How David Walked with God

You know, I have heard someone say recently, “Hope is what inspires us, but habits are what transform us.” And we are talking about how to walk with God, I mean, really walk with God step by step, 24/7. And, you know, it’s a journey and you do stumble.

And I get that, that hope is what inspires us and, you know, I talk with very, very sincere, kind, loving followers of Jesus and I hear them say things like, “You know, I really, I really want to see things get better in my home or at work or I really see some changes that need to happen with one of my kids or my marriage or, you know, I have been asking God, kind of praying, mostly in the car, that, you know, I know I need to meet with Him regularly or study the Scriptures, but to be honest with you, I keep trying, I keep trying. I know God is patient, I know He still loves me, I know it’s not about performance but I just don’t seem to be able to get over the hump.”

And I just know that is not a small group of people. Some research recently done by the American Bible Society and then also by Barna, revealed that in the last year, it was the lowest Bible engagement in the history of when they have ever evaluated. And this is all across the board. In other words, people who know Jesus and love Jesus have never been less in His Word than they are right now.

And what I want to say is that when Jesus says things like, “You’ll know the truth and the truth will set you free,” what preceded that was, “If you continue in My Word. If you abide in My Word. If you put into practice My Word, then you’ll know the truth and the truth will set you free.”

And Jesus’ very last prayer was, “Father, set them apart,” literally, “make them holy by Your truth.” And then He says, “Your Word is truth.”

And so, some of the things that I really want you to hear, just from my heart is I want to help you. I want to help you learn to get into the Bible, not like an ought or should or I need to read so many chapters or I’m glad I finally got rid of that guilt. I’m having my devotions. I want to help you learn to walk with God.

You’re going to have days where you miss. But where you build a habit. Some of you are musicians, some of you are athletes, some of you have just become excellent in certain areas. And if you work that backwards, there is a part that only God can change, but there’s our part. And part of that is the cultivation of habits for the right reason and in the right way.

And I think it’s, I don’t know whether I would call it ironic or whether I would call it amazing that when God wanted to give us the Word, the Word incarnate, Jesus, right? The Word became flesh. When He wanted us to see the truth of the Word and the heart of the Word and the communication of God in its purest, highest form, the writer of Hebrews says, “In these last days, God has” – what? “He has revealed Himself through His Son.”

There were prophets, there were psalms, there has been miracles, but in these last days the clearest picture of who God is through His Word is Jesus. And I think about when Jesus was tempted, being fully human, He had all the same temptations that we do.

And isn’t it kind of crazy that when He was faced with those three temptations in the wilderness that He reached back into the words that the Lord gave Moses in Deuteronomy and say, “It is written, it is written, it is written.” “It is written, ‘Man will not live by bread alone.’ It is written, ‘You shall only worship the Lord your God.’ It is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord God to a test.’”

And so, I just want to bring you back to, there’s a lot of wonderful information, right? I get to be a little tiny part of it. And I am glad and I listen to podcasts and I have a couple devotionals that I think are really great and I listen to messages and sermons and I hang out with Christians and, but so much of what is happening in Christendom right now, it’s called passive learning.

You are listening, someone else has done the work, someone else has dug deep, someone else has mined the truth of God’s Word and you’re a receiver of it. And those are good things, those are helpful things. But they are not a substitute for cultivating the daily discipleship habit of you meeting with God and Him speaking to you directly through His Word.

Hope is realized and developed when the habit becomes something in your life and your heart where as good as all that information is, it’s you meeting personally with God and you learn how to understand His Word, that it’s not over your head, that it’s not too complicated, that it’s not too overwhelming, that it’s not such a thick book.

But over time, little by little, you learn to walk with God. You learn to understand this is what He is like. You learn not just about God, but you actually know Him, you know His ways. I mean, those of you that are married or in a really significant relationship, right? You know their ways. You know what they like, you know their rhythms. Think about this. God wants you to know His ways.

In fact, Moses prayed, he says, “Show me Your ways. I want to see and know who you really are.” And God says: He revealed His ways.

This is how God thinks about life, this is how God thinks about you, this is how God thinks and feels about us when we fail and when we come to Him. This is the ways of God with relationships or money or anxiety.

And so, today I want to shift gears and I want to talk about David’s walk with God. And I want to give you just a sense through some of these characters that these are very real people, they had lots of distractions and lots of pressures, and they cultivated this habit in the midst of all their challenges, all the injustice and betrayals that they went through.

And so, lean back for just a minute and think about David, maybe through a little bit different light. First, he was a neglected child. You might remember he was the very youngest of all of his brothers and there were about ten in the family and the prophet Samuel comes because God has said, you know, the dad Jesse, one of his sons is going to be the next king.

