Good morning. Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Have you ever had a really, really good plan that you took to God to let him know what you’re going to do for him, only to find out that his response back to you was, thanks but no thanks, we’re not going to do it that way? What did you do when you realized that God’s answer was not just no, but? But no, and no, and no, and no. Did you get angry? Did you run with it anyway, thinking, oh, he must have heard me wrong, because this is a super good plan. What did you do? We get to find out what King David did, because he has this really good plan, and he brings it to God, and it is a pivotal moment in David’s life, this plan. Not just a pivotal moment for David, but it’s a pivotal moment in the history of David. of God’s kingdom and God’s world. We find this pivotal moment found in 1 Samuel chapter 7. I’m going to read the first 17 verses, so bear with me. After the king was settled in his palace and the Lord had given him rest from all his enemies around him, He said to Nathan the prom the prophet, Here I am living in a house of cedar while the ark of God remains in a tent. Nathan replied to the king, Whatever you have in mind, go ahead and do it, for the Lord is with you. That night, the word of the Lord came to Nathan, saying, Go and tell my servant David, this is what the Lord says. Are you the one to build me a house to dwell in? I have not dwelt in a house from the day I brought the Israelites up out of Egypt to this day.

I have been moving from place to place with a tent as my dwelling. Whenever I have moved with all the Israelites, did I ever say to any of their rulers whom I commanded to be shepherd of my people Israel, why have you not built me a house of cedar? Now then. Tell my servant David, this is what the Lord Almighty says. I took you from the pasture, from tending the flock, and appointed you ruler over my people Israel. I have been with you wherever you have gone, and I have cut off all your enemies before you. Now I will make your name great, like the names of the greatest men on earth. And I will provide a place for my people Israel, and will plant them So that they can have a home of their own and no longer be disturbed. Wicked people will not oppress them anymore, as they did at the beginning, and have done ever since the time I appointed leaders over my people Israel. I will give you rest from all your enemies. The Lord declares to you, the Lord himself will establish a house for you. The God, and God ends this vision to the prophet Nathan for the word to be given to David this way. When your days are all are over and you rest with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, your own flesh and blood, and I will establish his kingdom. He is the one who will build a house for my name and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be his father and he will be my son. When he does wrong, I will punish him with a rod wielded by men. with floggings inflicted by human hands, but my love will never be taken away from him as I took it away from Saul, whom I removed from before you. Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me. Your throne will be established forever. Nathan reported to David all the words of this entire revelation. The Word of the Lord. Let’s pray. Father, we are here again sitting in your house. You have called us to come and be before you, to be with you. Holy Spirit, help us bow our heads and our hearts as we anticipate an encounter with the Almighty Lord. We come to this pivotal moment in history of your people at a time when we ourselves are at a pivotal moment in our lives as well. Amen. So this morning we cry out to you, King Jesus, come teach us, mold us, transform us. Don’t let us leave this study unchanged. Show us your purpose for our lives. As you send your Holy Spirit to help us discover once again the power of your grace as you take me out of your way, we pray in Jesus name. Amen. What an incredible turn of events. David comes and he said, I’ve got this great plan. I’m going to build God a house. Nathan, the prophet, is on board. You see, David has time to think about these things because he’s living in a time of peace. He’s not being, tending his father’s sheep. He’s not running from King Saul.

He’s not out defeating the enemies of Israel. He is living in this spectacular cedar palace. And he’s at peace. And he goes out one day and he looks over the city of Jerusalem, and he looks at his house and he looks at this little tent where the Ark of the Covenant and the presence of God is, and he sees the irony of where he’s living versus where God is living. And so, I’m going to build this great, spectacular temple, and it’s going to be to your glory, God, and all your people are going to be able to come and worship you there. We can’t even get in this little tent because it’s so small. God, this is going to be great. It’s going to be so awesome. And without checking with the Lord, Nathan’s like, Yeah, sounds good. He’s blessing you right now. He’s going to bless this. Go for it. But guess what, folks? God had other plans. That brings us to our first point. Our plans for God are not always God’s plans for us. You know, no matter how good our plans may be, no matter how honoring to God our plans may seem, there are times when the plans we take to God are not the plans He has for us. And this is certainly true for David, and it has been true in my life as well. Have you ever had a time where you took a plan to God for everything? Only to find out that’s not what He wanted you to do. I know I’ve shared this story with you before. I’m going to share it again. I just feel impressed by the Holy Spirit to do that. A little over a year and a half ago, I was ready to retire. I had truly believed that God was done with me as a pastor. My husband and I were going to get out on the motorcycles, and we were going to take trips, and we were going to do all of these great things. I was worn out, and I said, Okay, God, I hear you. You’re done. That’s okay. I told my husband, whatever we have to do financially, I’m coming to you at the end of the year, and I don’t want to hear you say, well, we can’t afford it. So get us ready. A few months later, God said, yeah, right. Because we were sitting at a conference and God looked at me. And through the mouth of a, of a preacher, he said, I’ve got plans for you.

