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I’m preaching in the NOBTS chapel tomorrow. If you’re around, I’ll be glad to see you there. The NOBTS media types tell me that the thing will be broadcast over the Internet at 11:00am CST, http://www.nobts.edu/Chapel/. That’s my second shameless plug in a week.
If you’re not around, or you have better things to do, I will appreciate your prayer that God says something through the hip music leaders and me. Students need to hear from God, so do professors. I’m not much of a prophet, but I do think I can get out of the way enough that the Holy Spirit will offer food for a hungry soul between 11:00 and 12:00. That’s the prayer request.
Here’s value added to your day.
First, for students: We have new, original, and very cool t-shirts to make you laugh (preview on Friday’s blog entry). You can have one with my compliments if you’ll also take one to give away to another student before chapel Tuesday. Come by the office and Brooke will help you find your size. We’re in Dodd 203. They’ll be gone by lunch Tuesday, so get off your couch.
Next, for everyone: David was called a man after God’s own heart. How do you suppose he got that title when he stole a guy’s wife, then killed the guy? Hard to get your mind around is it not?
You’ll find the story of David’s misdeeds in 2 Samuel, chapter 11. First David was not doing what he supposed to be doing. The text says that kings got to war during the spring; evidently adulterers do not. David was in the wrong place. As if adultery were not enough, he went ahead and murdered the poor girl’s husband Uriah. David sinned twice, and his mess was not your garden variety stuff like you commit—he was deep in the weeds.
God was not absent while all this was going on. He put an anvil on David’s heart, and anguish so deep that David had to get out from under it. Scholars tell us that David wrote Psalm 51 while he was under God’s pressure. He wrote Psalm 32 after he found God’s forgiveness.
If you’re like me, you have sinned better than you’ve sainted. You may even realize as I do that God would have been justified to take you out. Yet, I have this wonderful reality that God’s pressure and his forgiveness are sure signs that He cares about me and you just like He cared about David.
Tomorrow, I will preach on Psalm 32:1-2 and explain how we, the people of God, need to turn away from our current wickedness against the Lord so that the blessing and prosperity of forgiveness can come to us. I will relate the sins of today’s North American church to those of David, and I think we’ll see how God wants to bring us back into His favor.
Here’s the text:
Blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered.
Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord does not count against him and in whose spirit is no deceit.
I hope you get blessed today and tomorrow.
