There are two kinds of heartache you are likely to experience in this world. The first kind is awful, terrible, horrible but — in the end — it is bearable. It is the kind of heartache that pulls us closer together. You see this when a loved one dies, and the family draws tighter together than ever before. We’re seeing this kind of heartache among those who have lost all their earthly belongings in the wake of Katrina. Families, churches, entire communities are drawing closer together and providing support for one another to get through the heartache that they are all enduring.

But there is another kind of heartache that is far worse than any other. It is the heartache and pushes us farther apart. The heartache of divorce. The heartache of severed relationships is a pain that lingers far longer than any other.

Why should this be so? I think it’s because this second kind of heartache is further outside of God’s will for humanity. God has set out to create community — a group of people rightly related to him and rightly relating to themselves and others. Anything that tears at the fabric of God’s community goes against his will. What God has brought together, let no one put asunder.

Question: Did David love Absalom?

I think it’s obvious that he did. He wept over the death of Absalom and cried out how he wished he had died instead. The problem is that sometimes love isn’t enough. That is, if you define love as a strong emotional feeling, then it is not right to say all we need is love.

Feeling love isn’t enough. Love has to actually do something for it to be enough. And sometimes even then….

I want to pick up the story of King David again, and I want to spend a little time looking at a small episode involving Jonathan’s son, Mephibosheth.

Mephibosheth was five years old when his father and grandfather died. News of this sad event threw the household into a panic. Mephibosheth’s nurse grabbed up the five-year-old and, in her haste, dropped him — crippling him in both feet.

A couple of observations: First, the nurse’s inability to calm her own anxiety made what appeared to be a bad situation much worse. How often in our own anxious reactivity do we just end up further complicating things?

Second, think what was communicated to Mephibosheth. If the new King ever gets his hands on you, he’s going to kill you. David had no such intention, but the five-year-old didn’t know that. Mephibosheth goes on to spend the next 20 years or so hiding from a King who only wanted to show him kindness.

It makes me realize just how important it is to give children accurate information about God. I’ve known so many people who spent decades hiding from God because someone had told them he was angry and cranky and didn’t have their best interests at heart. Because of the nurse’s anxiety, she crippled the boy physically. Because of her misinformation about the King’s true intentions, she crippled the boy emotionally.

What a tragedy it is to know that our false ideas about God’s character and nature often cripple children spiritually as well.

As I sat with my friend Randy Thomas watching Married Life Live’s showcase for the Drive Conference, an interesting thought occurred to me. It’s not fully formed yet, but it goes something like this: Northpoint trusts people (and God) more than most churches.

We watched a video testimony about a couple who decided a few years ago to get intentional about their marriage. They started attending Married Life Live — a quarterly event for couples. They get involved in a small group. They took the initiative.

They did not have to be guilted into doing this. They did not have someone calling to remind them to be there. They did not have someone holding their hand through the process. If they had decided not to do this, I’m not sure anyone would have noticed.

Married Life Live is an event for people who mostly want to be there. Serving on the planning team that creates the event, I know we work at creating something people want to attend. We want people to walk out of there thinking, “I might not agree with everything they said, but I’m sure coming back for the next one.”

If you don’t want to come, you don’t have to. But if you want to grow, you have to take the initiative and the responsibility. No one’s going to do it for you. And no one’s going to make you do it.

Northpoint works hard to make sure you know what the next step is — to make it easy for you to know what taking initiative and responsibility looks like. But do it — don’t do it — it’s up to you.

This is not the way most churches think. Most churches think we have to create structure that keeps people from falling through the cracks. We have to do something that keeps them tethered to the church. It’s like we’re afraid that if there’s a chance of them leaving, they will. I wonder if church leaders think that because if they didn’t have to be there, they sure wouldn’t come.

All of this seems to reflect a lack of trust in people. We don’t really believe that people will really want to come if they don’t really have to.

Maybe more than that, it seems to reflect a lack of trust in God. Do we really believe that God is drawing people to himself without having to rely on our guilt-trips and manipulation?

What if we worked hard to create environments where people actually want to come instead of making people feel like they have to come?