You are not done. Go home, get back in the game because I right now today wrote the names of people in your calendar that you have to go tell about me. You don’t know when you’re going to find them, where you’re going to find them, but I wrote them on your calendar and go get in the game. My husband and I were so excited. We went into this time of prayer. What does God want us to do? Where’s he we who’s he gonna send us to and we came up with this really great plan I was indeed gonna retire. We were gonna start a house church We found out about this house church ministry that had taken root up baptizing over a hundred people every month and as an evangelistic heart That I, that God had given me, I wanted to be there. I wanted to go preach Jesus in that place. And so, Rich and I took this to God. We took it to our friends first. Hey, what do you think? Yeah, we’ll even go and we’ll do that with you. And then, we took it to God. And a few weeks later, I’m sitting in Iowa to, at a training and, and Rich calls me up and he said, you got to look at this church down in Mesa. And I said, no, I don’t, I don’t want to live in hot Arizona. I get back and every day he’s like, did you call that church? No. Did you call that church? No. Did you call that church? No. I didn’t want to hear it again. So. I thought I’m gonna have a five minute conversation with pastor, with the pastor of this church. It’s already been filled. Easy peasy. No big deal. I made that phone call 45 minutes later. I hear the Spirit of the Lord through Pastor Todd tell me I’m coming to Arizona. Oh, but what about my plans, God? You were going to be glorified. Why do I have to move there? Well, three weeks later, you all invited us to form, you informally invited us to come, and six weeks after that, we were sitting in Arizona.

Our heads were spinning. I didn’t even have a chance to think about what God was doing and what He was asking me to do. But guess what? One night when I was wrestling with, are you sure this is what you want me to do? I want to go baptize all those people. What about those people? And you know what God said to me in that dream that night, he said, what about the thousand people in Arizona that I have prepared for you to go talk to about the Lord? I couldn’t say no then, you know, I got here and I quickly found out why God wanted me to be here. You see, I needed to hear your stories about how God had been moving in your lives. David hears this story. You’re not going to build a house. I’m going to build a house for you. And then God calls him into a time of remembering. When God changes the plans that we have for Him, and He gives us the plans He has for us, He calls us in a time of remembering. Why? Because when we step into that plan, life is going to be upside down and sideways. And we have to remember what God has done before. So that as we’re walking through that plan, we can see Him every step of the way. So we can be strengthened and find courage in not just what He did then, but what He’s doing now and what He’s going to do in the future. You all shared with me. What God has done in your lives and you changed my faith you changed me And not only just me, but as I told my family back home, you’re not going to believe why I’m here. I met this person today, and God did this, and this, and this in their lives, and you inspired my family. So much so that in April, three generations of my family were baptized because they had responded to the love of God that He gave us through His Son, Jesus Christ. If you think that you are in the wrong place at the wrong time, think again.

This is exactly where God wants you to be. He’s got you in the palm of His hands doing His will and doing His work right now. He came to David. And he said, David, what I have for you is so much greater than what you can imagine. It is not just for you right this minute, David, but this is going to be significant for generations to come. This is so important that this is going to be an eternal covenant. It’s called the divinic covenant, and I’m cutting it with you right now. Today, David, David knew. about God’s faithfulness. He knew the story of when God promised, the promises He gave Eve in the garden. He knew the promises He gave Noah after the flood. He knew the Abrahamic covenant. He was living under it. And now God was cutting a covenant with him and with his family and future generations to come. This was a pivotal moment. And the house that God is talking about, I’m gonna build you a house, David. David already had this beautiful palace of cedar. That’s not the kind of house he’s talking about. He’s talking about a dynasty. You see, when, think about when we, uh, talk about the queen and king of England, right? We talk about the house of Windsor. Because we’re talking about all of the people who came before and all of the people who are there now and all the people who will come generations later. It’s the house of the Lord. I’m establishing this covenant with you, and it’s going to make a difference forever and not just that it was called, we call it the divinic covenant, but this was a pivotal moment because this is a messianic covenant. Prophecy. This moment in time, God is speaking about the coming of His Son. His Son, who is the King of kings, who still sits at the right hand of the Father up in heaven. You think that this kingdom stopped when David died, when King Solomon died? No. He said this is going to be a kingdom forever, and it is still going on, and it will go on, and our King is coming back. He promised that, and he will establish his rule again on the earth. What a day that will be. David definitely had a good thing that he talked to God about, but God’s plans were so much better and so much more exciting.

