Ashley Beach-Author and Storyteller

It is hard to follow after the heart of God. Even in the garden of Eden when everything was perfect and everything and everyone He had created lived and dwelt in perfect harmony with Him, there was temptation and desire to fall away. Sins and power and fame and desire pull at us and tempt us to distraction. Sometimes those temptations push us to a point where we give in and succumb to the pressures of those desires. How are we following after the heart of God when we do those things? Sometimes, those desires have been so much a part of our lives for so long, they’ve become a part of us and we don’t know how to lay those things down at the cross where Jesus’ blood was poured out for those very things and live a life in full redemption. How do we come back from the lifelong sins? How do we break free from those constant desires and temptations of the flesh? How can we follow after the heart of God?

King David was and is known as a man after God’s own heart, but he was not without his own desires and temptations. Many remember him as the youngest and smallest son of Jesse. A youth that wasn’t even thought of when the prophet Samuel came to Jesse’s house to anoint one of his sons to become king after God ended Saul’s reign. He was first and foremost a shepherd. A boy of seeming insignificance, but one who grew up with a heartfelt desire to follow God, and that’s why God chose him.

As David grew and faced many, many, many trials in his young life–bears, lions, giants, lunatic kings trying to kill him, constant fleeing and hiding– he grew in his faith and though there were many times in his life that made him cry out to God in distress and despair because of the dark circumstances he once again found himself in, those were the times he found himself closest to God’s heart and those times would later shape and influence his life. But, he was not without his own temptations and faults.

When David had finally been crowned king of Israel, a lot of pressures and temptations came with that crown. He was suddenly the one to hear everyone complaints and cast judgements. He was still the head of the army and an active part of uniting the kingdom of Israel and taking back every piece of land God had promised them, creating and establishing for the first time the whole nation of Israel as God had intended. Pressures to take and marry many wives to make alliances and peace with other kingdoms and nations. The pressures of being father and husband to all and dealing with the internal disputes that came from within his own household. All these things started to slowly chip away at his time spent with God and kept him from studying God’s Word and keeping up his pursuit after God’s heart. The slow and subtle separation from God and refocusing of his attention on the many other things in his his life brought David to a place of weakness and vulnerability. Things he would have never considered doing before subconsciously became things he didn’t consider to be bad or against God’s will. A subtle becoming ok with other things began to take root in his mind and his heart. His celebration of the festivals and feasts designated by God became rote celebrations that no longer held the same tenacity and connection to his God as they once had. The mighty king that had long had the desire to go after God’s heart had turned away from that God without even realizing it. And then, he fell. Unfortunately, David’s fall from grace was anything but graceful, and he fell in a greater way than he probably never imagined would have been possible.

If you know anything of David’s story, you probably know of his impossible and unlikely victory against Goliath as a boy, and his sin with Bathsheba. His sin with her, committed under the false guise that he wasn’t doing anything wrong because he had stepped so far away from God and His law that he didn’t even realize he was falling hard and fast into a sinful lifestyle, would be his undoing. He took Bathsheba and slept with her, convinced no one would ever find out. But, she got pregnant and he was prompted to cover up his sin instead of confessing it to God. He called her husband home from the war to have him sleep with his wife to make it look like the baby was his. Her husband’s contrasting righteousness that had at one time been David’s, was his further undoing. Uriah refused to go into his wife when the rest of the men were on the battlefield, so David had to find another way to keep the world from finding out what he did. Murder. He sent word with Uriah to the commander of the army to put Uriah at the heart of the battle so he would be killed. David then took Bathsheba as his wife to explain the baby that would likely look like him and not Bathsheba’s husband. David’s separation from God’s heart led him to commit adultery and later murder, and filled his heart with deceit as he did whatever he could to cover his sin and lied to avoid losing his place on the throne of Israel. It wasn’t until the prophet Nathan called him out and prophesied the death of the child born out of their sin that David returned to the heart of God.

It is so easy to lose sight of the true heart of God. We get distracted by life’s hardships or problems. We get caught up in the busyness of life and forget to pray or read our Bible one day. And then 2 days. Suddenly it’s been months or years since you’ve really prayed or been in God’s Word. You’re still going to church, but you aren’t really worshipping anymore. You’re too focused on the other things going on in your life. Your mind is distracted by the other things you’d rather be doing or thinking of things that you want that will fill the holes of loneliness and depression and the desires to forget all the bad or feel loved and wanted, even if just for one night. You’ve lost sight of God and His Word and don’t even realize the fatal path you’ve put yourself on or see the deep pits of sin you’ve placed yourself into.

“How can a young man keep his way pure? By keeping it according to your word.”

We were never meant to live these lives on our own. Everyone of us was created with the desire for fellowship and relationship and we were made to have close and deep relationship with God. But, just as great as the desire for God and His presence is the desires of the flesh. To serve ourselves and get and take what we want because we feel we can and have a right to it. Our greatest struggles often come from deciding between our selfish desires and God’s desires for our hearts. As pleasing and fulfilling as the desires of this world may seem at the time, they always end in disappointment and heartache because they are only meant to bring us temporary happiness and pleasure. David had everything this world could offer. He was king. He was powerful. He was handsome. He had fame and popularity. He was rich beyond imagination. He was a known hero and warrior. He had many wives and would never want for a woman’s attention. He wrote music that was widely performed and recited. He had all the treasures and riches a person could have on this earth, and still he was never truly fulfilled. Clearly, because even when he had everything, he still wanted Bathsheba and took her.

