Day 40: It's My Life (...and Yours)

Jonathan Billinger [CC-BY-SA-2.0]

Psalm 32:5

New Living Translation (NLT)

⁵ Finally, I confessed all my sins to you
    and stopped trying to hide my guilt.
I said to myself, “I will confess my rebellion to the Lord.”
    And you forgave me! All my guilt is gone. 

Psalm 32:8-9

New Living Translation (NLT)

⁸ The Lord says, “I will guide you along the best pathway for your life.
    I will advise you and watch over you.
⁹ Do not be like a senseless horse or mule
    that needs a bit and bridle to keep it under control.”

***

Oh, how this psalm seems to reflect to my life! That's the beauty of it, for me.   I can read this psalm, written thousands of years ago by some shepherd-boy-turned-king, and feel like we have so much in common! I wonder what life experience, what rebellion, David was thinking of when he wrote it. The worst thing I can think of that could have inspired this was when he got Bathsheba pregnant and then set her husband up to be killed so that her infidelity wouldn't be found out. 

That's really pretty bad, and I don't think I could top it, but I can sure relate to it. There was a time in my own life when I had found myself in a similar predicament as David's mistress. Nobody plotted the death of my then-husband, though. No, he's still alive and well. 

God didn't let David off the hook for that. I can only imagine that he tried to ignore God for as long as he could. Nobody wants to feel conviction when they're passionate about their disobedience, and if Bathsheba was his disobedience, he certainly was passionate about her! 

How that speaks of the human condition! Aren't we all like that? Even if we love God with all our heart, when we are seduced away from a right relationship with Him, we get so caught up in the enjoyment of our sin that we just don't want to hear that what we are doing is wrong!

Sooner or later, though, we have to face the music. David sure did. The penalty for committing adultery, then having Uriah killed so that he could marry his lover, was the death of their son. I'm not sure that's what this psalm is about, but I do know that David spent a lot of time on his knees while his infant boy was struggling for life. And I know that later, David enjoyed a renewed relationship with God that can only come from true repentance. In this case, I'm guessing David's rebellion probably lasted all of a year. Oh, I wish mine had been so short-lived. It took me more like a decade.

Once back on track spiritually, God took control of David's life, just as He took control of mine, and just as He will take control of anybody's life who is willing to relinquish their own stubborn will. It's amazing how we always think we can manage our lives just fine, and how far unmanageable our lives become before we realize that we've strolled too far off  the right path. But once we repent and get back in line, we discover what we should have already known... that life is so much easier when we're living for God! There really is true freedom in that. 

We may think we can do better for ourselves than God can, but we can't. Since I have assumed that the sin that brought David to pen this psalm was sexual in nature, I'm going to be bold enough to point out one of the most common misconceptions about our ability to choose for ourselves.

Myth: 
"I can't possibly consider marriage to someone I haven't slept with, because I might get stuck with someone I'm not sexually compatible with." 

Fact: 
God knows everything about us... including what we enjoy physically. Think about it. God created us to be sexual people. He created intimacy between a husband and wife to be a special, wonderful gift! He didn't intend for sex to just be utilitarian. He wants it to be pleasurable, and there is plenty of scripture to back that claim up. So why on earth would anyone think that God wouldn't make sure that any mate that HE was allowed to choose for us would be unsatisfactory in that way? On the contrary, if we were to all live for God and give Him control of selecting our mates, we'd discover the true potential of God's gift to us, and it would be a mind-blowing experience every time.


If we will just trust God to bring us His very best in our lives, we will never, ever be disappointed with the results.

Now, I have to apologize to my mother in case she's offended by reading this. And to anyone else who might wonder how on earth I took a psalm of repentance and restoration and turned it into a lecture on sexual misconduct. Honestly, I don't know. It wasn't what I had in mind when I started writing, but it's what I ended up with. Maybe God knew that someone reading this needed to hear it. I'd sure like to think that even now, I'd allowed God to direct my thoughts, and given Him control over my keyboard.