Saul has really turned away from God. And so, he lines them all up and looks at them and he gets done and God says, “He’s not here.” And Samuel says, “Excuse me, Jesse, but are these all your kids?” And he goes, “Well, you know, there’s one more. He’s just a young one and, you know, he’s out there. He’s got the lowest job on the totem pole. He’s out watching the sheep.” Samuel says, “We’re not moving on. We are not going to have this feast. Bring him.”

And so, you know, let’s get this in real life. Some of you really know what it’s like to be passed over or looked over and be the neglected child like you really don’t matter. You know, similarly, remember with Goliath? It was he was dismissed by his brothers, “Get out of here you young, punk kid. We don’t need you here.”

Or think about the betrayal. You know, he had all those victories and the king got envious of people singing songs about David instead of songs about him and so he’s this young man, loyal to God, loyal to the king. And now he’s dodging spears. And it gets worse. I mean, some of you have been through trauma, right?

Can you imagine, you know, marrying the king’s daughter and the dreams that you had and you have gone from shepherd boy to giant-slayer to son-in-law of the king and you love this girl and pretty soon, he’s after you and you run for your life and after you run for your life he gives your wife to another guy?

What I want you to get is the ups, the downs, the emotions, the hurt, the challenges. These are the kind of things that help people like us understand God gets it. He really does get us. And it also helps us understand that when we say things like, you know, “I’ve got so many pressures and I’ve got so many distractions and work is so demanding right now and this is a tough season in my life and I’ve been through this and my family of origin issues. I’ve been through some really painful times.”

I just want to bring you back to these are not mythical people. David is a regular guy who has gone through difficult times. And then talk about betrayal. Then think about disappointment. I mean, David was there, he had this great spiritual experience, he’s anointed: “You will be the next king of Israel.”

And I’m just thinking he’s going, Wow, I mean, I feel unworthy and all the rest but when is this going to happen? And, you know pretty soon of course, it’s ten years. For ten years he is hiding in caves, he’s with a band of misfits, he’s acting like he’s insane at one point before a foreign king so he doesn’t get killed. He’s running for his life.

And when you read the psalms, which the great majority of them are written by David, you get a track record of his journey. And what you see is David had a practice. In the midst of it all, David had a practice of his version of the Tent of Meeting.

And so, what I want you to do is listen with me and let’s ask ourselves, What was it that David had? What is it that sustained him? What was the habit? What was his relationship with God?

What was the priority that he became a man after God’s own heart, that he would be a man that God would entrust and speak so powerfully through the psalms? And some of them were Messianic, speaking very clearly about Jesus, like, in Psalm 22.

What is it that made him eventually the greatest king and a man with victory and wealth and honor? And even what is it that, despite all of those successes and intimacy with God, that in a weak moment that he could fail so miserably and then how was he restored?

And I’m going to share what David prayed in Psalm 27:4. This is the one thing, despite all the ups, the downs, the betrayals, the struggles, the neglect, the injustice, the danger, the fear, the anxiety. He said, “One thing I have asked from the Lord,” and then notice, “that I shall seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life,” why? “…to behold the beauty of the Lord and to meditate in His temple.”

Do you hear what he’s saying? I want to know God. I don’t want to just go through the motions. I want to be in the house of the Lord, but I want to do something there. I want to behold Him.

And not just behold Him as this force or this power or morality and do this or do that and right or wrong. I want to behold the beauty of God, the magnificence of God, the majesty of God, the kindness, the compassion, the justice, I want to behold the beauty of God. And then I want to meditate. It’s a Hebrew word for, I want my thoughts about God to sort of go into my mind and digest them down into my soul and bring those thoughts back up during the good, the bad, the ugly, the challenging.

In fact, he goes on to say, “For in the day of trouble,” here’s the reason, “He will conceal me in His tabernacle, in the secret place of His tent He will hide me. He’ll lift me up on a rock and now my head will be lifted above my enemies around me.”

And I will offer Him in His tent sacrifices with shouts of joy. I will sing, yes I will sing praises to the Lord.” And so, it’s this intimate desire to connect with God, to sing praise to God, to behold who He really is. And he says this is the one thing above all else that I want from God.

And later in the psalm he asked, “Hear, O Lord, when I cry with my voice. Be gracious to me.” And then he says, “When You, O Lord, said to me, ‘Seek My face,’ my heart said to You, ‘Your face, O Lord, I shall seek.’” And then he says, “Don’t hide it. Please reveal Yourself to me.” Do you hear the passion?

