November 4 – Gimel - Psalm 119:17-24

November 4 – Gimel - Psalm 119:17-24
     
Deal bountifully with thy servant, that I may live and observe thy word.
Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law.
I am a sojourner on earth; hide not thy commandments from me!
My soul is consumed with longing for thy ordinances at all times.
Thou dost rebuke the insolent, accursed ones, who wander from thy commandments;
take away from me their scorn and contempt, for I have kept thy testimonies.
Even though princes sit plotting against me, thy servant will meditate on thy statutes.
Thy testimonies are my delight, they are my counselors.

Can you imagine having the passion that the Psalmist has for the Law?

What have you been longing for so much lately that your soul is consumed?  To see that it is the Law seems hard to understand, but the beauty of these words fills me to the point that I begin to understand that passion.

What if, every time we opened the Bible, we prayed these words with as much passion as the Psalmist did, so that every moment of our day we were living by and observing God’s word?  What if we were to ask that our eyes be opened so that we see God’s teaching in everything we observe?  What if we were to stop thinking about ourselves as citizens of this world and realize that we don’t belong here and the faster we get to heaven, the happier we will be?  What if we were consumed with longing for God’s teaching and a desire to obedient to that teaching?

I will grant that sometimes, maybe even much of the time, those things are true of us.  We might vocalize it or express it, but sometimes we do pray that we live according to the will of God.

We run into trouble with the ‘soul-consuming’ passion, don’t we!  There is so little that happens to us which consumes our soul.  We try to live quiet lives so that the rest of the world doesn't notice us.  We try to fit in with the crowd … even the crowd at church.  We want to be just like the next person so we don’t stick out and look or act differently than everyone else.  Our culture is made up of people trying to be average. We eat the same food (hence, the millions of chain restaurants), shop at the same stores, buy the same clothes, drive the same cars.  And by doing so, we shove our passion down into our souls and let it out a little bit at a time so that it doesn't offend anyone, sometimes not just the people around us, but those who are closest to us.

We don’t really know what it is like to desire God’s hand at work in our lives with such passion that we receive bountifully or behold wondrous things or see beyond this life to the next or feel consumed with passion for the things of God.

If you pray this prayer and really mean it, wait expectantly for the Lord to change you into the unique and glorious individual He created in the first place, living according to His Law of love.