By now, I've established a near life-long practice of reading an Old Testament passage, New Testament section, and a psalm most days of the year.
I love the psalms. I pray/read them, and sometimes break them down into small units, to pray sections of it across a week.
This is easy to do with Psalm 119, which is already broken up as an acrostic, running from A to Z in Hebrew letters. It's easy to read one "letter" per day.
Truth be told, though, 119 was never my favorite psalm. Oh, I enjoyed singing it in my a cappella psalm-singing group. And I love snippets that have made it into the Christian contemporary mainstream, like "Thy word is a lamp until my feet and a light unto my path" (Psalm 119:105, KJV, as sung by Amy Grant).
But the repeated phrases like, "How I long for your precepts," "I delight in your commands," and "Oh, how I love your law" never resonated with me. I mean, I'm a decent rule follower and a highly conscientious one at that, but I really don't get too excited about following rules or studying them. I think I've secretly felt that the psalmist was off his rocker a bit, a little too fastidious and holy for the rest of us. I mean, who gets excited about precepts, commands, and law, except for real sticklers? And they don't seem like any fun.
This year, I'm ingesting the psalms like fine wine, savoring each sip, breathing them in, speaking them out. Somehow, interacting with them like this brought Psalm 119 to life for me. I've enjoyed and resonated with each part. I made it through daleth, the fourth letter, just fine. Then, he hit me. The section of this Hebrew letter, he, that is:
Teach me, O Lord, the way of your statutes, and I will observe it to the end. Give me understanding, that I may keep your law and observe it with my whole heart. Lead me in the path of your commandments, for I delight in it. Turn my heart to your decrees, and not to selfish gain. Turn my eyes from looking at vanities; give me life in your ways. Confirm to your servant your promise, which is for those who fear you. Turn away the disgrace that I dread, for your ordinances are good. See, I have longed for your precepts, in your righteousness give me life. (verses 33-40, NRSV).
Now this sounds a lot like my husband's and my favorite psalms (25 and 86), so it's no surprise that it resonated. I desperately seek the Lord's guidance so that my steps are secure and righteous.
But reading it this time, it was more than just personal right living to me. It was kingdom living.
This realization hit me with a big thud! The psalmist is speaking about the kingdom of God. For him, it's not the rules themselves that pull him into sonorous raptures. It's what the precepts are part of--God's way of life.
Eugene Peterson's The Message translation shows this perhaps a little more clearly. It begins:
God, teach me lessons for living so I can stay the course. Give me insight so I can do what you tell me—my whole life one long, obedient response.
It's like the title of Peterson's book, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, a book about deeper discipleship that uses the Psalms of Ascent as a grounding passage. The Psalms of Ascent begin right after Psalm 119; it's like this ginormous psalm is preparation for these psalms that were sung as pilgrims walked the long round upward to Jerusalem.
This pilgrimage is a great illustration of discipleship. Walking through the wilderness reflects our walk with God, which ushers us into the kingdom of heaven. The truth is, we don't have to wait for our deaths to enter. No, Jesus said, "the kingdom of heaven is at hand" (Mark 1:14) and "the Kingdom of God is within you" (Luke 17:21). We can inhabit the kingdom now as we enter the life that is truly life (I Timothy 6:19).
If I take this passage to heart and apply it to my life, it might read something like this:
Lord, I am all in for following You. But help me to do this, fully. I love you more than anything; please be my shepherd and lead me. All these things that distract me are powerful--turn my heart and eyes away from them. You have many promises in Your word; please confirm them to me because this will strengthen my faith. I'm weak, though, so please take disgrace and embarrassment from me so that I don't have to worry about this. I know Your way is good and that You are good. Stepping into this life is truly life; everything else is a shadow.
I feel like God has been building me up toward this all year, through many difficult things. I had the rare experience of feeling like He told me specific commands:
Worship me.
Fix your eyes on me.
Stand on my promises.
