I Chronicles 17:23 Therefore now, LORD, let the thing that thou hast spoken concerning thy servant and concerning his house be established for ever, and do as thou hast said.
When your Ambitions are Thwarted
All of us have had the frustration of seeing our intentions thwarted. Maybe one morning everything seems to go the wrong way. Everyone and everything seems to be conspiring against you. It’s a little bit like my maxim that the world conspires against a person in a hurry. If you are in a hurry, the slowest people in the world are going to be in front of you from the moment you are in a hurry until the time you are late.
What if it is your entire life’s ambition that is thwarted? What if it is a spiritual ambition that is thwarted? David knew what that felt like because it was in David’s heart to build a house for God. Because it was such a noble ambition, the prophet Nathan just assumed that it was exactly what God wanted. Well, God told the prophet, “Go and tell David my servant, Thus saith the LORD, Thou shalt not build me a house to dwell in.” This was a shock. This was not just a big ambition; it was a good and godly ambition, yet God explains very clearly that it was not His intent that David should build the temple. It was God’s intent that Solomon, David’s son, should build it.
This story helps us to think about what we should do when our ambition, the biggest and best one, is thwarted. First, be humble. Verse 16 says, “And David the king came and sat before the LORD, and said, Who am I, O LORD God, and what is mine house, that thou hast brought me hitherto?” None of us can ever recover from any thwarted ambition until we come to a place of humility where God is God and we are not. That is a hard place to be, especially when we think our ambitions are both big and beautiful.
Second, be teachable. David was very teachable in how he replied to God. David says, “Therefore now, LORD, let the thing that thou hast spoken concerning thy servant and concerning his house be established for ever, and do as thou hast said.” It was not as David had wished, but it was as God had said. David was teachable to what God wanted. At the end of the day, what God intended was greater than what David had planned. God’s perspective was much broader than the one David could have as a mere man.
Third, be resilient. I like to think of resilience as a tough flexibility. We are not talking about a leaf shaking in the wind, but a toughness that is flexible. In verse 26, David said, “And now, LORD, thou art God, and hast promised this goodness unto thy servant: now therefore let it please thee to bless the house of thy servant, that it may be before thee for ever: for thou blessest, O LORD, and it shall be blessed for ever.” David was resilient; he didn’t just give up. This was not the end of David’s story or his relationship with the temple. In fact, it was the beginning of what God wanted to do with David’s life in regards to the temple.
Are your ambitions thwarted today? Don’t give up early. Be humble, be teachable, and be resilient in whatever God gives you to do.