A King Must Rule From A Secure Place

A king must rule from a secure place. Our hearts determine if we rule as stable, secure leaders or unstable, insecure leaders. Palms 73:1 says “Surely God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart. But as for me, my feet had almost slipped; I had nearly lost my foothold. For I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.” Under the old covenant the Psalmist understood that his relationship with the Father was based in heart purity and outward behavior, i.e. the better you are toward God, the better God is toward you. However, under the new covenant that relationship changed by way of Jesus’ death and resurrection. God is good toward us all the time! Our purity of heart will not affect the Father’s goodness toward us. However, our heart attitude will affect our choices, our judgment, and our leadership and have earthly consequences. We risk losing focus and getting off track in our call, our assignment and our destiny. The Father’s grace is there to keep our relationship with Him intact, but we experience the temporal consequences of getting off track when we slip.

Note that the Psalmist said ‘my feet almost slipped’. He knew his thoughts and emotions were bringing him to envy someone else’s success, specifically success gained through wrong motives and methods. To ‘slip’ means ‘to move from a secure place, to lose traction’. The Psalmist almost lost his spiritual traction because of a heart condition.

What does slippage look like in your world? For the small business owner, it’s the business across the street that expands and succeeds using bait and switch tactics while you
barely hold your own with honest representation of your products. For the experienced employee seeking promotion, it’s the novice in the next cubicle who ‘brown nosed’ the boss and got the promotion. For the man or woman in ministry it’s the minister down the road attracting crowds with flashy lights, charismatic clamor and spiritual junk food, while you barely keep the lights on as you offer spiritual meat and language of life. Don’t move from your secure footing!!! The outward success of someone else must not rule your thoughts or control your emotions. You rule them! When faced with the Psalmist’s dilemma we must first ‘take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ’ (2 Cor. 10:5). Submit those thoughts to Jesus……and they will submit to Him by departing from you. Do it 20 times if you have to! Secondly, bind up the liar, thief, and destroyer; the demons that seek to influence your thoughts and emotions. They must obey you (Eph. 1:22,23)! Third, check the depths of your soul for the trigger point and weakness that opened you to entertaining and meditating upon someone else’s position in life. Shore up that point in your soul by identifying it and deleting it (James3:13-15).

Some of you may have already gotten off track as I described above. There’s good news! We have a Redemptive Father! Change you mind. Just jump back on track. Restart the engines and move ahead. He’s not mad at you, He’s glad at you for getting past it and moving ahead with your focus on Him, not on them. This is the secure place where you will not slip.