Lessons from the Life of David - Chapter 9
The Supplicant
I have entitled today's study on David's life, David the supplicant. We have discovered so far in looking at the life of this great man of God, many of the things that made him a useful servant in the cause of his God. Among them is that he had a regular contact with God through prayer. Someone has said, "Prayer is that activity of believers, whereby they communicate with God, worshipping Him, praising Him, thanking Him, confessing to Him and making requests of Him." We who are believers pray because we know by experience that our God is the source of all good, the supreme sovereign of all that happens in time and is the omnipotent, all powerful one. Faith is the basis of all true prayer and is the means by which believers come to God and ask Him to exercise that power. We need to keep in mind that God promises to answer our prayers only if they are offered out of pure motives and are according to His will and with the genuine desire to bring glory to His great name. Also, we petition for our needs, not our wants and sometimes for His own good reasons, God will not answer in the way we would like Him to. These were important lessons that David had to learn in his life for God.
Many of David's psalms are prayers and he can teach us so much about our approach to God. For example, in Psalm 54, David prays, "Hear my prayer O God. Give ear to the words of my mouth." Someone has said, "As long as God has an open ear, we cannot we cannot be shut up in trouble." David at this time needed deliverance from his enemies, they seemed to be everywhere. However, he goes on to say in verse 4, "Behold, God is my helper." He recognised that God protects His people. Spurgeon comments on this and says, "What matters the number or violence of the believers' foes when God uplifts the shield of His omnipotence to guard us and the sword of His power to aid us. Little care we for the defiance of our foes while we have the defence of our God."
In Psalm 55, David implores the Lord to give ear to his prayer. Here, David is almost craving an audience with heaven and an answer from the throne. He goes on to say, "Attend unto me and hear me," knowing from experience that the Lord will listen and attend so carefully that He would understand the pleas of his servant. Our God will often fulfil desires, which we ourselves could not have expressed in intelligible words. As Paul puts it in Romans chapter 8, "Groanings that cannot be uttered" are often prayers that cannot be refused. In verse 17, David teaches us the importance of regular times of prayer. He says, "Evening and morning and at noon, I will pray." To begin, continue and end the day in communication with God is supreme wisdom. What David means here is that he will always pray. He finishes the statement by saying with confidence, again born out of experience, "And the Lord shall hear my voice." Spurgeon said, "When our window is opened towards heaven, the windows of heaven are open to us. Have but a pleading heart and God will have a plenteous hand." I read recently that developing prayer habits can be of tremendous help to those of us who want to develop a close relationship with the Lord.
David's life as king was never an easy one. He had many enemies to contend with and many battles to fight, most of which he won with God's help. In addition, David had to contend with many family problems, which brought him much heartbreak.
So it is that in several Psalms, we find him at prayer. I am sure that you, like me, need so often to come to the throne of grace where we seek the Lord's help in times of difficulty and distress. Joseph Schiven wrote a lovely hymn, which has been a great encouragement to the Lord's people for almost 200 years now. Let me remind you of the first verse:
What a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and grief's to bear,
What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer.
O what peace we often forfeit, O what needless pain we bear,
All because we do not carry everything to God in prayer.
The sentiments and truth of this hymn, was certainly David's experience.
We read of David's final prayer just before he died in 1 Chronicles chapter 29. It followed the gathering of all the moneys and materials collected by the people of Israel for the building by Solomon of the temple of the Lord. The gifts they brought along with David's own contributions were liberal and generous. This caused David to offer to the Lord a magnificent prayer of worship and thanksgiving. In this, David's final prayer, offered before his people, he offered worship and thanksgiving proclaiming the Lord as being worthy of all honour. He acknowledged the Lord as the source of all riches and honour stating that he and his people were unworthy to give to God. All that they gave had come from God anyway. He prayed finally that the present devotion of his people to their God would become a permanent practice. We would do well to follow David's example as a consistent supplicant.