Waist Deep 2018 - February 22


I Kings 15: 5 For David had done what was right in the eyes of the Lord and had not failed to keep any of the Lord’s commands all the days of his life – except in the case of Uriah the Hittite. (NIV)


God has a habit of choosing flawed people to achieve great good.*


Have you ever been told not to “throw out the baby with the bathwater”? Do you even know what that means? I have some friends who perfectly illustrate this adage. (In order to “protect the innocent,” I can’t be specific about how.) Each of them has some very good and valuable qualities; each one loves and serves the Lord with those qualities; and each one has some personality flaws which cause others to avoid them. I have had the occasional bad experience with each of these friends but I have chosen to continue to value them for what they have to offer to me personally and to the Kingdom as a whole. Tossing out the clean baby with the dirty bathwater is a waste of time, soap, water, and a perfectly good baby.

In the life of David, we see God’s perspective on babies and bathwater. The Bible makes no attempt to hide David’s sins and “[f]or all times to come, both his sin and his return to the Lord became part of the Scriptures which would be read publicly.”* The dirty bathwater: David’s sins – including the big two, adultery and murder. The clean baby: David loved God; he never worshipped other gods; he repented and paid the earthly consequences of his sins; God forgave him.

Most of us go through life committing sins that will never be made public – or become an object lesson through the ages. We should all hope not to be identified and remembered by our failures and weak-nesses. “At the end of your life, your sin can be your exception, like it was for David.”*



The Lord brought his Son to earth through unlikely characters – the humble, the troubled, the flawed.*


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