I usually don’t get depressed reading my Bible, but these days have been different.
As I mentioned some time back, I’ve started on another Bible-on-a-year trip. At the moment I have just finished 2 Chronicles. This time through this part of the Bible I paid special attention to the prayers of David. I found myself crying when I read this:
“O LORD, God of our fathers Abraham, Isaac and Israel, keep this desire in the hearts of your people forever, and keep their hearts loyal to you. And give my son Solomon the wholehearted devotion to keep your commands, requirements and decrees and to do everything to build the palatial structure for which I have provided." (1 Chr 29:18-19, NIV)
Did David ask for the wrong thing? No, as a parent I’d pray the same for my sons. I’d beg God to keep their hearts devoted to him. But we know that in the end Solomon fell into idolatry.
As Solomon grew old, his wives turned his heart after other gods, and his heart was not fully devoted to the LORD his God, as the heart of David his father had been. He followed Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, and Molech the detestable god of the Ammonites. So Solomon did evil in the eyes of the LORD; he did not follow the LORD completely, as David his father had done. (1 Kings 11:4-6, NIV)
And because I knew that, it made all the accounts of Solomon’s early reign and his great start all the more bittersweet. It’s kinda like watching the early days of Anakin Skywalker in Star Wars. You know that, in spite of all the good things he did earlier, he was going to fall away, and he was going to become Darth Vedar.
This time through the Bible, however, I think I found the beginning of Solomon’s fall, the mistake he made that led him down the slippery slope and caused everything to end so badly.
Solomon brought Pharaoh's daughter up from the City of David to the palace he had built for her, for he said, "My wife must not live in the palace of David king of Israel, because the places the ark of the LORD has entered are holy." (2 Chr 8:11, NIV)
Solomon’s first foreign wife was the daughter of Pharaoh (from Egypt). Very early in his reign, he made the decision to keep her away from the presence of the LORD. Think about it, he wouldn’t even let her enter David’s palace just because the ark of the God USED to be there?
I personally believe this decision that his wife would be kept out-of-bounds to God, so to speak, that caused this aspect of his life to spiral out of control.
King Solomon, however, loved many foreign women besides Pharaoh's daughter—Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians and Hittites. They were from nations about which the LORD had told the Israelites, "You must not intermarry with them, because they will surely turn your hearts after their gods." Nevertheless, Solomon held fast to them in love. He had seven hundred wives of royal birth and three hundred concubines, and his wives led him astray. (1 Kings 11:1-3, NIV)
We usually read the account of Jesus feeding the five thousand with five loaves and two fish, and we learn from it that whatever we offer to God gets multiplied to make an impact for his kingdom. But the converse is also true. If we leave one aspect of our lives apart from God’s rule and blessing, that part of our lives starts to grow, to multiply and fester, and eventually it has the potential to derail our lives and mess things up for us big-time.
It was not the problem of a foreign wife that was the root of the problem. If we look at the matter in detail, we’ll see that David had a foreign wife too, the daughter of the king of Geshur (1 Chr 3:2). And so did Joseph, in fact, he married the daughter of the priest of On. That’s like a Christian prophet marrying the daughter of the Dalai Lama (if he ever had one, of course). But that did not cause those two men to backslide. They saw God as heavily involved with ALL they did. In fact, David even brought God into his domestic squabbles, as we see from the following incident involving one of his wives.
As I mentioned some time back, I’ve started on another Bible-on-a-year trip. At the moment I have just finished 2 Chronicles. This time through this part of the Bible I paid special attention to the prayers of David. I found myself crying when I read this:
“O LORD, God of our fathers Abraham, Isaac and Israel, keep this desire in the hearts of your people forever, and keep their hearts loyal to you. And give my son Solomon the wholehearted devotion to keep your commands, requirements and decrees and to do everything to build the palatial structure for which I have provided." (1 Chr 29:18-19, NIV)
Did David ask for the wrong thing? No, as a parent I’d pray the same for my sons. I’d beg God to keep their hearts devoted to him. But we know that in the end Solomon fell into idolatry.
As Solomon grew old, his wives turned his heart after other gods, and his heart was not fully devoted to the LORD his God, as the heart of David his father had been. He followed Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, and Molech the detestable god of the Ammonites. So Solomon did evil in the eyes of the LORD; he did not follow the LORD completely, as David his father had done. (1 Kings 11:4-6, NIV)
And because I knew that, it made all the accounts of Solomon’s early reign and his great start all the more bittersweet. It’s kinda like watching the early days of Anakin Skywalker in Star Wars. You know that, in spite of all the good things he did earlier, he was going to fall away, and he was going to become Darth Vedar.
This time through the Bible, however, I think I found the beginning of Solomon’s fall, the mistake he made that led him down the slippery slope and caused everything to end so badly.
Solomon brought Pharaoh's daughter up from the City of David to the palace he had built for her, for he said, "My wife must not live in the palace of David king of Israel, because the places the ark of the LORD has entered are holy." (2 Chr 8:11, NIV)
Solomon’s first foreign wife was the daughter of Pharaoh (from Egypt). Very early in his reign, he made the decision to keep her away from the presence of the LORD. Think about it, he wouldn’t even let her enter David’s palace just because the ark of the God USED to be there?
