this way? Sometimes it is just getting alone. That is such a difficulty for many of us: getting alone with the Lord.
The excuse when you get married is that you are with your spouse. The excuse when you have children is that the kids are around. There is always an excuse for not getting alone. But we need to carve out quiet, alone time with the Lord.
I picture David with his little flock of sheep, walking with them, listening to them make sounds, observing their interactions, communicating with them, and considering how beautifully God made these sheep. They understood him in some way, and he understood them. I imagine different sheep had different personalities, and David knew each one.
As he walked with his staff, leading the sheep from one hill to another, perhaps he saw a different field where they could eat. As he crossed a stream, he stopped and listened to the brook babbling. He saw the purity of it. He knelt down, drank the water, and perhaps noticed smooth stones in the stream, wondering how they had been washed smooth over time.
Picture David out there in the fields and wilderness. He was seeing God in everything. When he woke in the morning, he saw the Lord in the sunrise. When the sun went down, he saw Him in the stars. David lived thousands of years ago, before our modern knowledge of the stars, yet he saw such depth in these things because he saw God in everything.
It is easy to rush through life and not see God in the temporal parts of life. A searching heart sees the eternal in the temporal.
One of my friends said to me years ago, “Ray, you walk so fast. Why don’t you stop and smell the roses?” I could not comprehend it. My thought was, “You have to get where you’re going. Why saunter when you can get there? Why waste time?” But I do not think it really seeped in until I had children.
There is a park near where we live. We live in the concrete jungle of Manhattan, so we have to struggle to appreciate nature because there is not much of it around us. But children find beauty in the simplest things.
My daughter loves to collect branches and leaves—dead things on the ground that we do not want to bring home. She finds beauty in them. One of her favorite leaves is the ginkgo leaf. It looks like a fan spreading out, with beautiful veins in it. Before I had children, I never looked at a ginkgo leaf. I never studied it or thought about how it differs from an oak leaf or a maple leaf.
She bundles leaves up, holds onto them, and feeds them to imaginary friends. It has made me think. I skipped Psalm 8:2 earlier, but it is so true:
Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast Thou ordained strength
because of Thine enemies,
that Thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger.
Children see opportunities to worship God in temporal things—in simple things that we pass right by. They see beauty in things we do not pay attention to. It reminds me that we need to look for the Lord in everything.
We need to look for the Lord as we go through Scripture. These are not merely historical stories in the Old Testament. We should be seeing the Lord. How do we see Him? We search out the Scriptures to find Him in them. Sometimes things are right in our face, and the Lord speaks immediately. But sometimes we have to search beyond the initial layer to see Him and His heart behind what is being said.
One of the most famous comedians of our generation is Seinfeld. The reason he became famous is because he saw humor in everyday things. I am not subscribing to all of it; I am simply saying that was his thing. He saw humor everywhere—walking down the street, getting on the subway, writing in a book.
Could that be the mark of our Christian lives—that we see the Lord in everything? David saw the Lord in every part of his life. There was no part of his day in which he was not searching after the Lord.
Part of that searching is a heart of worship. As David saw the Lord, the outflow of his searching heart was these psalms and songs. What a blessing we have received because of that searching heart.
Another thing that comes out of quiet searching is prayer. David was a man of prayer. That is part of a searching heart.
Psalm 109:4 says, in the final phrase:
But I give myself unto prayer.
The words give and myself are in italics. We know that italicized words in the Bible are words added in translation for clarity and flow. But the original sense of this phrase is, “But I am prayer.” That is what it means: I am prayer.
David’s estimation of himself was that he was prayer. That speaks to me of a man of prayer. As we search after the Lord’s heart, part of that search has to be prayer and communion with Him.
We were recently teaching our children that Muslims pray five times a day according to a regimented system. My daughter responded, “Well, we can pray all the time.” Duh, right? What a great observation.
But I thought about it more. I almost have a Muslim prayer life. I pray in the morning, for my three meals during the day, and before bed. I have a regimented five-times-a-day prayer life. Should not my life be marked by constant prayer?
David had communion with God. As he walked, he talked with Him, listened to Him, and communed with Him. He had a meditative heart, wondering what was on the Lord’s heart as he searched after Him.
About a year ago, our group in Manhattan had a retreat at Danny and Julia Conington’s home in the Poconos in Pennsylvania. We had several teaching sessions and workshops. But we decided that at the retreat we would have one hour of quiet time. Each person would be alone for one hour.
This was monumental for us: one hour by ourselves. The only thing we could take was our Bible. We went out into the wilderness for an hour, then came back and had fellowship about the time we had.
It was the most precious time of the whole weekend: that one hour of quiet. We had great teaching—Dean was teaching, and it was solid teaching. I do not want to take away from it. But honestly, the best time we had was that one hour of quiet with the Lord, that meditative time of fellowship with Him.
I imagine that many of us had things that the Lord spoke to our hearts that we did not even want to share with others because they were so personal. The Lord showed us our hearts in that quiet time.
