[31 Days resumes tomorrow]
Sometimes reading the Bible is a little like reading a newspaper article. We get the five W’s – the who, what, when, where and sometimes the why – but we often hear little more than the basic facts of the story.
Take the reading from yesterday – the story of David and Bathsheba. We learn that David stays in Jerusalem while his men go off to fight the Ammonites. He is enticed by the sight of a beautiful woman bathing on a rooftop, sleeps with that woman and gets her pregnant, and then tries to trick Uriah, Bathsheba’s husband, into sleeping with his own wife so the pregnancy can be attributed to him. When Uriah refuses, we learn how David schemes to have Uriah killed in battle and then marries Bathsheba himself. Later, after the prophet Nathan rebukes David, we observe how David confesses his guilt to God, comforts Bathsheba after their child dies, and then gets her pregnant again with the child who will be born Solomon.
These are the facts, but I want to know more. I want to know what’s going through David’s head, not only during this debacle, but even more importantly, after it’s all over. The way this story reads, David simply picks up the pieces of his broken life and moves on, forgiven by God and never tempted by pride again. He gets the miracle cure. He learns his lesson just like that, in one try, and then takes his clean heart and rides off into the sunset.
I don’t buy it.
I’ve wrestled with the same temptation on and off for the past five years or so. Sometimes this temptation merely simmers in the background, sometimes I even wonder if I’ve nipped it in the bud for good. But when I least expect it, the temptation rears its ugly head again, sending me straight back to square one.
Like David, I am tempted by pride. I yearn to be important and well-known, a big-wig. I want to be in the “in-crowd,” included and respected. Not on the fringe, not over here in my own quiet little corner. In. The. Center.
Last week, this temptation roared out of hibernation, and once again, I succumbed. Badly.
Long story short, there’s a new Christian writers’ conference that’s got everyone abuzz, and I wanted to go. Initially I said no, which was the right decision. My family is my first priority, and because of that, I try to choose my travel obligations wisely. But then I heard my friends were going, and other writers I admire, and other people I respect, and suddenly, I felt left out. I was bitter and angry and a little bit panicky, a stream of anxious regret running through my head – I’m the only one not going, I’m the only one not there, I’m never going to make it as a writer if people don’t know me, and no one even notices that I’m not going because no one even notices I exist…
If that angst over feeling left out wasn’t enough, at the same time I realized I’d fallen prey to the same old sins, the same old temptation I’d been wrestling with on and off for five years. I’d fallen victim to pride, self-importance, envy and greed. Again.
Good grief.
And then, just when I thought I couldn’t feel any worse, I read about David. “Well that’s just great,” I thought to myself. “He gets a clean heart and never has to worry about temptation again. How nice for him.”
But that’s when I began to wonder if perhaps the Bible doesn’t give us the whole story down to every last detail. If David is anything like the rest of us – and he is, because he’s human – I suspect he wrestled with temptation more than once after his bad Bathsheba decision. I suspect pride and self-importance were an ongoing struggle for him. Temptation, in my experience, doesn’t simply disappear just because we repent and are forgiven. Temptation is an ongoing threat, sometimes a lifelong struggle, something some of us wrestle with again and again.
I suspect the day David penned the words, “Create in me a clean heart, O God,” wasn’t the last time he spoke that prayer in his heart. Although the bible doesn’t tell us so for sure, I bet David, like the rest of us, returned to those same lines again and again.
Questions for Reflection:
Do you ever find yourself tempted by the same sins over and over again? How do you try to break the relentless cycle, and how do you forgive yourself if you fail?
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I think you are onto something with there words, Michelle. David had to pray that prayer more than once. I have several regular supplications that get repeated over and over again. Glad to know I am in good company – you and David.
Just curious – what/where is the writers conference?
It’s the If Gathering in Austin, TX (Feb.).
I had a feelng that was it. 🙂 Remember, dear one, in the end, whenever you put your family first, it’s the right decision and God will bless that tremendously. Michelle, God is the Divine Networker, and He knows your address. No one will ever have any difficulty finding you! Promise!
