“God, I’ll give You 10 more years."

Few realize that A.W. Pink’s masterwork The Life of David did not emerge in a brief burst of inspiration. From 1932 to 1939 it unfolded month by month over 7 years in Studies in the Scriptures, the periodical that Pink wrote, edited, and mailed largely with his own hands to a small but faithful readership scattered across the world. There was no publishing empire behind him, no large congregation filling the pews, no institution promoting his work.

From 1922 until shortly before his death in 1952, laboring largely in obscurity, he produced nearly 30 years of sustained Biblical exposition - works now published as books, including The Attributes of God, The Life of Elijah, and his studies of Genesis, Exodus, John, and Hebrews, all of which first appeared as monthly installments to ordinary Christians hungry for serious teaching.

What later generations received as a theological classic was delivered a chapter at a time to readers Pink would never meet. He lingered over David’s victories and failures because he understood that David’s story, more than just ancient biography, is a searching revelation of the human heart, the deceitfulness of sin, the necessity of grace, and the relentless faithfulness of God. Pink wrote for a small audience, yet his writings eventually reached far more people than he could have imagined. What appeared small in his lifetime became enduringly amplified in God’s providence.

Pink’s classic opens 2 Samuel 11 and David’s fall, with a note of trembling reluctance:

“A difficult and most unwelcome task now confronts us: to contemplate and comment upon the darkest blot of all in the fair character of David. But who are we, so full of sin in ourselves, unworthy to unloose his shoes, to take it upon us to sit in judgment upon the sweet Psalmist of Israel?”

From there, Pink names the greater danger this episode exposes - not merely David’s sin, but the nature that made it possible: “The ‘flesh’ in the believer is no different and no better than the flesh in an unbeliever!”

And he locates the true beginning of David’s fall not on the rooftop with Bathsheba, but earlier, in a quieter failure of duty: “David relaxed when he should have girded on the sword: he preferred the luxuries of the palace to the hardships of the battlefield. Ah, it is so easy to follow the line of least resistance. It requires grace [diligently sought] to ‘endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ’ [2 Tim. 2:3].”

From this, Pink draws the warning every believer must carry: “The important principle here for the Christian to lay to heart is, David had taken off his armor, and therefore he was without protection when the enemy assailed him. Ah, my reader, this world is no place to rest in; rather is it the arena where faith has to wage its fight, and that fight is certain to be a losing one if we disregard that exhortation, ‘Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil’ [Eph. 6:11].”

David’s catastrophic fall did not erupt from nowhere. It began quietly, with spiritual relaxation: the warrior stopped fighting, the king abandoned his post, and the believer laid down his armor.

This brings us to the Rev. Cameron L. McGill, founder and lead pastor of Lake Church at White Lake, North Carolina; a former president of the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina in 2017; and president of the North Carolina Pastors’ Conference in 2016.

In 2020, McGill was elected to the Bladen County Board of Commissioners, where he now serves as chairman.

Cameron and his wife, Tiffany, are key leaders in the North Carolina Renewal Project and our effort to move pastors and spiritual leaders into the public square in obedience to Jesus’ ekklesia Kingdom assignment in Matthew 16:18. He has served in pastoral ministry for 27 years.

Cameron recorded recently that while preaching through the entire Word of God one chapter at a time, he encountered 2 strikingly different portraits of David. In 1 Samuel 17, the teenage David rose early, left his father’s sheep with a keeper, and ran toward the battlefield to confront Goliath. Yet some 40 years later, 2 Samuel 11 records that “at the time when kings go forth to battle,” David remained in the palace. The warrior who once ran toward the battle now stayed in bed until evening, and from that retreat came Bathsheba, adultery, deception, and murder.

One Monday morning, worn down by the combined weight of pastoral ministry and public office, Cameron prayed: “God, I’ll give You 10 more years. Until I’m 60, I’ll give You 110 percent and leave everything on the battlefield. But when I reach 60, I need a way out - a finish line where I can wave the checkered flag.” He soon realized, though, that it wasn’t a checkered flag he wanted to wave. It was a flag of surrender.

Providentially, at that very moment, Cameron glanced at the security camera and saw 90-year-old Pastor Bobby Carden walk onto the property. Brother Bobby had pastored faithfully for nearly 50 years and was still preaching 3 times a week, visiting the sick, and conducting weddings and funerals. He asked Cameron to pray that God would give him 10 more years - not so he could rest, but so he could keep serving until he turned 100.

The contrast pierced Cameron’s heart: at 50, he was asking God to release him from the battlefield, while Brother Bobby, at 90, was pleading for 10 more years in the fight. That encounter settled something in him: no palace for Cameron. As both pastor and public official, he intends to carry the cross and stay faithful on the battlefield until Jesus comes.

David laid down his armor and fell, and a 50-year-old pastor-statesman in Bladen County, NC, had to choose which of the two Davids he would emulate.

This is the fight still being waged in ten thousand pulpits and ten thousand town halls across America - the choice of the battlefield over the palace.

https://vimeo.com/1212396012

A Gideon stands.

David Lane

American Renewal Project