I get to visit churches all over the country. It’s part of my job. And everywhere I go I find people praying for vision. Church leaders repeatedly ask God to give them a vision for their church. I’ve spent the past couple of days with 1,500 pastors, and they tell me: We’re just asking God to really give us a vision for our church.

Here’s the problem: I think God has already given most of these people a vision for their church. If you ask them, they have something in mind. They generally know what they’d like their church to look like. They just have no idea how to get there.

What they need to do is stop praying for vision and start praying for strategy.

And then they need to ask God for a spine.

I say this periodically, but I don’t say it often enough. I am amazed at what I get to do. Last night I sat in a room with church leaders from 37 states, 11 countries on five continents. The people there represented a total church attendance of more than 450,000 people. Think of that: the things we are going to talk about this week at the Drive Conference will impact nearly half a million people.

And I work with the people who created this conference.

Granted, I didn’t do much here. Mostly, I sat and quietly nodded while Reggie Joiner rubbed his face and asked, “Does that make sense?”

Here’s the issue on the table: so many leaders have bought into the myth that if they tinker enough with their churches they will eventually create wholesale change. But it doesn’t work like that. At some point in time, if a church is going to survive for the next generation, you are going to have to introduce radical changes.

Tinkering is for people who don’t really have the courage to make the changes they know need to be made. Tinkering allows a leader to trick people into thinking things won’t really go too far. Tinkering frustrates everyone. Tinkering says we’re not really serious about this whole project. Tinkering is a way of maintaining status quo while still managing to be irritating at the same time.

For a generation I heard people say that there are two speeds at which you can change a church: slow and slower. That’s dumb. That’s foolish. That’s irresponsible.

God doesn’t seem to be interested in tinkering. He calls men and women in the Bible to introduce radical change. Abraham. Moses. Joshua. Samuel. Josiah. Jonah. Peter. Paul.

Come to think of it, the church calls people to radical change in the most fundamental way. We do not call people to tinker with their way of life; we call them to repentance — to radical change. Why in the world would we ask people to do something we aren’t willing to do ourselves?

Quick question: Why was Jesus called the Son of David?

By that I mean: why David? Why not the Son of Moses or the Son of Abraham or the Son of Elijah?

Hard to believe it’s been a year since I started this crazy thing. Thanks to all of you who make this a regular read — especially those of you who leave comments. You have made this an incredibly rewarding experience.

Shall we go one more year?

David has gone from drifting to blowing through yellow lights. And everything is going according to his plan. He sees Bathsheba, finds out who she is, sends for her, has sex with her and sends her home. Done.

And then the first cracks start to show in his plan.

Bathsheba sends word that she’s pregnant. Up to this point, it’s been David doing the sending. He finds out it’s not so good when you’re on the receiving end. This wasn’t in the script.

How you respond when things start to unravel will determine largely how bad things get.

At this moment David could choose the end the whole thing. Apologize to Bathsheba, her husband, his own family, the nation, God, whomever. He could call the whole thing off and end it right here. But he doesn’t do that.

Instead, David says, “I can handle this. I’m the King. No one needs to know about this. I’ll take care of it.”

Sin always does this. It refuses to stay on the script. It takes on a life of its own and refuses to be controlled by you. You start out being in control of it, but eventually it begins to control you. And it does so by promising the same old thing: You can be in charge. In essence, you can be God.

Here’s David doing all the sending, moving people here and there like pieces on a chessboard. First it’s bring that woman to me. Then it’s bring me her husband, and I’ll fix this mess. Then, when Uriah refuses to cooperate it’s take this letter (which contains your death warrant) to Joab.

The same man who sang praises to God, defied the enemies of the Lord and danced with all his might at the thought of God’s presence is now filled with deceit and hypocrisy and violence. David was thoroughly committed to a strategy of cover-up.

When it starts to unravel, when the consequences of your sin first show themselves, you will find yourself in one of two places: honesty and repentance or cover-up and more sin. The path you choose will determine just how bad it’s going to get.

When it comes to yellow lights, there are two kinds of people in this world: those who slow down and those who speed up. I used to be one kind, and then I had kids. Now I am one of the most cautious drivers on the road. I don’t think I’m a hesitant driver, but if it’s close I’m going to err on the side of caution. My cargo is too precious. The stakes are too high.