And then he goes on and talks about yet another rejection, “For my father and my mother have forsaken me, but the Lord will take me up.” And then listen to his daily discipleship, “Teach me Your ways, O Lord, and lead me on a level path because of my foes. Do not deliver me over to the desire of my adversaries.”

So, what you see is David has a passion for God. You see that he loves His Word. You see that in the midst of everything, it’s His anchor. And so then the question I have for you is: What role does the Word of God play in cultivating this habit in the midst of all these challenges that he has been through?

And so, let me take you to Psalm 119. It’s a very, very long psalm. And the entire psalm is about the value and how David sees the Word of God. And so, first he talks about, well how do you remain pure in a world that he lives in like we live in? And in Psalm 119:9 through 11 he says, “How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to Your Word. With all my heart I have sought You. Do not let me wander from Your commandments. Your Word I have hid in my heart that I might not sin against You.”

And then he goes on in verse 33. And what does he pray? What are his kind of prayers? “Teach me, O Lord, the way of Your statues. I choose to observe them to the end. Give me an understanding, that I may observe Your law and keep it with all my heart. “Make me walk in Your path of Your commandments, for in them I delight. Incline my heart to Your testimonies and not to dishonest gain. Turn my eyes from looking at vanity and revive me in Your ways. Establish Your Word to Your servant and that which produces reverence for You. Turn away my reproach, which I dread, for Your ordinances are good. Behold I long for Your precepts! Revive me through Your righteousness.”

And so, listen to the kind of prayers in his time. It’s not, “Make everything work out or get things better at work.” He says, “Teach me, give me, help me to walk, incline my heart, turn my eyes away, establish Your Word, turn my enemies away from me, revive my heart.” These are prayers of someone who says, “I want to know You. I am pursuing You and I need Your help.”

And it’s also a man who messes up. And so, we get to verse 59 of 119 and we get a picture of: What do you do when you blow it and you need to repent? Verse 59 says, “I considered my ways, I turned my feet to Your testimonies, I hastened and did not delay to keep Your commandments.” Why? “The chords of wickedness have encircled me, but I have not forgotten Your law.”

In other words, man, I am getting sucked in. I am not doing well. I feel like I’m getting strangulated by the evil. I am going down some paths that I know are wrong, And then he goes, “At midnight I shall rise and give thanks to You because of Your righteous ordinances. I am a companion of all those who fear You and of those who keep Your precepts.”

And so, you have this rhythm of a very ordinary man who has this rhythm of ups and downs in his life. I remember as a newer Christian, not like brand-new but when I really began to walk with God and I just felt like some days I felt so close to God and, “I thank You, this is so awesome, I love You.” And then there’s other days I got so discouraged and so depressed and I would pray and it would be like, Man, I can’t get my prayers even up to the ceilings. And something is really wrong with me.

And I remember I had been reading through the psalms and as I kind of tracked, if you would, think of a chart. I mean, praise God, praise God! Exalt Him! Let everything that has life and breath praise the Lord! Rah! Rah! Rah! Rah! Rah! Rah! Rah! Rah! Rah! And then, you know, like two psalms later, “Where are You, God? You’ve left me. This is terrible. I can’t believe it. And he gets some perspective and he again takes his honest struggles to God.

And what it reminded me was having ups and downs, are you ready for this in your walk with God? Maybe this will really help you. That’s called being human. People who really love God have ups and people who really love God have downs. We are human. Our emotions rise and fall and we do respond to our circumstance.

The Spirit is saying to you, “Seek My face.” And what I would encourage you to say is, “Lord, help me to walk with You. Help me to be one of those people to say, “Lord, Your face I will seek.” David had a lot of challenges and he faced a lot of adversity. He said, “Before I was afflicted, I went astray. But now I keep Your Word.”

He said, “I know, O Lord, that your judgments are righteous, that in faithfulness You afflicted me.” He goes on to say, “If Your law had not been my delight, I would have perished in my affliction.” In other words, he had struggles and ups and downs and mistakes and he really sees the adversity as something that God used to redirect him and draw him back to himself. And that was Psalm 119:67, 75, and 92.

And what I want to leave you with today is this: David’s core was a passion to know God. And David’s primary instrument was the Word of God. In Psalm 119: 105 he says, “Your Word is a lamp to my feet and a light unto my path.” In other words, when I am in God’s Word, I see me for who I am and where I’m really at.

And it’s a light that gives me direction about where to go in every area: relationships and life and work and challenges and struggles. And the lamp that he is describing here was just a little tiny thing that gave you about three feet of light.

And the only way to keep going on the right path is you had to take a step. And as soon as you took a step, you got three more feet of light. Let’s walk with God the way David walked with God, filled with ups and downs and struggles, but where His Word is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path.