David - a man after God’s heart

The above is a phrase many say but haven’t really sat with to unpack the meaning. 

If you ask people to break down what this phrase means their translation would come down to something that makes David’s heart the focus, instead of God’s heart. Their translation would read as “David, a man who loved God intensely with his whole heart”

But I was watching the “House of David” series on Amazon, and a scene that lasted less than a microsecond made me sit with that phrase once again.

 I’ll share the scene because I believe it serves as a reminder of what the above phrase means. The backdrop of the scene: David’s favored, fighting brothers were back home from a battle. David was still in his shepherd from the backwoods era. Caveat: the details of this scene can’t be found anywhere in the Bible, but it’s one of those creative licenses that stays true to the essence of what is in the Bible. They do a bit of the big brother teasing little brother exchanges, and one of them hands to David a spoil from the battle, a treasured weapon, telling David the significance of this item. David barely looks at the item and swiftly tosses it into a nearby fire, asking his brother if he doesn’t remember that items like that are accursed and abhorrent to God. 

This scene is less than a second long and it’s long before any of the real action and tension starts. But it manages to do the character world-building work of establishing David as “a man after God’s heart”. A person who’s so concerned with what God wants, how God feels, what God is thinking. A person whose focus isn’t God’s hand, but God’s heart. This mindset shows up in snap judgments like in the  scene above where the decision-making came down to a single question: Would God like this or not?

Beyond this extra biblical example, we see the expressions of this character of David in the Bible. His main grouse with Goliath and the reason he volunteers to fight him is that he’s “defying the armies of the living God” (1 Samuel 17:36). He initiates the idea to build a temple for God, remarking “Here I am, living in a house of cedar, while the ark of God remains in a tent.” (2 Samuel‬ ‭7‬:‭2‬ ‭NIV). 

If we want to be honest with ourselves, many of us are “a man/woman after God’s hand”. What drives our tastes, our ambition, our needs, our desires… is what WE want - what God wants comes in a distant second place. Even for many Christians, what drives their daily pursuit, what gets them out of bed in the morning, what makes them keep going, can be summarized into these three things: “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life”. We hustle and labor so we can afford the delicacies we love, the luxury items we aspire to, the envy and admiration of others. 

Our relationship with God is not really about His heart, but about His hand. Any fervency, any diligence in spiritual pursuit, any dedication to the things of God is really with a primary goal of getting God’s goodies. That’s the singular focus of our praise, our worship, our offerings, our intensive prayers, our labor and sacrifice - that God rewards us with the things we desire. 

It’s high time we sit with the uncomfortable reality that this is an unhealthy approach to building a relationship with God. All of us have the ick about people that get close to us only for what they can get out in return. How much more God, whose omniscient power can not only hear every word but read every thought? Ulterior motives are useless in His presence - He knows exactly what we are doing. 

We focus on His Power and lose sight of His Person: that in the midst of that glory is a Personality with likes and dislikes. That our aspirations may not be His ideal for us. How many of us go straight in prayer to make demands of God’s benefits, without stopping to ask Him if it’s even His will for us? This approach is the basis of several disappointments and subsequent doubt seeping in - because we are trying to build a relationship on a faulty foundation.

What’s it going to take to be after God’s heart? To center Him so much that all our ambition, our aspirations shrink to inconsequence, and His purpose becomes paramount in our life? In a sense it’s a challenging journey because we have been trained to aspire to success, fame, glory, the good things: turning our back on them is no mean feat. Swimming contrary to the tide in a world that’s on a constant journey to be better than, to be more than. Being the odd one out in many circles filled with devotees to Power and Money. But that’s what we are called to do. To love the Lord, with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind (Matthew 22:37). There’s no version of the First Commandment - to love the Lord - that doesn’t involve seeking after His heart. God grant us the grace to obey.