Better Than David?

I heard someone once admit that his major and minor setbacks were evidence that he was not healing and that his stumbling had a direct correlation to his trust in God - or rather, lack thereof.  His comment reminded me of King David, a ruler referred to as a "man after God's own heart" (1Samuel 13:14;Acts13:22). Not only was he a king  he was a  warrior, father, and husband. He had it all - or so it seemed. 

No one suspected a man of his stature would revert  to old dysfunctional behaviors, but they were wrong. David's frailties were ever before him and inevitably drove him to his knees in tearful pleading to his God.  The story of this upright man is particularly crucial to our understanding of what a new life "in Christ' looks like. 

You can't get more credentialed than David - impossible yet, he was humble enough to exclaim, "Have mercy on me, O LORD, for I am in trouble;  My eye wastes away with grief, Yes, my soul and my body! For my life is spent with grief,  And my years with sighing;  My strength fails because of my iniquity,  And my bones waste away." Psalm 31:9,10.  It was his humility (ability to admit weakness) that saved him from a life of ego, pride and competition.  He didn't view himself as less messed up or more spiritual  than others but instead, admitted before God and the universe the exact nature of his wrongs. David's admittal of moral failture was evidence in itself that he did indeed trust God and ratified God's promise to David that he was a new creature in truth.  What does this mean for us? A new life in truth is not void of mistakes but rather of denial of those mistakes.

Are we any better than David? Should we pride ourselves into thinking we've come a long way in the last few thousand years and our needs are not as desperate as those who went before us? Since the beginning, the human race has been in need of the truth about God and not just printed words in a sacred book with gilted edges, but in an intimate day-to-day relationship.