Love
Lynn
I can so relate to you. No one is perfect and I believe that we want to be recognized, but we should be recognized for the glory of God not our own. Sad thing is we sometimes forgets. The good thing is we ate reminded God’s words; )
Oh Michelle,
You are not alone. And David I am sure had temptations. But the thing is – we now see them. The Holy Spirit speaks to us and says…. hey, there, remember Me, this is not what I want you to be doing. For me I am hearing – the same old, same old problems,.. control and pride. But I squished them… they come back, I squish them again. It reminds me of that old game, “Whack a Mole”… another one pops up. Thank the Lord we are covered by His grace and love.
Good for you for fessing up and getting back on track – To Whom we are worshiping… right?
Blessings,
Janis http://www.janiscox.com
I think that there are many details left out of this and other stories in the Bible…maybe God wants us to be thinking!! This is an awesome post, Michelle.
There are many times that I struggle with the same old temptation. I am somewhat better at resisting now, but that comes with much prayer and support from my loved ones. Sometimes when I am on the edge of giving in, I hear an old friend’s voice telling me, “if nothing changes, nothing changes.” That always catches me because I know if I give in to the temptation, I will still be the same old person I was before. And I think sometimes God pulls us back from the edge and other times He just gives us the choice: are you going to change or not? So when I hear those words in my head – “if nothing changes, nothing changes” – I know that it is time to be obedient, even if it hurts at the time. I’m not talking about just little stuff here, either. Those words kept me from having an affair with a married man. I loved him dearly, his wife was getting ready to leave him (but hadn’t yet), and he was dying (he has passed now). I thought it so incredibly unfair that God had given him to a woman who would leave him in his darkest moments, when I knew I would have been there to the end. I wanted to be a woman of integrity, though, and in that one incredibly painful moment, I was able to rise above the temptation. I did not partake of what was not mine. But no… that was not the end of the story. I have struggled with temptation since that time. I have made some horrible decisions in the years that followed. Sometimes I cannot tell if it is my wayward heart or my wayward mind that is pushing me so hard. I know that the Enemy is very aware of my weak spots. I have to go back again and again to the prayer, “create in me a clean heart, O God”. I sing that verse (and the verses following it), because I have heard it put to music. I also ask God to guard my heart and mind. I ask Him to cover my ears so that the lies of the Enemy cannot get through. Then things go good and I forget about it for awhile. Then the temptation shows up again and we start the process over. The good news is that I have moved on from the adultery issue and don’t have that chasing me like it did any more. But the new temptations are just as bad… they could be just as destructive if I gave in. Adultery. Pride. Greed. Whatever. They were all meant for our destruction by the Author of Lies. I’m so glad, Michelle, that you can see the lies for what they are and that you know this is not a one-time thing. In this broken world, we must always be on guard against the temptations.
Far from alone, far from unique. Looking at David and even *remotely* thinking “…and he *never* fell prey to the same temptations again is enough to get me rolling on the floor laughing – this is a man who, though he may have been after God’s own heart, was also capable of a fairly high level of deceit. Pride, lust,self-will – check. I doubt repentance was a “one and done” deal for him – could I be wrong? Sure. Based on my own experiences, and those of every other believer whose words I’ve been exposed to for years, I think not only are we not alone, but surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses. Of course, your mileage may vary 🙂
Very glad I found your post tonite. It is our human condition to struggle with temptation. Thank-you for sharing your heart, for being vulnerable. Praise God that he works through our weakness, and we can become women [men] after God’s own heart.
Michelle, take heart. This personal wrestling you describe is something most Christians experience–even Christians we mostly consider great Christians like David and Paul. Paul describes his intense struggle in Romans7 this way: “For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.” The operative words are “keep on doing,” even though he was a strong Christian! And I’m thinking David’s struggle with sin was not so cut and dried either. Though I’m not absolutely sure, I believe he lived with intense guilt for at least nine months before the prophet Nathan confronted him, and only then did he finally confess his sin as result, and in part, with these words: “For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me.” It doesn’t sound like (to me) that it was an easy transition. He also later dealt with great pride later in taking the census, resulting in the loss of many lives. Sin will be a part of our lives as long as we live (sadly, including repeated sins and failures). But oh, what a great and gracious God we serve. I take heart in knowing that the same God who forgave David and Paul’s greatest sins (included repeated ones) forgives mine. We just keep returning to the Cross. Thanks for such an honest post!
Love
Lynn
if we ever get to hang out, ahem, like at a conference or something, i feel sure we would talk for hours because we are just alike….
“These are the facts, but I want to know more.” Me, too, Michelle! I would love to hear things more from a female perspective too. 😉 Can I just have a few minutes alone with Bathsheba and get her take? ha.
