2 Samuel 3:36  All the people took note and were pleased; indeed, everything the king did pleased them. (NIV)

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It’s almost impossible to please everyone. If it ever happens to you, don’t allow your expectations to rise to that level with any kind of regularity. The quickest pathway to disappointment is to imagine that you can please everyone all the time. 

Now I’m a pretty Sunny Blue Sky kind of guy, but it took about five minutes into my leadership career to recognize this truth. I have opened my mouth and stuck my foot in it far too many times to count. I have been known to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory with a practiced ease that makes failure look even easier than it should be. 

King David did the hard, right thing. People noticed. Everyone was pleased. 

The first sentence in the paragraph above deserves our attention. Doing hard, right things produces the kinds of results we really want for ourselves and for others. We often fear doing the hard right things because they’re hard, even though they’re right. 

What we need to keep in mind is that whatever we do, there will be results. We’re going to have to live with those results. It’s a lot easier to live with results that flow out of doing hard, right things. Hard, right things may not feel good in the short term, but they will almost always pay off handsomely in the long term.

King David got a good start as he sought to unite the kingdom. If he had taken the easy way here, the kingdom might have experienced a serious fracture right there at the beginning. 

If we fast-forward a bit, we see how things ended with King David. He took the easy way on several important occasions. On one occasion, he should have turned his eyes away and walked away from what ended up being a tawdry affair, a murder, the death of a child, and a loss of respect he would never fully overcome. 

As pleased as everyone was to see him walk behind the casket of a man who had served Israel honorably and had been murdered by his rival who was acting like his friend, people began distancing themselves from the king who was powerfully in charge of everything but himself. 

People were pleased to see King David walk behind the casket of a man who had served Israel honorably, only to be murdered by his rival, who acted like his friend. Many of those same people began distancing themselves from the king who was powerfully in charge of everything but himself. King David continued to reign after his great sin, but as he was warned by one of his advisors, it was all downhill from there. 

As Adele sings so well, he almost had it all. A little lapse, a wee moment of rebellion, can destroy a career and wound a nation. 

Right now is a good time to prepare for the inevitable choices ahead. Doing the hard, right thing is always worth it. In the early days of contemporary Christian music, a group called the Second Chapter of Acts sang a song with lyrics that are so helpful to recall. They sang, “Taking the easy way isn’t the easy way.” 

This is one truth that both King Saul and King David would agree with, at least in retrospect. 

Today is a good day to strengthen the habit of doing the hard, right thing every time. 

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I will cultivate the habit of doing the hard, right thing every time. 

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Our Father, I want to do the hard right thing every time. Looking back on my life, however, I see how many times I have taken the easy way. I took the easy way even when I knew it wasn’t the easy way. I took the easy way even when I knew the consequences would be negative. Please deliver me from this moral laziness. Please deliver me from this lack of leadership integrity. Empower me to make hard, right decisions each and every time. Amen.