While the first one is perhaps a little harder to see in this passage (although worship is also comprised of behavior), the other two are directly present. My eyes are to be on Him, rather than worthless things. It's amazing how distracting those worthless things can be, whether the mind-numbing rabbit hole of YouTube videos or ruminating on the puzzling and irritating behavior of others.
I struggle a bit with the "stand on my promises" part because I had some smattering of "name it and claim it" in my youth. Now, I really appreciate the faith and fervor of my friends in this camp. But, on my part, I think that God personalizes His messages to us quite a bit more. Discernment is needed for what God is saying to each one of us. It's not all the promises, all the time. Simple experience alone shows that life doesn't pan out that way.
For me, I've held onto His promises of presence. I tell Him all the time, "You are all that I need." He knows, and I know, that this isn't 100% true for me. I mean, if I had no food and no family, would I still be saying this? I may think that my life mirrors Job's, but it doesn't yet. Not fully. Would I be praising Him if it did? I don't know, but I know that even though I cycle through praise and whininess over the course of the day, I have received the message that ultimately, He is all that I need, and I cling to that.
My pastor-father says to hold on tightly, that when things get hard, it's OK if it feels like you're not moving forward. Only hold on.
This is both psychologically and Biblically true. In Revelation 3, Jesus tells the Church in Philadelphia to just "hold on to what you have." Things are evidently rough there. They live beside the synagogue of Satan--people who should be fellow worshippers but are definitely not. I feel like much of the modern church veers precariously toward that epithet at times. In those circumstances, God's word tells us to "hold on."
When illness threatens to overwhelm body and soul, hold on to God's promises.
When world circumstances are frightening, hold on to God's presence.
When friends turn to foes and allies seem hidden, hold on to God's word.
When the path forward is unclear, hold on to God's truth.
Have others observed this connection between Psalm 119 and kingdom living? Admittedly, the church is in a renewal of sorts right now, rediscovering--almost like a second Reformation--that God's salvation is bigger than the personal salvation of an individual. The "personal Jesus" and sinner's prayer as one's ticket to heaven will hopefully fade away as we move back to the Biblical understanding that salvation is so much bigger. We're talking about the full restoration of all things.
But it can feel like slow going. B.C. Newton blogs about the Psalm 119 connection here:
I Am a Sojourner on the Earth | Psalm 119:19 – B. C. Newton (bcnewton.co). I love his phrasing:
For the psalmist, even his home country is foreign to him because he does not belong to this world. His heart and his portion are in the kingdom of God. He longs for the treasure that thieves cannot steal and that moths cannot devour. He desires the presence of His God. Yet he is here, on earth and with a fallen, sin-marred body.
Believers are here on earth, longing for their heavenly home, longing for God's law and His rule and reign. If I am standing on God's promises, the biggest one that jumps out to me personally is when Jesus promised to not leave us as orphans (John 14: 8). I often feel quite the opposite; that He has in fact left us as orphans in a sinful world. But, I choose to believe and stand on His promises, and He tells us that His Spirit is within us. Sometimes He says that Jesus Himself is in us (e.g. John 17), which makes sense because He, the Father, and the Spirit are One.
If He is within us, we are ushered into kingdom living. We can do so increasingly if we renew our minds (Romans 12:2) and engage in practices (read: spiritual disciplines) that connect us to His person and will. Then, as Dallas Willard taught, it's not a matter of the Spirit getting into us, but Jesus leaking out of us. We won't be able to help ourselves. The goodness of God will flow through us, because He is overflowing like streams of water within us.
Maybe you've seen people like this. I've seen and heard of some. For many of us, we shine like stars...sometimes. I've seen it in myself and others, this on again and off again glory, when something is spoken or a facial expression is given that is...so very...of God. Beautiful and loving and healing. May we have this increasingly, as we let the Lord of Life enter in more fully to transform us and, through us, serve His purpose and will for the healing of those around us until He comes again for the full restoration of all things.
I can't say it better than Scripture does, so I'll conclude by sharing Philippians 1:9-11:
And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ--to the glory and praise of God. (NIV)
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