David sends someone to find out about this woman he sees bathing on the rooftop. The guy comes back and says, “That’s Bathsheba. She’s Eliam’s daughter and Uriah’s wife.”

Translation: Slow down, David. This is someone’s wife and someone’s daughter. You know these guys.

Let me say a word to the men who read this blog: When you find yourself tempted by the form of a woman, stop and remind yourself that you’re looking at someone’s daughter. At some point in time, someone held that tiny baby girl and kissed the top of her head and dreamed dreams of what she would be like when she got older. And they never imagined that she would become an object for you to use to gratify your lust. If you have kids, think forward to a time when someone will want to use your child in that way. What feelings does that inspire in you?

If that’s not a sexual buzzkill — see a counselor.

Usually, when you’re about to take the plunge and do something you know is wrong, there will be a little inner voice, a message from your conscience or the words of a friend ringing in your ears. That’s a yellow light. Be careful here. Proceed with caution.

David comes to this yellow light, and if he was really in a good place with God he probably would have slowed down, thought this through and come to a full and complete stop. But thinking is the last thing David wants to do. He wants to feel something. So, he pushes the accelerator to the floorboard and speeds through the intersection without thinking of what this could do to someone’s wife and daughter — not to mention his own heart and his own family.

Maybe you’ve moved past drifting. You haven’t crossed any lines yet, but you’ve got a plan forming in your mind. And God brought you to this blog to ask you this question: “Will you stop and think about the possible consequences of crossing this line?”

Maybe it’s sex. Maybe it’s a relationship you know isn’t right. Maybe it’s a financial choice. Maybe it’s a vocational decision. Maybe it’s an honesty deal. You’ve got a plan forming in your brain. Will you just stop and think about the potential downside to this? What kind of legacy will this leave for your kids? What will this decision do to your relationships to those closest to you? What could happen to your heart if you go through with this?

I think David’s first mistake could be called drifting. It was spring, and in the spring kings went to war. It was what they did. In fact, the primary reason the Israelites wanted a king was so they’d have someone to to lead them in battle (cf. 1 Samuel 8:19-20). This is what David had done every year, but, for some reason, this year he just didn’t want to. He said, “You guys go on without me.”

He seems bored, listless. The text says, “One evening David got up from his bed.” That’s what I’m talking about. What’s he doing in bed in the evening?

As far as we can tell, David’s about 50 years old now. He’s not a feeble old geezer. But he’s not a young boy anymore, either. His eyes are probably starting to dim a little. His hairline may be receding; his waistline is probably expanding. He’s had them some extra fiber to the royal diet. He’s got a treadmill in his office. Grandmothers come up to him now and say, “When I was a teenager I thought you were so dreamy!”

He was always so passionate — about everything! But he doesn’t feel that passion anymore about anything. He’s restless. He’s drifting.

There may be nothing as dangerous as a passionate man who has lost his passion. He is a danger to himself and to those around him.

The bizarre thing is that he used to talk to God about everything. Good or bad, he’d just bring it right to God. But now…he’s not even talking to God about it. Maybe he doesn’t know what to say. When God finally confronts David about the whole episode (through the prophet Nathan), he says, “I made you king. I protected you from Saul. I gave you this kingdom, and if all that hadn’t been enough — if you’d wanted more — I would have given you more. Why didn’t you come and talk to me?”

The best thing you can do when you’re bored is talk to God about it. But a lot of us are afraid to do that. The reason I have a hard time with this is because of what used to happen when I was a kid. I would tell my mom I was bored, and she would decide that this was a good time for me to clean the bathrooms. Or mop the kitchen. Sometimes I think that if I tell God I’m bored he’ll send me on some horrible errand that I’ll hate and will be tremendously painful.

Do I really trust that God is good and has my best interests at heart?

That’s kind of what it comes down to, isn’t it? If I do, I’ll be more apt to bring all my thoughts and feelings to him. If not, I’ll be more likely to allow myself to just drift. And that’s where the trouble really gets started.