I personally believe this decision that his wife would be kept out-of-bounds to God, so to speak, that caused this aspect of his life to spiral out of control.
King Solomon, however, loved many foreign women besides Pharaoh's daughter—Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians and Hittites. They were from nations about which the LORD had told the Israelites, "You must not intermarry with them, because they will surely turn your hearts after their gods." Nevertheless, Solomon held fast to them in love. He had seven hundred wives of royal birth and three hundred concubines, and his wives led him astray. (1 Kings 11:1-3, NIV)
We usually read the account of Jesus feeding the five thousand with five loaves and two fish, and we learn from it that whatever we offer to God gets multiplied to make an impact for his kingdom. But the converse is also true. If we leave one aspect of our lives apart from God’s rule and blessing, that part of our lives starts to grow, to multiply and fester, and eventually it has the potential to derail our lives and mess things up for us big-time.
It was not the problem of a foreign wife that was the root of the problem. If we look at the matter in detail, we’ll see that David had a foreign wife too, the daughter of the king of Geshur (1 Chr 3:2). And so did Joseph, in fact, he married the daughter of the priest of On. That’s like a Christian prophet marrying the daughter of the Dalai Lama (if he ever had one, of course). But that did not cause those two men to backslide. They saw God as heavily involved with ALL they did. In fact, David even brought God into his domestic squabbles, as we see from the following incident involving one of his wives.
When David returned home to bless his household, Michal daughter of Saul came out to meet him and said, "How the king of Israel has distinguished himself today, disrobing in the sight of the slave girls of his servants as any vulgar fellow would!" David said to Michal, "It was before the LORD, who chose me rather than your father or anyone from his house when he appointed me ruler over the LORD's people Israel—I will celebrate before the LORD. I will become even more undignified than this, and I will be humiliated in my own eyes. But by these slave girls you spoke of, I will be held in honor." (2 Sam 6:20-22, NIV)
By the way, I personally think the last line about the slave girls was David’s way of hitting Michal below the belt. I can understand his anger, but it was still mean, in my opinion. Let’s not idealize everything a man of God does, OK? Having said that, however, the fact remains that despite his mistakes, David saw God as vitally involved with all he did.
Unlike Solomon.
And hence the lesson I took from this and want to share with you.
It is too easy to divide up our lives into compartments, our family, work, leisure, ministry and other spiritual stuff and see them all as separate. And when we see them as separate, the temptation of thinking that God belongs to and should only be involved with the more spiritual stuff (such as our prayer times, Sunday services and church ministries) is strong.
If we ever give in to that temptation, we are courting trouble the way Solomon did. God desires to leave his mark, to show his hand in EVERY area of our lives.
May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 The 5:23, NIV)
And this is the key to seeing if you have been holding back areas of your life from God - Prayer. If there is any area of your life you have not been submitting to God in prayer, this is an area you have declared out-of-bounds to God. Whether you do that because you think it is too trivial to bring to God or because you are harboring rebellion in that area does not matter. What matters now is the fact that what you hold back from God poses a grave danger to your walk with God.
Prayer is also the key to bringing any area of your life back to God’s rule. Whatever the area may be, begin by praying to God about it again. I pray to God about many aspects of my life, even how I do push-ups. And just a couple of nights ago I had a late night conversation with a dear brother-in-Christ who showed me yet another area I have been holding back from God. When he did so I realized that I have not been praying about that aspect of my life. So I had to commit that area of my life back to God again.
Anyway, that’s it for this sharing. Pray for me that I can organize my time well this season. I’ve been very busy, but there are still more matters I’d like to share with you. Be blessed!
Unlike Solomon.
And hence the lesson I took from this and want to share with you.
It is too easy to divide up our lives into compartments, our family, work, leisure, ministry and other spiritual stuff and see them all as separate. And when we see them as separate, the temptation of thinking that God belongs to and should only be involved with the more spiritual stuff (such as our prayer times, Sunday services and church ministries) is strong.
If we ever give in to that temptation, we are courting trouble the way Solomon did. God desires to leave his mark, to show his hand in EVERY area of our lives.
May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 The 5:23, NIV)
And this is the key to seeing if you have been holding back areas of your life from God - Prayer. If there is any area of your life you have not been submitting to God in prayer, this is an area you have declared out-of-bounds to God. Whether you do that because you think it is too trivial to bring to God or because you are harboring rebellion in that area does not matter. What matters now is the fact that what you hold back from God poses a grave danger to your walk with God.
Prayer is also the key to bringing any area of your life back to God’s rule. Whatever the area may be, begin by praying to God about it again. I pray to God about many aspects of my life, even how I do push-ups. And just a couple of nights ago I had a late night conversation with a dear brother-in-Christ who showed me yet another area I have been holding back from God. When he did so I realized that I have not been praying about that aspect of my life. So I had to commit that area of my life back to God again.
Anyway, that’s it for this sharing. Pray for me that I can organize my time well this season. I’ve been very busy, but there are still more matters I’d like to share with you. Be blessed!
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