Our Need for Renewal

David’s Spiritual Drift and the Need for Renewal

In reflecting on 1 Samuel 30, the concept of renewal taking place in David's life comes to the forefront. David has been on this spiritual decline. But then the passage ends with restoration and deliverance for the people. The pendulum that this swings. The thing that creates the reversal that leads to restoration is the renewal that takes place in David’s life.

This moment is so crucial in David’s life. Everything is trending in the wrong direction and if David and his men are not careful, they will end up missing the work that God wants to do through them.

Spiritual Drift in the Church Today

There are parallels for us today. Just as David and his men will play a distinct role in God’s work in the nation of Isreal, so God works through his Church to accomplish his purposes in the world. But, like David and his men, we also need renewal.

Statistically the lives of the average Christian aren’t any different than non-believers, our Biblical knowledge - what we need to instruct us about God and life in godliness - is at a state that is often termed illiterate. Our modern worship services are often geared to make us enjoy and feel good, but leave us little space for prayer, repentance or any calls to be transformed. We’ve fallen into the trap of busying our lives like the culture around us so that we have little space for reflection, fellowship, community, and discipleship outside the Sunday morning service.

Living the Christian life is often understood as adherence to some general moral principles. We are taught a number of ‘best practices’ that help us live better lives that make “better decisions and fewer regrets.” But our knowledge of God, our experience of him, and the richness of his power and grace toward us are no longer deeply personal and deeply experienced.

We need renewal. David needs renewal.

How God Uses Crisis to Bring Renewal

But, the real warning of this story is that we are prone to drift and God will allow us to face things in life that make us aware of our need for God. He’ll bring us to the end of ourselves, he’ll let us go our own way and wander into a valley so that we might turn to him and experience a renewal that leaves us deeper and more grounded in him.

Don’t be content with your own walk with God. There is more and God’s desire is to lead us more deeply into his heart - to experience more of his presence, his power, his love, his grace, his strength. Like I said, the grace of the past season - it leaks. What got you through the past won’t be enough to keep your gas tank full for the next stage in this journey. You’re going to need to a rebirth a re-new-al. And it only comes when you come to the end of yourself, your efforts, and you find comfort waiting on God.

From David’s Renewal to Christ’s Restoration

David achieved this great victory and restoration for all the people. It shared that restoration with all. And in the same way, Christ also achieved a victory on the cross that brought restoration to us. He set the captives free, he gave back what was lost - and he did it so that you and I might come to him and be made new and whole and to grow more and more into what God wants and designed for our lives.

Our world needs that restoration. You and I need that restoration. But, it begins with renewal. If we want to see God stir our baptismal waters. If we want to see lives completely reversed, marriages restored, families made whole. If we want to see a diverse church of young, old, single, married, and ethnically diverse - a reflection of the day when all things are restored - then we need renewal first.

You and I need renewal. And yet, we probably don’t recognize the drift that has taken place in the US church. Statistics reveal that Christians are burned out, stagnant, and lonely. Materialism, porn, and anxiety are constant struggles for Christ followers. The average Christian has a shallow understanding of the Gospel and its implications for life. It has a shallow understanding of God’s word. We have an acquaintance level of knowledge with God but know little about how to abide in Him and know him deeply.

We need renewal.

How We Find Renewal and Become Agents of Restoration

Seminary professor, Richard Lovelace, remarks that “Much of what is currently passed off as Christianity is actually a set of techniques for self-improvement, not a life of faith energized by the Holy Spirit.” He goes on to say, “The tragedy of much contemporary Christianity is that it has learned to live with too little of God.”

So how do we find renewal? By recognizing the drift in our lives. To repent corporately but also personally. To learn as a community about God as he reveals himself in scripture and through that to learn the rhythms of prayer, confession, and worship. It’s not easy work, but our soul desperately needs it. OUr world desperately needs men and women who will allow God’s renewal to work out of them and to bring restoration and healing through the Gospel to our world.

David found renewal and through this it mustered his men to go and do the work of restoration. He embraced the lonely moment by turning to God and praying and surrendering and worshipping his father in heaven. God strengthened him and prepared him to achieve a work of restoration.

So Christ embraced a lonely hour in the garden of Gethsemene. Alone he prayed and it says that an angel of the Lord strengthened him. And he approached the cross so that he might achieve restoration for all who would come and receive it from him. And he did it so that you and I might be restored in our alienation and enmity with God. So that we might no longer be slaves to the power of sin. And until that final day of complete restoration, God wants to build us up into a holy people who proclaim His restoration to the world. So we must continually be renewed in Him.