July 12       You Need to Stop Doing Things for God    II Sam 7:1-18

   This past January, as Barack Obama was sworn into the office of President, for many people in our nation, there was a wave of excitement.  In the midst of economic recession and a floundering war, many people hoped, many wanted so much to believe that this man would be different than past Presidents and that here would be the voice of a new day.   That is not unusual when a new leader takes office.  The same feelings were with the people of Israel around the year 1000 BC when David finally became King.  The momentum was up.  Everything had come together.  David was defeating the Philistines who for over forty years had oppressed and abused Israel.  David was building a new capital city and palace at Jerusalem.  And David gave God the glory.  Therefore David wanted to build a temple, a house for God in his new capital of Jerusalem.  But amazingly, God announced that David should not build a house for God.  Rather God would build a house, a kingdom, for David.  God did not need David to do anything for God.  David really needed God to do something in and through and for David. 

In the church, we so often speak of serving God.  Just this morning, we have offered prayers and blessings on those who are traveling to Peru to serve God.  This is all a good thing, a very good thing.  The Bible clearly calls us to service of God and of our neighbor.  However, more importantly, more vital than what we do for God is what God does in and through and for us.  Before we can ever do for God, God must first do for us.  This morning, I want to see how we need to stop doing for God and instead allow God to do something for us.

In our scripture passage, David decides to build a temple for God and he tells his plans to the prophet, his pastor, Nathan.  At first, Pastor Nathan is thrilled.  It sounds like a great idea.  Nathan gives his blessing that day to David’s plans to build a temple.  However, as Nathan prays to God that night, Nathan is told that God does not want a temple built.  David’s plans are just all wrong. 

You know, we often have a plan for our lives, for our families, or for our church.  It seems like a great idea.  But there are times when our grand human plans to do something for God are a huge human distraction away from what God is doing for us.  Nathan realized that after a night of prayer.  God showed Nathan that David’s plan for God would interfere with God’s plans for David. 

Was it wrong for David to want to do something for God?  Is it wrong for us to want to serve God?  Well, of course not.  But as David made his own plans, David was about to cross a line from being full of God to being full of himself.  David was always known as a man after God’s own heart.  David, since he was a young boy, had always possessed a heart filled with God.  But now he was in danger of instead being filled with himself.  We can do the same.  As we serve God, as we do even great things for God, we can slowly and quietly come to forget about God.  We are so busy doing for God that we forget about simply being with God. 

One of the dirty secrets of Christian pastors is that we can get so busy serving the church that we spend less and less time simply being with God.  I was in a pastor’s seminar several years ago where the speaker asked the pastors how many of them honestly had regular daily devotional times of prayer and scripture study.  Less than half raised their hands.  Less than half of the pastors in the seminar were spending significant time in prayer and scripture.  Why was that?  They were so busy running here and there, serving their congregations, planning for events, attending meetings, that they had little time for just being with God.  If that is true for pastors, how much more so is it true for the average church member?  We can actually get too busy with church and loose sight of God.  

  One of the great messages of the Protestant Reformation of the 1500s was that we do not find salvation by what we do for God.  Instead, our salvation and our redemption come from what God has done for us in the cross of Jesus Christ.  This is a vital message to rediscover.  A full and blessed and whole life is not found in what I do, but rather my real life is found in what God does in me. 

So Nathan comes back to David and tells him that he is not to build a temple for God.  There will be a temple someday when the time is right.  But more importantly at that moment was what God was building in the life of David.  David learned in that Moment that God had plans for David that were more important than any plans David had.  Have you grasped that truth? God’s plans are more important than your plans.  

So what does David do?  Verse 18 is a crucial verse which I hope you will think about for a long time.  “Then David went in and sat before the Lord.”  David went to pray.  David sat before the Lord.  People often say to us, “Don’t just sit there, do something.”  But you know God says to us, “Don’t just do something, sit there.”  What if that was the motto of our church?  “Don’t just do something, sit there.”  What if we were less doing and more praying?  What if before we made any plans, we spent much time sitting and praying and listening to the plans of God?  David dropped his plans and he sat down.  David prayed.  David listened.  And God built for David a great kingdom. 

 I get up most every morning and I sit.  I pray.  I breathe.  I meditate.  Mostly I sit.  People ask, “What do you do when you sit?”  I do nothing.  The point is to sit.  To simply be and to be with God.  People say to me, “Well, of course, sitting like that will help you relax and be calm and lower your blood pressure.  Or in such prayer, you are guided by God.”  All that is true, but all that is still coming with my own agenda, my own desires, my own plans.  The purpose is I sit.  I sit and see what will happen.   I sit and see what God will bring to me.   Listen.  I try to come to prayer with empty hands so that God can place what He wants into my hands. 

Now many Christians worry that this path will lead us to laziness and a lack of service to God.  But there is no danger that sitting before the Lord will give us nothing to do.  David did much after he sat down.  In the power of God, David built a great Kingdom.  You see, in prayer, God commands and we go.  We go to build a church.  We go to run Vacation Bible School. We go to lead the Women’s Ministry.  We go to help with the Youth Group.  We go to repair homes for people in need.  We go to far away places like Peru.  But when we spend time sitting, then we go with God’s plans and not merely our own plans.  And those are blessed wonderful plans. 

  You and I can accomplish so much in our lives.  Jesus at his Last Supper said in John 14:12, “I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing.  He will do even greater things than these because I am going to the Father.”  Can you imagine that?  We think of all the wonderful and powerful things accomplished by Jesus but he says that you and I can do even more in our lives if we have faith.  That is amazing.  How can that be?  It is by faith which grows strong as we sit before the Lord.  You can do much for God.  But don’t just do something.  Sit.  Sit.  Sit.  Pray. Pray. Pray.   Listen for the way of God.  And then you will do more than you ever thought possible.  Amen.