Repentance and the Will of God

Illustration by Pixabay 

Repentance and the Will of God

by Mariz Alliah Peñaflor

Learning from 2 Samuel 12 and 13 (whole chapters)

    David sinned against God when he had an affair with Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah. In addition, in order to cover up the sin of having her pregnant, David ordered that Uriah must be put in the front line where he is surely be killed. After Uriah's death, the king married Bathsheba. These sins are so grave that God was angry at David.

   When God pronounced the judgment on David- wherein God said through prophet Nathan that David's son with Bathsheba will die, and his family will be in so much trouble, David repented with all his heart (2 Samuel 12: 13, and Psalm 51). However, because of such "contempt" that he did to the Lord, the Lord still punished David. 

    From 2 Samuel 12: 14-23, we can read that David prayed and prayed to God to let the boy live, but still God allowed the child to die. This is not because God do not care about the life of the boy, He cares about him, but it is to show David that this is the consequence of his sin. 

    David fully understands that it is his mistake, and so, he remained humbled in God's presence, he did not blame God at all. What he did was  NEVER to commit that same sin again. 

    Many of us do not learn from the consequences of our action. Many of us do not even think about the possible consequence before doing sin. We always follow what we want and what we feel, disregarding how "contemptuous" it is towards our loving God.

   Repentance is very important. We have to turn away from these dangerous  lifestyles, because the more we engage ourselves to all kinds of sins, the more we will be enslaved by them. 

   In addition, we must accept whatever consequece there might be, if there will be any,  just like David. God is teaching us to repay or restitute on whatever damaged we caused other people. In David's case, he murdered Uriah, and so the consequence was really big. 

   In 2 Samuel 13, his other punishment happened when Amnon, his oldest son, raped Dinah, David's daughter. Absalom, another of his sons killed Amnon for it. Since that tragedy seemed irreconcilable both for David and Absalom, this young man chose to be his father's enemy by forcing his way to the throne, even by trying to kill his own father.

   Now, we can see that the problems of our own family are sometimes a result of our own mistakes. You might ask, why would David's children do such immoral things? It is because they do not grew up loving the Lord. If David was able to raise his children in the Lord, I believe, his punishment wouldn't be by his son's hands. But then, because David's children are not Godly, they became his own grief. 

  What I learned about loving God is that, it requires obeying what God teaches. It is sometimes difficult to understand why God would prohibit things that we "feel" happy about. The reason is that, in most cases, the things that we wanted are the things that ruins our own bodies, or ruins other people. God is commanding us to do what is best for us and for the poeple around us. It is only a matter of trusting Him on "that". DO NOT be driven away by your emotion or affection, if you know that it is a sin. Believe me, it brings destructive consequences to our present life and our eternity.

Also read in: https://missdayspring.blogspot.com/