David was a man that loved God. Acts 13:22(NLT) tells us, “But God removed Saul and replaced him with David, a man about whom God said, ‘I have found David son of Jesse, a man after my own heart. He will do everything I want him to do.’” Because of his arrogance and disobedience, and the fact that he proved himself unwilling to do all that God wanted him to do, God removed Saul, and He chose David to be king of His people. Acts 13:22 tells us that David had an extremely important characteristic that Heavenly Father was looking for in a leader. This principal and defining characteristic that God found in David is that he was a man after God’s own heart. This meant that David would do everything God wanted him to do. He wanted to please Heavenly Father above all else, and he would be obedient to God’s Will.

By the inspiration of God, David wrote many psalms that are in God’s Word, and if you’ve studied a little bit about David, you know that he endured many things. Being king was a very complex position. Leading such a great number of people, as one might imagine, he had several enemies. There were also times in King David’s life where he was very sad. On one such occasion, he was brokenhearted about a situation with one of his sons, Absalom, who had conspired against him and tried to overthrow his throne. During his times of sorrow and duress, some of David’s friends would try to persuade him that God would not come to his aid, but David was steadfast in trusting God. He knew that Heavenly Father would give him the victory. He knew that no problem was too big for God and that Heavenly Father could replace anything that was lost or stolen.  

David wrote in Psalm 3:3(KJV), “But thou, O LORD, art a shield for me; my glory, and the lifter up of mine head.” David didn’t have an easy life, and there were constant matters and problems at hand. But no matter the situation, God had his back. Many times, David felt as though things were way over his head and much too complex for him to solve. He humbled himself before Heavenly Father, and God never abandoned him during those times, but bought him victorious outcomes continually. So, there was never a time when David could not depend on Heavenly Father to take care of the situation. He shielded David’s life, and was his glory. God was the Lifter of his head.

So many of us have a perception of God that isn’t based on the truth of who He is. God is good all the time, and all the time, God is good. 2 Peter 1:3(NLT) tells us, “By his divine power, God has given us everything we need for living a godly life. We have received all of this by coming to know him, the one who called us to himself by means of his marvelous glory and excellence.” Everything that God does is divinely perfect. By His divine power and orchestration, He has given us all that it takes to live a Godly and full existence. He is excellent in every way. God is not sad or distraught. He’s never unhappy with who He is. He marvels and glories in the Son and the Holy Spirit continually. It’s through His good pleasure, happiness, and love that He created us. And not only this, He made sure that we’d have all we needed to mirror His nature and reflect it back to Him.

God has nothing but love for us, and He doesn’t harbor ill-will for the things we get wrong. King David wasn’t perfect. He did some things that were terrible and, dare I say, whack. God forgave him, and He forgives us. When we ask for forgiveness, Psalm 103:12(NKJV), tells us “As far as the east is from the west, So far has He removed our transgressions from us.” He loves us, and being the gracious, loving Father that He is, He wants us to rise up to the standard of moral and spiritual character of His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ.  Continually, God roots for us to elevate our thoughts to the mind of Christ, so that He can lift our heads through His Word.

We can’t go back and regress to old patterns of behavior that were drenched in an infant level of faith. The bible tells us that our Heavenly Father is brilliant, and one of the characteristics of brilliance is not doing redundant things. When you are brilliant, you do it perfectly from the beginning, this is who the Father is. Everything that Lord does is perfect. He never makes a mistake. When God tells us that we can live in such a way that our lives are a direct image of Christ, we can have full confidence that we have all we need to meet His expectation. God will never tell a person to accomplish a task in which He has not given the necessary tools to accomplish it. The bible tells us that to whom He has called, He has qualified. Therefore, one of the things that we can know with certainty is that God has empowered us. And because of this, we should always be progressing and moving higher in Christ. He is the Lifter of our heads, and our whole lives will follow if we study His Word and remain obedient to do what it says. ■  

Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

“The Lifter”, written by JMack, theChristianMan.com© 2021. All rights reserved. All praise and honor to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.