“David, you may know the pleasure of having a child by whom this church will be built. Not thru your work, but through your child the dream will be fulfilled.”. It isn’t God’s judgment that’s coming on David as a consequence of wrong.

It is just God’s redirecting David’s plan and pronouncing, “This is a great resolve, but I say ‘no’ to you and I say ‘yes’ to your boy.

Well, was David not right to begin with—wrong in thinking about building the temple? It’s an issue of accepting God’s “no” and living alongside the poser of His will. And we predict God to package His plan for us just like we would. We’d like the logic that we use to be His logic. And when it’s not, we wonder what is wrong as it’s not working out like we might have worked it out. When God asserts no it isn’t always discipline or refusal. You have pursued His will ; you have wished to do His will.

With all good inclinations you announced, “By God’s grace I’m going to follow this.” And here you are, 30 or 40 years on, or perhaps only 5 years after, and it has not materialized. Now if you hear some folks, you can be put on a guilt-trip.

“You see there,” they are saying, “you set your heart on God, but you have run from Him. Maybe the road they’re traveling is God’s will for them, and it took His exclaiming “no” to get them on that right road. The thing we have got to do in our walk with the Lord God is to listen punctiliously from daily.