To Encourage You

2 Samuel 7:18-19 “Then King David went in and sat before the Lord and said, ‘Who am I, O Lord God, and what is my house, that you have brought me thus far?’”

Have you ever had someone ask you before they told you what they had to say, “Are you sitting down?”  If you have, you know that the reason that they said this was that the news was either so good, or so bad, that if you weren’t sitting down, you may well fallen down under the weight of what you are about to hear.  That’s the mindset we see in the account above from the life of King David. He is bowed down low under the weight of the glory of God’s mercy which he had received.  He is overwhelmed by the thought of it. 

David had just heard God’s word to him as it was spoken through the prophet Nathan. God had reminded David that he had once been a lowly shepherd boy.  But God, for no other reason than that He had a great and loving heart, had raised David up to be prince over all of Israel.  Then the Lord declared to David that He would raise up offspring from his loins who would build a house for the glory of God’s name, that God would establish this son’s kingdom, and He would reign forever on His throne.  With this promise God was telling David that it was from his line that the Messiah would come to save the world. 

The wonder of this was almost too much for David to bear.  It was a message he had to sit down to ponder.  But do you realize that, if you are a Christian, you, like David, have been showered with mercy that is likewise so great that you should be bowed low under the weight of it. Each and every one of us was nothing but a sinner that had been fighting against God when He opened our eyes to our folly and then called us into His fold. He caused us to understand that while we were yet sinners, David’s great Son had died for us (Romans 5:8). It was completely and solely because of the kindness and love of God’s heart that we were led to repent and given the power to believe.  It was all a great gift of God (Ephesians 2:8-9). And that’s not all, not even close!  He has ordained that we not only be forgiven of all our sins, but that we should be adopted into His family as one of His own children. As such, we have become brothers and sisters of His Great Son, and thereby “heirs of God and a joint-heirs with Christ” of everything that is His – which is everything that exists (Romans 8:17)! 

God has promised us that as His child, He will never leave us nor forsake us (Hebrews 13:15). He has promised us that He is causing everything in our life, no matter what it is, to work together for our good (Romans 8:28).  He has promised us that someday soon we’re going to be with Him in paradise.  It is a place where “He will wipe away every tear from (our) eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things (will) have passed away” (Revelation 21:3-4). And all of it, every single bit of it, is a gift of His great mercy and grace. 

If you are a Christian, do you think about such things?  You should, you know, for God wants you to meditate on them day and night and He wants you, in so doing, to be greatly blessed by it (Psalm 1:1-2). How wonderful are the blessings of God! How heavy is the weight of it!  May God help us to ponder such things. May we be like Mary who “treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart” (Luke 2:19). And may we dwell on the fact that the following wonderful prayer by Paul on behalf of the church, a prayer that was placed in his heart by the Holy Spirit, is the Lord’s longing for each and every one of us: “For this reason I bow my knees before the Father,  from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being,so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:14-19). 

Are you sitting down as you hear such things? Are you weighed down by the glory of it?