God said: I found someone! That other one that I had was no good! The one that was raised up, didn't do what I needed him to do. He failed to realise that, when I anointed him, and raised him up, and positioned him to be king - it was so I could get something done. What was in the heart of God, was way beyond Saul's comprehension; and so, in the end, because Saul just wouldn't cooperate, and do what God wanted to do… God had to remove him.
Bit of a tragedy, isn't it? If I won't fulfil what God called me to do, then God certainly will find someone to take my place; and the difference will be, that person will say ‘yes’, when I said ‘no’. I don't want to be like that! I have a fear of the Lord – I want to keep on that edge, keep growing. I never want You to look and say: he wasn't doing what I needed him to do, so I'll find someone else - but that is what happened with Saul.
The Bible says - “I have found a man after My own heart, who will do all My will”. He has ‘found’ him, meaning that He's been looking. God is looking for people. Why? Because His kingdom will never advance without them. People will never get saved unless God has someone to represent Him. Are you such a man? Are you such a woman? Are you a person that will represent the Lord this year? Are you a person that will make a difference this year? That's what God wants to know! He's looking for them. He's looking for people like that.
2 Chronicles 16:9 – “The eyes of the Lord go to and fro, through the earth, that He might find someone whose heart is loyal to Him, that He might work powerfully on their behalf”.
It's not a position. It's not a title. Do you have a heart after God?
God said: “I've found a man that is after My heart”. In other words, I have found someone who is desperate to find what I'm like, and what I love, and what I want to do in the earth. He's not a guy that's sort of sitting back, and just saying a little prayer, and get on with his life. Here's a man who wants to know what is on My heart to do, in the day he lives.
Look back in the Bible at all these great men - they lived in a generation, and God touched their lives. God touched David. The first thing He says about him - he ‘pursued the heart of God’. He wasn't just a guy who had a good idea of ‘being a king’. He was a guy with a pursuit, and passion, for a relationship with God - a pursuit to know what God is like.
Jer. 9:24 – “For in these I delight… that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord, exercising lovingkindness, judgement, and righteousness in the earth”
God delights in some things. There are things that He loves; and when you do the things, He really starts to come and take notice of you. He loves people who will pursue Him and be in love with Him; not just sing songs or clap - its far more than that. Their longing is to get to know Him, and understand how He thinks, and what He likes, what He dislikes, and to find ways to please Him.
He said: I've found someone who's got a heart after Me, and he will do what I want. Why? Because that's the pursuit of his life - discovering My heart. It's on the heart of God to see people saved - to see people reached for Christ. Here is the first thing we see - the pursuit of God's heart.
Acts 13:36 – “For David, after he had served his own generation by the will of God, fell asleep”.
1) The pursuit of God's heart
2) He was a history maker.
He was not content to just live an ordinary life. The overflow of his pursuit of God was that he changed a generation. He became a history maker, in that he so impacted the day he lived, that everything in the nation changed. The government changed, the finances changed, the social structure changed, the way people related to God changed. Everything changed. He was a man who literally wrote history!