A Man After God's Own Heart

After my last blog post, I had a friend ask me, "How was David a man after God's own heart if he did all that he did?"  That's a great question, especially since David is viewed as such a hero and role model for so many Christians.  I believe that the answer is found by looking at when that statement was made about David.  We find it two times in Scripture.  The first time, in I Samuel 13:14, we hear Samuel telling King Saul that God had taken his kingdom away because of his heart of disobedience.  David was chosen to be king because his heart was wholly given to seeking the Lord and following after Him.  David's spirit was displayed in his attitude toward Saul, in his zeal for the name of the Lord during his battle with Goliath, and in his deep desire to build a dwelling place for God, and in the fact that he led the nation of Israel to worship God and God alone.  David's lapse and descent into sin, came much later in life, but even there, David displayed the kind of heart that honors God.  When David sinned, he came to full repentance, he humbled himself before the Lord, and he gave everything he had to be restored to fellowship.  One of the characteristics of Scripture that testifies to its credibility is the fact that it doesn't gloss over the failures and weaknesses of its heroes.  David's sin with Bathsheba and his murder of Uriah, were horrible failures, but God is a God that looks at people as redeemable rather than disposable.  He forgave David, although the consequences of David's sin were long-lasting and far-reaching, and He restored David to a place of fellowship and blessing.
The second place in Scripture where we find this reference is in Acts 13.  Paul refers this statement as a part of his argument that Jesus is the Messiah.  He came through the line of David, a man after God's own heart, who would fulfill all of God's will.  This statement is a historical overview of the entire life of David, the place that he had in the history of the Jewish people and his role in the coming of the Messiah.  It was the sum total after all the good and the bad had been figured in.  David's downfall should never be used as an excuse for sin in the life of a Christian, but it should also never be used to set aside the things that God accomplished through him as a result of the great majority of his life when he followed hard after God with all his heart and soul.
So, we can use David as a role model in several ways, both as an example of the things that we should do in order to be the kind of man that God wants us to be, and as a warning against the kind of things that can destroy a man's life and testimony and rob him of fellowship with God.  And when we sin, we can follow his example of humble repentance, full confession and brokenness before God so that we can find that place of complete restoration that David found.  Not bad for the runt of the litter, huh?