Daily Devotion for August 16, 2006

Finding Your Nathan

 

“So Nathan went back to David and told him everything the Lord had said.” 2 Samuel 7:17

 

Do you have a Nathan? Do you have someone who offers you a positive influence by calling you into godly accountability for sinful behavior, as Nathan did for David? Excuse me for saying so, but I’d guess you probably don’t. Tell me if I’m wrong.

 

 You may have someone who’s on call. Someone who knows if you tell them you’ve gone off the wagon, broken your diet, stolen something, gossiped again, etc. You’re telling them because you WANT them to remind you that this is something you’ve confessed to God and that you’ve repented of and given to God – that it’s something you don’t want to do anymore. And maybe they are even able to tell you what the consequences of doing it will be, although Nathan was a prophet and how many prophets are there around us today?

 

 But in the passage from 2 Samuel 12, David didn’t call Nathan. The Lord sent Nathan to David, and he introduced the subject of David’s sinning in a subtle, indirect fashion that aroused David’s moral outrage before making it clear that David himself was the sinner! No one communicates like God!

 

 We need our Nathans but I believe they’re not only hard to come by, but also very, very hard to really want. If it were only a matter of the big sins, murder, theft, and adultery – well, you or I may feel we’ve overcome those pretty well. But what if we had a “friend” who at the end of the day knew better than we did ourselves the conversations and experiences of our day and called us or came to see us and said, for instance, “Hey, Tim! Pretty interesting conversation you had with your co-worker!” And then this “friend” went on to point out that I’d lied several times in the course of chatting with my co-worker! And then this “close pal” – who was REALLY getting on my nerves by now – proceeded to tell me that my co-worker knew darned well that I was lying and that I undermined my effectiveness as a leader and that in the future she would not be as likely to tell me certain things that were going on at work, things I needed to know, because she knew the truth could not necessarily be entrusted to me.

 

 You probably get my point: it’s hard to really want a friend like that! But without it, what does confession mean and what about repentance?

 

Prayer
Dear Lord, Please give me the strength to accept the Nathans who may offer themselves in my life, to welcome and embrace the truth they bring to me so that I may sin no more. In Jesus’ name I pray, Amen.

 

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