Aligning Hearts

Greetings Warriors and Scholars.

Today I want to share with you something about my prayers of late. One thing I have been praying about Nerd Chapel for a while now is that God would align my heart with His heart. My reason was that it is so easy when you step out in ministry to focus on what you want or what you feel comfortable doing and I felt that doing so would help keep me straight and focused on God's direction instead of on my desires.

As of late I have been praying this over myself more generally. I think this is going to be something for my 2016. I am not sure this is a "safe" prayer, but why do we pray safe prayers? What benefit is there in that? Do we grow from safe prayers? Do we benefit from them?

King David did a lot of amazing things. He fought bravely for God against the warrior Goliath and in many other battles. He wrote many songs of praise that we still use today for the worship and adoration of God. He built up the nation of Israel and expanded its boarders significantly.

Yet he also failed. Israel had been warned that a king should not have many wives and he had several. One of these relationships began as an illicit affair with a married woman. He then tried to cover it up with murder by sending her husband to the front lines of a battle.

In all of this David was called "a man after God's own heart" in 1 Samuel 13:14. Why? Well, one example of this came after the great sin he committed. A prophet named Nathan came to confront him about it. He told a story about a man with many sheep taking the only sheep of another man for a feast. David was outraged at the man doing this and Nathan said "YOU are that king". David immediately saw his own sin and repented.

Essentially, David course corrected to align his heart with God's heart. There were still some consequences for David's sin and actions. But God did forgive him. I have to wonder...what if David had stopped earlier to align his heart with God's heart? How would things have been different? Would David and Bathsheba been spared many problems if he had kept his heart aligned with God and chosen not to pursue her? We will never know the answer, but I think things would have been very different.

Side-Quests and Preparation

Today I took a walk out to the beach...well, out to an overlook very close to the beach.  There is a trail system near my apartment that goes through wooded dunes.  As I was hiking in the woods I found a section with signs that said "Private Property".  I chose to skim off the trail and walk alongside the not so visible barrier for a while and eventually found a different section of trail. I then hiked for a while in area that I have been on and came to the overlook.

Life has a lot of times like this. Sometimes the journey doesn't take us where we want or expect to go.  That is the case for me.  Other times we get sidetracked and have different side quests.  Another place we see these quests is in video games, particularly in RPGs.  I remember when my neighbor and I would play Final Fantasy 7 during our middle school or high school days.  I don't ever remember all the sidequests but I remember a lot happening and the amazing length of the game.  I had not done a whole lot with RPGs so this was new and strange to me, but cool and fun as well.  Sometimes you would do a quest to get a better weapon or to level up.  Other times you just walk around looking for battles to learn about your new weapon or your new team-mate. 

Right now my family is in a side-quest situation.  After a fire in our house we are living in an apartment complex which is very new to us until our new house is built.  I call this a side-quest because it is a temporary thing for us. 

David, before becoming King, had some side-quests.  He was living in Philistine territory for a while because of King Saul's threats against him.  During this time he had to figure out how to survive and convince the Philistines to let him hide among them.  He did this by doing raids, but he never let Achish (king of the Philistines) know the truth of where he was raiding.  I doubt that this is where he ever wanted to be.  As much of a warrior as David was, I don't know if he enjoyed raiding towns and killing the inhabitants.    You can read about his time there in 1 Samuel 27-30.

But this time did a few things.  He prepared the area for Israel to expand its territory, something that happened under his leadership after he became King of Israel.  God often uses these side-quests to prepare us for stuff.  They might start with painful events such as our fire or they might be an adventure planned for in advance, such as a short term mission trip. 

So tell us, on the Facebook page or here on Blogspot, what side-quests have you been on and how were you trained and prepared for other things through them?