Everyone who was in distress, and everyone who was in debt, and everyone who was discontented gathered to him; and he became captain over them. Now there were about four hundred men with him.
— First Samuel 22:2
Many believers today are like the men who gathered to David: discontented, distressed, and in debt. Just about every person who gets saved does so under the false impression that freedom from everything negative will immediately follow. Furthermore, just about every person who gets saved does so for selfish reasons—to go to heaven, not hell. Every believer was told that Jesus would cancel the debt of sin and immediately remove its power. While it is true that Jesus took away the debt of sin, our subjective experience of its power over us still remains.
Therefore, nearly everyone who gets regenerated ends up feeling like the wretched man of Romans chapter seven (v. 24) who finds himself still under the control of indwelling sin (vv. 19–20). What a paradox! The church life is filled with such distressed people.
Adapted from David: After God’s Heart, page 63.
Tomorrow: “False Expectations” (2)
“our subjective experience of its power over us still remains” . . . what a powerful and true statement. We have well-worn pathways of sin coursing throughout our soul. Lord, make us aware and fill us with a desire to experience You and Your Way that we, instead, would have new pathways with Your life coursing through them!