“Temptation, in my experience, doesn’t simply disappear just because we repent and are forgiven. Temptation is an ongoing threat, sometimes a lifelong struggle, something some of us wrestle with again and again.”
Yes, I still struggle with the same ol’ temptations too. Sigh. I guess the victory isn’t that the temptation disappears but that we continue to fight it.
Yes, I do! I love how you say “roared out of hibernation.” That has been my experience exactly. And, the devil is such a stinker that I find I always end up getting super tempted right before a Communion Sunday at church, so that I will feel doubly terrible later in the week if I screwed up.
Pointed prayer on my subject of weakness, having an accountability partner, and memorizing verses on the topic have all helped me. But I am still going to mess up — because I am a mess. So, I need to remember that if God gives me grace and forgiveness, I must extend myself some grace, too.
Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes – tempted (and succumbing) over and over again to the same sins. I call them “zombie sins” because they just refuse to die! I so related to your heart when you talked about wanting to be someone *big* – I have battled this so much. Especially in the last year since I moved to a very small mountain community. I actually *whined* about that very thing on my blog today. I feel like my “corner of the world” has gotten even smaller. And how on earth am I going to get recognized now?
Sigh.
I know that I am not alone in this struggle. This desire to be known. Part of it stems from God-given desires, a true wish to be used by the Lord for His purposes. But most of it just gets filtered through self-pride and enemy lies. I know that David must have had MANY battles against his own flesh, and against the enemy of the Lord. I believe he must have failed on several more occasions. And yet, he continued to pursue God with all of his being, and God called him a man after His own heart.
So, above all the riff-raff that is me, I want God. First. Foremost. Forever.
GOD BLESS!
Your wondering about if David had any more temptations made me laugh. Not at you, Michelle, but because I remember reading one of Joseph Heller’s later novels (yeah, the Catch-22 guy). Can’t remember what the title was, but I remember it had a quote on the cover, “Go figure.” It was a first person conversation, like a journal, that David was having with God. He was very old at the time, and was thoroughly disillusioned with Bathsheba – and thought of Solomon as a ne’er-do-well. In fact, David is just a kvetching old man who thinks everyone is waiting for him to die. It’s a very funny, realistic book. I enjoyed it enough to remember it after a couple of decades.
So, if Joseph Heller was right, and he made a pretty good case for it, David did not ride off into the sunset all pure. And you were right to consider this. Well, we all are human after all. Thanks for sharing this.
I love your honesty, Michelle. David is one of my favorite characters in scripture because we are so alike. Reading the Psalms, most of which are attributed to David, I find him asking over and over again for help with temptation and sin. We don’t know what temptations or sins specifically, but over and over he asks for God to cleanse him, keep him from sin, purify his heart, rescue him from rebellion, etc. I see him despair, feel betrayed by God, request the destruction of his enemies, etc. I see him struggle with all the emotions I feel day in and day out about God, about myself, and about my place in this world. The stories are just facts, like you say. The Psalms tell about the man who wrote them.
Oh yes. You are not alone. There are several conferences happening now and I honestly haven’t felt called to any of them. And then, I started going down this road of “Am I not good enough to go to these things?” Because like you, I’ve looked around and been jealous that so many others are going. So, I’m just focusing on being content with what I have instead of what I don’t have.
Dear Michelle,
Thank you for your honesty, truthfulness, and your sincerity with this subject as well as your other writings. God knows your heart and sees your struggles. He will not forsake you! There isn’t a person alive-including myself that does not struggle with these issues. For me, I have learned to lay it down at our Fathers feet on a daily basis. Meaning, I ask forgiveness, admit it to him, ask for strength to overcome it. He has really been helping me in this area. As far as forgiving yourself, I learned this at a women’s conference a few ago-Not forgiving yourself is saying the stripes that Jesus took on Calvary isn’t really good enough. Forgive yourself and let yourself off the hook. We are all human and prideful people and I feel that is one of the reasons we need Jesus. You are a talented writer with a good heart and sweet spirit. I feel every time we are to hard on ourselves we are making the devil so happy. We are giving him a window to speak doubt and untruths in our spirits. I know this to be true because I battle these things also. So you keep your joy, and turn your writing over to God and it will soar! I will be able to enjoy your writings for years to come! Hugs,Melissa Smith