What Moves Us

05.13.12

1 Chronicles 21.1 1Then Satan stood up against Israel and moved David to number Israel.

I’m glad we have the testimony of Scripture to help explain Scripture. The explanation in 2 Samuel 24 is that the “anger of the Lord” incited David to take the census. That seems a little vague to me and so when I read 1 Chronicles, I find “the anger of the Lord” is Satan. To which I respond, “Oh, I get it! Satan moved David to do this!” That’s more understandable.

What moves us? Everyone has a weak link and something will move us. Maybe when we were younger it didn’t take much to move us, but now that we’re older we find a reserve of painful experience to draw from that makes us a little less vulnerable to the wiles of the enemy. Everybody can be moved at some point. For some it’s more, for some it’s less.

I imagine David, late in life, in these accounts in 2 Samuel and 1 Chronicles. I imagine he’s sort of in a new place in life where he’s decided he needs a diversion from the whole Absalom affair and so he begins to think about the future of his kingdom and his legacy and successors and all that; and he decides he needs to know how much clout he has. The man after God’s own heart sure seemed to forget where the True Source of his power came from, from time to time.

This is yet another example of David getting caught up in either forgetting the Lord, or trying to out-think the Lord. Maybe he was considering building an empire. Whatever the case he forgot about God and decided to rely on his own resources. And that was a bad mistake. David was held to a higher standard and once again, he settled for less. David’s numbering his troops was his own arrogance getting the best of him. David wasn’t supposed to keep track of his military strength, he was to rely on God regardless of what the military need was – God had promised to help little Israel overcome a lot if they only kept their faith in Him.

I can imagine David struggled with knowing all the time; it’s hard for a king to not pay attention to things like the size of the army and the amount in the treasury. That’s the difficulty of being a king and forgetting one is a servant as well. A king assesses and says, “Okay folks, here’s what we tackle next!” A servant says, “Lord, what’s next?” David’s power and favor led him to think it was up to him to make the next move (whatever that was going to be.) Usually, the Lord asks us to do something huge with little or no resources so we have to rely on Him…like feeding five thousand…or something along those lines.

Again, what moves us to do what we do (or has caused us to do what we have done)? Was it kingship, or servanthood? Everyone has a point where they will do, but a lot of that has to do with how one views himself at the point of movement. Perspective makes all the difference in the outcome. Not many are in the place of David where we are actually kings at present. But the Scripture says we are kings in training and for that we must remember what is required of kings: they are leaders and servants.

The right view of God will make all the difference in our failure or success. When God says count we count. But until we hear from Him, we keep our faith firmly rooted in His promises to provide – and trust there is more than enough in Him to accomplish whatever we face – amen?