This is the millennial reign of Jesus that when he comes back, David seems to understand the weight of what has just happened. Instead of being angry that God had shut down his plans, instead of running with them anyway, because God must have heard him wrong, what does David do? He withdraws into a time alone with God. He comes and he gets into a time of prayer. He doesn’t sit before the Lord, he doesn’t stand before the Lord, he falls on his face before the Lord God Almighty. It is incredible what he says in that prayer. I want to read just a couple of verses of that prayer. Go home and read this prayer. You find it in 2 Samuel chapter 7, beginning in verse 18 to the rest. Um, let’s see. It ends, um, yes. Uh, all the way to the end, verse 29. I want to read just a couple of verses. 18 and 19, this is David’s response. Who am I, Sovereign Lord, and what is my family, that you have brought me this far? And as if that were not enough in your sight, Sovereign Lord, you have also spoken about the future of the house of your servant. And this decree, Sovereign Lord, is for a mere human. Who am I? David says. How can this be that you would do that for not just me, but for my family and generations to come? Verse 22, you see when God calls us into this kind of prayer time, He calls us to remember who He is. Verse 22, David says, How great you are, Sovereign Lord!

There is no one like you, and there is no God but you, as we have heard with our own ears. Is this how you and I pray when God calls us to come and be under His will, doing His, engaging in His plans for our lives? In her Bible study on the life of King David, Beth Moore invites us to focus our attention on verse 28. We will discover three truths about God that sustain David, And it sustained many generations to come. He says, this is the first one, Sovereign Lord, you are God. When we are in a prayer time, we need to acknowledge that our God is the Sovereign Lord, and there is no one like Him. The second truth is that His covenant is trustworthy. How in the world are you going to know that you can trust the faithfulness of God if you don’t know Him? How do you get to know him? Well, prayer, conversations with him, reading his word. You’re going to find out that his covenants are trustworthy when you read about him in here. If you don’t know what his covenants are, you won’t know that they’re trustworthy. They won’t be able to sustain you in a time of trial if you’ve never read about him. The third thing that we find is that David says, and you have promised these good things to your servant. These important truths have been Passed down from generation to generation to generation from King David They went all the way to this young teenage girl named Mary.

God was changing her life She thought the plans that God had for her was for her to get married to Joseph and they were gonna live this Wonderful life together and they did but God had plans for her For them that they did not know about. You see, we, we heard about it just a few minutes ago. The angel of the Lord came and said, Mary, hold on. You are gonna be the mother of the Son of God. She questioned it at first, how is that gonna be? God reassured her that he had it all taken care of. And what was her response? I am the Lord’s servant, Mary said. May your word to me be fulfilled. How do we respond when God comes to us? These three important truths about our sovereign Lord are important. They were important for Mary, they were important for David, they were important for us. Dear friends, when you look over your lifetime, what good things has God already done for you? Where has he taken you? What mountaintops have you enjoyed together? What deep valleys have you walked through with the Lord? Share them with each other. Share them with your family. Share them with the strangers that God brings into your life because your life experience is so unique to their circumstance that you are the perfect person to tell them about the work that God did in your life so they can know that God will do it for them if he did it for you. How has God shown up? You know, back in 1999, I would never have believed in 1999 if you had asked me that God was going to show up in this powerful way. You see, after nine years of being alone, God brought this incredible man into my life who believed in God. And he shared his faith with me. And he walked me to the cross. God used him, my husband Rich, to pull me out of the pit of hell that I was living in. I did not deserve it, but God loved me so much that He looked at me in that pit of hell and He called me daughter. And He said, rise up and follow me. I’ve got plans for your life. And it does not include being in a pit of hell, because that was never my will for your life.

What is the will of God for your life? That brings us to our last closing point. What would our life be like if we would believe What God says about us. When He called me daughter, my life changed forever. He calls you daughters and sons of the Most High God. You are sons and daughters of the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. He came to earth. He took on flesh. He took our sins upon Him when He died on the cross. He was raised from the dead, three days later, for our redemption, and our, so we could be redeemed, and we could be brought back into a right relationship with the Father. And He sits at the right hand of the Father today, in this moment, interceding for us. The kingdom of God is alive and well, and we walk in it every single day. Do we live like we do? Let’s pray. Father, Sovereign Lord, Your purpose for us is good. Your hope for us is good. You are our God, and Your words are trustworthy. Give us an opportunity to come away with You. So that you can help us look back over all that you have brought us through and show us, in that time, all of the good things you have already done for us, as your will for us was fulfilled. In this time of prayer, God, give us the ability to look back, to look now, and then look into the future, see where you’ve, how you’ve taken our greatest failures and you’ve turned them into your greatest accomplishments, not for us to be glorified but for you to be glorified. Amen. Father, give us the ability to humble ourselves before you and say, not my will, but yours be done. Call us to come, to fall down before you, to remember your goodness and to trust in your will and your plans for us, we pray in Jesus name, Amen.