2 SAMUEL 4

What made Rekab and Baanah think that David would rejoice over their murder of Saul’s son Ish-Bosheth? Didn’t they remember how David reacted to the Amalekite who claimed to have killed Saul? In their zeal to secure the throne for David, they did something very foolish... and paid for it with their own lives.

Here again, I have to admire David—not necessarily for his solution to the problem, but for his utter refusal to jump ahead of God’s timing in the plan to bring him to the throne. In a culture where blood feuds were common, where families who were at odds would wipe each other out, David refused to enter into violence against Saul or the members of his family. To me, this is another flash of the divine coming through David—one of the reasons he was called a man after God’s own heart.

You see, God doesn’t get what He wants by force either. Indeed, He has mysterious ways of fulfilling His will for our lives, but He never resorts to the use of force to accomplish His purpose. Ultimately, force is contrary to the philosophy of love. (I say "ultimately" because I think we often look at some of the Old Testament stories of God’s discipline and apply the label of "force" when, perhaps, it isn’t warranted.)

Love doesn’t force itself on others, and it doesn’t force its way on others either. What God wants is for us to decide to be friends with Him, to engage freely in a love relationship with Him, our Creator. And no part of that process can include force. He can’t force us to love Him, and He can’t retaliate against us if we don’t. (If He does, we were never really free to begin with.) God doesn’t use force to get what He wants, and the closer we come to Him, the more I think we will also emulate that attitude.