Like David, Unlike Solomon

Sometimes ago I listened to two people argue and honestly, the content of the argument I find laughable. Jaiye believed that his friend Segun is taking life especially spiritual life too seriously. He believes his friend is taking spiritual warfare too seriously and cannot comprehend why this guy had to wage war so much in the place of prayer for every little thing, he just couldn’t comprehend why things won’t just work for him by simple faith. 

On the other hand, Segun couldn’t get past the fact that Jaiye’s life is too simple for a believer. He hardly struggles for anything. The promotion comes at just the right time and his prayers are typically lazy but rather potent with answers compared to him; he even considered the possibility that he might be suffering from wrong believing, he tried living loosely like Segun for a while but the outcome wasn’t palatable. 

Here’s the challenge, Jaiye and Segun are two sides of a coin. There’s nothing wrong with either of them actually. This is just like the case of David and Solomon. David was king in the time of war, everything in his life had to be by war. He fought for practically everything, survived childhood fighting lions and bears; he grew up anointed for kingship but he literarily had to fight to sit on the throne. David’s fighting was so much that God attested to the fact that his hands were too stained with blood and he couldn’t build a temple for him (1 Chronicles 28:3)

On the other hand, Solomon had everything settled before he was born. Call him the trust fund baby and you won’t be wrong. He was the product of the worst moment of David’s life yet he was considered the successor of David. The God who knows the end graced Solomon with so much wisdom, it may not make sense to us, why Solomon was allowed to build the temple, live recklessly without constraint and still hold the kingdom together till his demise. 

I guess we will never be able to fully comprehend these things but one thing is clear, when David tried to live like Solomon, he got into trouble. This is the critical point of this discussion. God has allotted the path of everyone, if your portion is to live like David, there’s no point trying to be a Solomon or arrogantly looking at them like some spoilt brat getting everything they never worked for. If on the other hand, you are lucky to be a Solomon don’t look down on David as though the things happening in his life are nothing but the consequences of his ill actions. 

It is just as the teacher concluded in Ecclesiastes 9:11 “I returned and saw under the sun that the race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong, neither is bread to the wise nor riches to men of intelligence and understanding nor favour to men of skill, but time and chance happen to them all”