After his son that was born out of his sin with Bathsheba died, as Nathan had prophesied would happen, David was broken in ways he had never been before. The stark reality of all the things he had done hit him and his eyes were opened to how far he had fallen away from the God that had once captured his heart. His heart was completely torn with the grief and overwhelming guilt of his actions. He had stopped following after the heart of God and had done so many things he never imagined he would do. And his son had to pay the price for those sins. A price he himself should have paid.

I don’t know what you’re life has been like. I don’t know what trials and hardships you’ve faced. I don’t know what desires and temptations you’ve given into. Maybe you’ve had temporary moments of giving into the desires of your fleshly heart. Or maybe, like me, you’ve had a single sin that’s been a constant companion and stumbling block in your life for as long as you can remember, and though you dream of freedom, you can’t seem to ever quite get there. Or, maybe, you’ve found yourself on a path so far away from God and you don’t even know how you got there. Maybe you’ve experienced the slow and subtle separating of your heart from God’s and don’t even realize or see the depths of your sin and where that path has taken you like David.

It doesn’t matter where you are or what depths you’ve plunged into time and time again. What made David a man after God’s own heart was his repentance that brought him back to the heart of God and his constant coming back to Him. David’s life was radically changed after that day and his repentance is one that has reached into eternity and is written in the Bible so we know what it means to become white as snow after living in the depths of our sins and desires. David never again walked so far from the heart of God after that moment. He laid his broken soul down before God and asked His forgiveness for every sin he had committed. He knew he was unworthy and undeserving of God’s love and grace, but he knew his life was nothing without it. He humbled himself before the God who had always been faithful and allowed himself to be covered in God’s all-reaching grace and mercy and committed himself to serving that God the rest of his life. He chose to follow after God’s heart–again.

I am far from perfect and will be the first to tell you that I often feel so unworthy to be writing these stories. I know the deeper message within that God has written throughout these stories, and yet my own heart doesn’t always follow after the heart of God. Many hardships and trials have distracted me throughout my life and so much like David, I’ve found myself on the other side of a shift I didn’t even know had happened or was happening. I’ve found myself in recent years in that place where I somehow stopped reading God’s Word or listening for His voice and let the things of this world get in the way and create the subtle separation between me and my God. Like David, I at some point found myself in a place that was different than before when the trials of life pushed me closer to God in my younger years and somehow made it easier to pursue Him despite the hard times. I had stopped following after the heart of God.

I write this and share these things as a glimpse behind the heart of my new series titled Heart of God. The story of David and his being known as a man after God’s own heart is foundational in starting this new series and is foundational in my own life and faith. I’ve never related to any other person in the Bible as much as I have David throughout my life and have often turned to his psalm of repentance in my deepest times of falling and failing in my life. His psalms that talk of the weariness of his bones from his trials and the soaking of his couch from his tears have been relatable too. But, God wrote a powerful story with David’s life and though his greatest failures were made known to the world, they were shown to the world as a picture of the great redemption he experienced when he humbled himself and repented of his sins and asked for God’s mercy and forgiveness. God forgave him and his story was made that much stronger and beautiful because of his failures.

Your story can be the same, my friends. As unbelievable as it is for me much of the time, my story can be the same. I have so often been overwhelmed by the fact that I’m coming before my God once again, confessing the same sin and sometimes feel I shouldn’t keep coming back to Him because I’m annoyed and frustrated that I keep making the same mistake over and over and over again and am grieved at how much it hurts Him every time I do it or fall into that temptation and give in. But, He never stops loving me and that’s something I need to keep reminding myself of. As Paul said, God’s all-encompassing love is not permission to keep sinning just because we’ve been forgiven of that sin. Christ’s death paid for that sin, but because of that death, I should strive even more not to sin.

No one is righteous in and of themselves. We all fall short and fail time and time and time again. We will all experience times in our lives when we aren’t as close to God as we should be or we let ourselves get distracted by both the pleasures and the hardships of this world. But, no one is ever too lost or too far beyond the reach of God’s love. Sometimes our lives have to be shaken up to realize the places we’re living in or face the consequences of our sins. Hopefully no one has to experience rhe loss David did to awaken him to his reality, but sometimes it takes drastic and tragic circumstances to open our eyes and hearts to how far from God we’ve fallen in order for our hearts to be turned back to Him. As tragic as those things may be, nothing compares to the true penalties for our sins that we deserve. In truth, each and every one of us deserves the agonizing death Christ endured on the cross. Worse than death is the eternal separation from God’s presence that we will experience if we don’t repent and surrender our hearts to God. None of us deserve His grace or mercy or the blessings that come with those gifts, but He gives it to us and He gives it to us freely.

This was a long post, and I guess God laid a lot on my heart to share, but I wanted to share my heart with this new series coming out. I’m not worthy of writing these stories and I still struggle. I still have trouble following after the heart of God on a daily basis and am re-learning how to renew my mind in Him and the importance of hiding His Word in my heart so I can stand against the enemy. But, somehow, God has chosen me to write and share the stories that I’m not even writing anymore, He is. And He’s choosing to use me even though I constantly fail. His strength is made perfect in my weaknesses, of which there are many, and I pray that despite my failures, God will use these stories as a way to reach people’s hearts in the same way He’s used them to reach mine.

I pray that if you’ve strayed from the heart of God, that you will find a way back to Him. And, if you’ve never experienced the heart of God, I pray He will reveal that heart to you in a mighty and powerful way. And if you’ve stayed close to the heart of God, blessings on you as you continue your pursuit after the heart of God.

May you experience the depths of God’s love and forgiveness in such a way that it reveals to you the beauty of God’s heart and the beauty He desires for your heart.