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 WILL YOU PRAY?

I just finished reading a post on Facebook that read:

King David was a man after Gods own heart, he wrote the psalms, trump A BILLIONAIRE made his own Bible and sold it for money. BIG DIFFERENCE

Wow. To believe that one can actually make such a final judgement must be heady stuff. Had this man met King David, who was, by God's own decree a man after God's own heart, after David had committed adultery, tried to hide the fact that he had fathered an illegitimate child with the wife of a faithful soldier (who was full of loyalty and integrity) and then made sure that the husband was murdered, the writer of the above post might have sung a different tune, being quick to judge another with such finality.

King David, as well as you and I, had/have the capacity to commit every sinful act of rebellion against God, every arrogance, every envious act of self-righteous and to walk in them were it not for the grace of God. One stands on very shaky ground to assume that God cannot save another sinner like you and me because his sins make ours seem inconsequential.

There is no perfect leader on the face of this earth. Nor has there ever been save for the Good Shepherd, the Lord Jesus Christ. The apostles weren't perfect, but they were being transformed daily by the Holy Spirit living out within them the resurrection life of the Risen Lord Jesus.

Truth is, apart from the grace and mercy of God making Himself real to us, granting us eyes to see and eras to hear, giving us the gift of repentance and faith, it would make no difference if our feet were two inches off the ground or six meters off the ground if there was a rope around our necks and its end secured to a tree limb, we'd still be hung. Scripture declares that there is a humility that comes from His wisdom.

Someone prayed me into the Kingdom by God's leading and ordination. It was my great Aunt awakened by the Holy Spirit at 2 AM on an April night in 1970 to intercede for this reprobate until the Lord told her the battle was won, and she could return to her rest.

Rather than damn a man (which is not our prerogative) washing our hands of such a brute, God commands that, if we see him as an enemy, to pray for him, not AT him for the Holy Spirit to change his heart and mind and draw him to Jesus Christ. Ezekiel 18:32 makes the heart of God clear. "For I take no pleasure in the death of anyone who dies,” declares the Lord God. “Therefore, repent and live!” The Apostolic witness is the same in 2 Peter 3:9, "The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not willing for any to perish, but for all to come to repentance."

We have to face the facts that the only people the Lord God has to work with are finite, broken by sin and in desperate need of His applying the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross to bring that one out of death and into Life.

Do we ignore the foibles and sins of others as if they don't exist? No. But we must hold fast that His grace is greater than the sum-total of the sin of all humanity. He bore your sin, my sin, King David's sin, Donal Trump's sin, my mother's sin, the sin of the whole world. God has opened the Door for all to be reconciled who will but believe Him.

Shouldn't we pray for sinners, both those who seem like great sinners to us as well as those sinners whose gossip, resentment, unforgiveness, jealousy and greed and idolatry will damn them just as surely if they do not repent and believe the Good News? Intercede in humility and with a grateful heart that the Lord has called and equipped you to be His ambassador to those who are less than perfect. On that note, pray for me, my brothers.

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