If at first you don’t succeed…maybe you weren’t supposed to.
If at first you don’t succeed…maybe you weren’t supposed to.
2 Samuel 7:1-16
Our culture elevates success. So-so is okay, but spectacular? Now, that’s something else!
We’ve all had that teacher whose classroom walls were unimaginatively decorated with motivational posters or sayings intended to inspire us from our mediocre to the marvelous.
So NOT to succeed is like…huh…really?
Really.
David wants to glorify God by actually housing God, but God makes it clear that specific square footage isn’t His thing—at all. David, living in a palace that could be featured on The Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, wants God, who has been pitched in a tent, to take up residence with prime real estate.
David is denied. An overachiever myself, I imagine David’s intentions are pure, and good. Yes, the possibility of self-gain is in there; it is good on the soul to do good things; but I think David genuinely wants to acknowledge and please God.
Doesn’t God want to be acknowledged and pleased? If you’ve wandered through the Old Testament even for a day or so, you know this: the answer is yes.
So, why did God say no?
There’s a lesson here. God wants us to know that it isn’t about David. Our “no’s” from God are just like David’s. Some things don’t come our way because they’re to come to someone else. In this case, the “something to come” is gifted to David’s son (1 Kings 6 and following).
In other words, it isn’t always about us. When you think about a job or a lead in a musical (yea!), our bad news could be—or actually is—someone’s good news.
Think about it this way. Robinhood’s desire is to share the wealth. Considering what I just said, the guy in green tights likely got that idea from God.
And God is God, and God is never done gifting us in His timeframe not ours. As we read into 2 Samuel 7, God shares why David isn’t to build this heaven-on-earth temple. God doesn’t want this gift; instead, He flips it. He wants to gift us with His provisions just like He wants to gift David. We are the young child in this metaphor, and God is the super parent. His pleasure is in making us appreciate (and understand) all He is doing. God promises to make David’s name as famous as anyone who has ever lived on earth (verse 9).
For an overachiever? Yep. That’s pretty much what you want, your name in gold in the history books. Maybe you even get your own page.
But the point here is God gives us the page. It’s not our own doing. And it’s a single page among countless other pages. God doesn’t just bless us; God blesses everyone.
How does God do that? One answer is sometimes He says no to us.
PRAYER: God, You would make a FAR better Robinhood than me. Help me see this. Amen.
This is a powerful lesson in acceptance….