It is important for us to stop. Stop from the busyness and toil. We need Sabbath. The Pharisees saw it as a ritualistic religious matter of taking a day off. For us, it is a matter of the heart. We need hearts of Sabbath rest.
There is a physical component in which we need to stop what we are doing, but there is also a heart nature to Sabbath rest. Please forgive me, but I believe most of us are just too busy.
If we are too busy to have quiet time with the Lord, if we are too busy to search Him out and spend the time necessary to find His heart, then we are too busy.
If we are too busy for the Lord, then we are too busy.
Take that for what it means in your own life. I understand what it means in mine. But if we are too busy for the Lord, then we are too busy.
The first day of our existence was a day of rest. Man was created, and then entered into rest. The Sabbath day came right after man was created. There is something in our nature: we need rest. We need spiritual rest too.
Perhaps this is something to consider over the weekend: how we can have that rest in our hearts and lives so that we can spend the necessary time searching Him out.
As David walked with the Lord for years and searched Him out, the search did not happen quickly. Our search is more like a marathon than a sprint.
There are sprints along the way. We receive bolts of energy—often after a conference. We are excited and ride the wave for a while. But then we get tired, weary, or disappointed by something that happens. This is a cycle we go through often.
People who run marathons say that around the eighteenth mile they hit a wall. A lot of people can make it eighteen miles, but after eighteen miles, they hit a wall. The last push is by far the most difficult part.
Many of us have been pressing on and may have reached that eighteenth mile. Perhaps you are here this weekend because you are at that point and hitting a wall. Or perhaps you see it coming and are worried that you do not have what it takes to press on.
How do we press through that eighteenth-mile mark? There are many things we have already considered, but before I close, I want to talk about one key thing: our need for one another.
This searching heart—a heart after His heart—is not merely an individual thing. It is a corporate thing. We need to be for one another.
We live in difficult times. It is easy to be a lone Christian, or someone who pops in and pops out when convenient or when something is necessary. Please do not get me wrong: join in whenever you can.
For years in college, I tried to live my Christian life by myself. It is a long story, and maybe I will have an opportunity to share that testimony later. But I wandered from the Lord. I tried to live for the Lord as a Christian in my bedroom, and it did not translate beyond that because my Christian life was only in my bedroom. There was nothing beyond it, and I wandered from the Lord.
What it taught me was our utter need for fellowship. We cannot live this life and have a heart after His heart if we do it by ourselves. We need each other.
So many times in my walk, I have been encouraged by another brother or sister—often people you least expect. It may be a quiet sister who rarely says anything in an open sharing meeting, but then she shares something and you think, “Wow, that was awesome.” Or you hear someone pray whom you never hear pray, and you see behind it a precious heart.
There is a brother in this room who spent time with my family recently, right as my parents were going through divorce in the last couple of years. Instead of simply saying that he would pray for me, he prayed.
I do not know if he realized how impactful that was to me and my family. Instead of merely saying it, he actually did it.
It makes me think about our relationships with one another, and whether we have underestimated how much value we have in one another’s lives. Part of being a Christian and growing is shedding our pride so that we are willing to share what we are going through with one another. Let someone pray for you. Do not think you have it together so much that you cannot let someone pray for you.
David had Jonathan. What a blessing it was to have a partner in the Christian life. Although David and Jonathan did not spend that much time together, how much must it have encouraged David in the time they had? They had real yoke fellowship. They were yoked together as brothers in the Lord.
Often, a brother or sister comes through our midst for a little while and then moves somewhere else. Our heart is that they would find one—just one. Look at the value of that. Sometimes all we have is one, but sometimes we have such resources in one another.
Let us not underestimate the value we have in one another’s lives as we go forth from here, press on together, and live that life of pursuit after His heart.
May we have the marks of friendship: loyalty and a willingness to speak the truth in love. A friend speaks the truth. If you see a brother or sister doing something, or living in a way displeasing to the Lord, you must invest in them enough that you can share the truth with them.
You cannot merely share the truth. Sharing the truth in love means investing in someone enough to build credibility, so that you can actually share the truth. That takes time as well.
There is so much more to it, but I think that is probably good for now.
Let’s close in a word of prayer.
Lord, we are so humbled that we can come before You today, that You would want to share Your heart with us. Lord, we are so thankful for all those in this room, and we think even about those who want to be here but cannot be here—those who are after Your heart.
We pray, Lord, that as we go forth from here, You would humble our hearts to the point where we realize that apart from You, we cannot do this. We need Your Spirit to lead us and show us what needs to be taken aside in our lives, what needs to be set aside, so that we can have that undistracted, wholehearted, all-in heart for You, Lord.
Make us disciples who have counted the cost and are pressing on toward the prize. Lord, we come before You this morning. We present ourselves and really praise You. Continue to speak to our hearts as we open Your Word and listen to ministry throughout the rest of this day.
As we begin this new year, Lord, we find it an opportunity to set our hearts aright, to turn and seek You out as we begin this year. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.