GOD IS GREATER THAN MY HEART

Have you ever had one of those days or seasons where it just seemed like everything went wrong?  If there was such a thing as Murphy’s Law, you were living it.  If something could go wrong, it did.  Many of the saints of old experienced just such battles.  In 1 Samuel 30, it tells of a time when King David had just such an experience.  It seemed as if everyone and everything was against him. 

King David and his army had just returned to Ziklag where they had left their families to wait for their return.  David and his army upon returning could see from the distance a giant plume of smoke rising over Ziklag.  As they reached the city, they discovered that the Amalekites had attacked Ziklag and burned it to the ground.  Upon their arrival they noticed that all their wives, children, and possessions were taken captive.  Vs 3 says, “So David and his men came to the city, and behold, it was burned with fire; and their wives, and their sons, and their daughters, were taken captives.”

The Bible says that David and his men wept sorely, so much so that they were exhausted in soul.  It says of David, “And David was greatly distressed; for the people spoke of stoning him, because the soul of all the people was grieved…” As you can tell from the scripture narrative, everyone was in an emotionally exhausted state, especially David.  But then the Bible says something very curious, “…but David encouraged himself in the Lord his God.  (1 Samuel 30:6 NKJV)

This has always intrigued me as a modestly depressed person how David was able to encourage himself in his God.  Typically, we envision David going into a corner, talking to himself, and using good internal dialogue to bring himself out of this emotional funk.  However, if we let the Bible interpret itself, we see that this act of self-encouragement has a very different meaning.

Verse 7 & 8 tell the whole story.  The Bible says that in this act of self-encouragement, David called for the priestly garments, and he put on the ephod cloak with breastplate and Urim & Thummim and he “…enquired at the Lord, saying, Shall I pursue after this troop?  Shall I overtake them?  And he answered him, Pursue: for thou shalt surely overtake them, and without fail RECOVER ALL.”  David’s act of encouraging himself in the Lord, was a determination to spend time and seek the Lord for guidance and direction.  He didn’t sit back and continue to wallow within his circumstances; he made a conscious decision that he was going to hear from the Lord in this situation.

I want to encourage you that when you are having a day, or a week or even a season where it seems everything that could go wrong, goes wrong.  God is not absent in your state of “soul exhaustion”, and if you will do what David did and seek the Lord, He will give you the direction to RECOVER ALL.  Even when your heart is screaming impressions of condemnation, the Bible says this, “For whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart…” (1 John 3:20)

~Rory Larsen~