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A MIGHTY MAN WAS DAVID





My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God. (Psalm 84:2)



Perhaps DavidÔÇÖs greatness and his significance for mankind lie in his complete preoccupation with God. He was a Jew, steeped in the Levitical traditional, but he never got lost in the forms of religion. ÔÇ£I have set the LORD always before meÔÇØ (Psalm 16:8), he said once and again he said, or rather cried, for his words rise from within like a cry, ÔÇ£My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God; when shall I come and appear before God?ÔÇØ (Psalm 42:2)



David was acutely God-conscious. To him God was the one Being worth knowing. Where others saw nature he saw God. He was a nature poet indeed, but he saw God first and loved nature for GodÔÇÖs sake. Wordsworth reversed the order and, while he is great, he is not worthy to untie the shoelace of the man David.



David was also a God-possessed man. He threw himself at the feet of God and demanded to be conquered, and Jehovah responded by taking over his personality and shaping it as a potter shapes the clay.



Because he was God-possessed he could be God-taught.



He sent his heart to school of the Most High God, and soon he knew Him with an immediacy of knowing more wonderful than is dreamed of in our philosophies.



Lord, may I be as God-possessed as David. Give me a heart that cries out to You; then teach me and enable me to know You with immediacy and intimacy, Amen.