The spirit of Absalom

Pastor Steve was teaching today on Psalm 63. It's a Psalm that David wrote in the desert, when Absalom had run him out of the kingdom. If that story isn't familiar to you, you can find it in 2 Samuel 13-17. The sermon was about what we do when God seems far away and we can't feel His presence. David turned his desert into a place of worship, and faith began to rise. It was a good sermon, but that wasn't the take home point for me today.

In the process of telling the story and setting the background, Steve said, "Beware of the spirit of Absalom." It was a side note really, but it struck a chord deep in my heart, and I stayed there for the rest of the service. Yes, I heard the rest of the sermon, but God was doing a deep work stirring in my heart and revealing some ugliness that I had been blind to. Like the surgeon's knife cutting - not to harm, but to heal.

Now, you need to know that I've been praying two prayers fairly regularly for some months now. One is that God will expose the blind spots in my life, so that He can deal with them and I can be free. The second is that God will root out anything that is not of Him at Salem Alliance church. I sense the church is on the cusp of seeing His power unleashed and we need to be a people purified and prepared to host the move of God's Holy Spirit. I just had no idea that the two prayers would cross paths and hit so close to home. :)

So this morning, as Steve preached, he identified the spirit of Absalom as the one that says, "If only I were in charge, I could do a better job." As soon as he said it, a light bulb came on in my head and I recognized the ugliness of that spirit at work in me. I have entertained that thought just recently. Oh, how crummy it feels when you see something like that at work in your life!!! And then to realize that I have allowed and courted it. Ugh! Yet, with exposure, comes freedom. Once I recognized the truth of Steve's words, and the Holy Spirit's conviction, I knew the way out.

Young Absalom was King David's son, and yet he wasn't content to wait on the Lord for promotion, he took it upon himself to attack David's leadership and position himself to seize the throne. If we look further back in the story, much further, we see a young David, with Saul as his king. Saul was unjust, vindictive, and rejected by the Lord God. YET, David would not lift a hand against the Lord's anointed. In sometimes ridiculous situations, he opted to leave his own future in the hands of God, and not attack Saul - when all around him would have said he was justified to fight back.

Absalom's is an insidious spirit of rebellion. David's is a spirit of humility and trust in the Living God. I have lived, for far too long, with the spirit of Absalom. Now, I want the spirit of David. So today, as our service ended with worship, I sat and cried and prayed - recognizing where I needed to confess sin to God - and repented of the rebellious spirit of Absalom. In that confession and repentance comes the gift of Jesus Christ to take authority over the evil spirit and renounce it in Jesus Name. I glanced up and saw our cross at the front of the worship center, and had a deep sense that God had done a mighty work on my behalf today. And for that I am grateful.