Pride goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall. Proverbs 16:18
King David knew that if the tide of sinful pride continued to rise, his nation would collapse spiritually. He knew that economic depression, moral disintegration, or military defeat inevitably follow spiritual decline.
So he did what all intelligent men should do when they reach the end of their ropes, he turned to God. Are you at this juncture in your life?
Do what David did, turn to God. He stopped asking God to destroy his enemies. (Psalm 5:8-10).
It was revealed to him by the Spirit of God that the spiritual tide of his nation could rise no higher than the spiritual level of his own heart.
So, he fell on his knees in utter humility and prayed this prayer “Search me, Oh God and know my heart, try me, and know my thoughts and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting (Psalm 139:23-24).
David appeals to God concerning his sincerity. He desires that as far as he was in the wrong, God would discover it to him.
Those that are upright can take comfort in God’s omniscience as a witness of their uprightness, and can with a humble confidence beg of him to search and try them, to discover them to themselves, for a good man desire to know the worst of himself and to discover them to others.
Here was a wise confession on the part of a great leader.
David knew that a people can rise no higher economically, scientifically and politically than the level of their spiritual resources. Here was a humble admission and an acknowledgement that a nation’s sickness can be attributed to its spiritual ills.
If we today could only realize that a nation can rise no, can be no stronger, and can be no better than the individuals, which compose that nation!
There is nothing wrong with this world. The trouble lies with the world’s people.
If the world is bad, it is the people who are bad.
If the world is confused, it is the people in the world who are confused. If this is a godless world, it is the people who are godless.
David realized this truth; and in wisdom, he concluded that he should start making things right in himself. Each one of us need reach that same conclusion.
As a teenager growing up in Montgomery County, the small town of Kilmichael, I often listened to the late Mr. Walter Dorris sing a song intitled “It’s Me, O Lord, Standing in the Need of Prayer.”
He would go on to say, “It’s not my father, not my mother, not my brother, not my sister, but it’s me, O Lord, standing in the need of prayer.”
In my closing, let us humbly cry as David did.
Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting (Psalm 139:23-24).
