2 Samuel 12 contains one of the most amazing moments of worship described in the Bible. After David owns his sin, Nathan declares that while God has forgiven him, there would be consequences to his sin. David’s sin would have become known to all, and for him to be exempt from the prescribed penalty for his crimes would have caused God to be held in contempt. He was the king and his life had to demonstrate that God takes sin seriously. So, God would take David’s son from him as David had taken Uriah’s ‘lamb’ from him. When the child becomes ill, David fasts and goes without sleep for a week praying desperately that God would spare the child. But the child dies. Why this ultimately had to be the case we don’t know. It is hard to imagine how David could have accepted this from God’s hand. We would expect him to have been angry with God and turned away from him in disillusionment. But instead he does something remarkable. When he hears of the child’s death, “he went into the house of the Lord and worshipped”. This moment expresses the true nature of worship. It is absolute surrender. It is being prepared to give up everything to the God who gave everything, even his own son Jesus, for us. In the wake of an event that would have been the hardest thing imaginable to accept from God’s hand, David worships God. For all his grief, he accepts that God is God. And what else can we do when we receive such hardships from the hand of God?
Surrender your life to God.
Read 2 Samuel 12:13-31
