TO DELIGHT IN HIS COMMANDMENTS

January 27

Psalms 119:35 Make me to go in the path of thy commandments; for therein do I delight.

One time I heard someone pray a similar prayer. A person who was so discouraged with her own efforts to overcome a certain weakness in her life, that she was ready for God to do anything, and I mean, anything, to help her. She prayed something to this effect, “Lord, please, do anything, absolutely anything, you have to do in my life in order that I’d be delivered from this temptation. It hinders my walk with you, my walk with my brothers and sisters, as well as my testimony of being your child. I give you leave Lord to do whatever it takes to deliver me.”

I coned this the ‘Whatever-it-takes’ prayer.

How much we want to go in the path of His commandments has a lot to do with how much we want it. And how much we want it has a lot to do with how much we delight in them. One day, during the course of a class, I gave my students a description of the peace, beauty and spiritual cleanliness that will be in the millennium; I explained how we will then live closer to the creation and to the Creator. One of them who very much enjoys the spiritual and technological pollution of this didn’t even seem excited about it. He was disappointed. The prospect of life without its present-day three-ring-circus of travel, communication and entertainment seemed to him dreadful. He delighted in the ways of the world so he couldn’t appreciate the ways of the Lord.

May God help us to delight in the Lord, in His ways, in His commandments, and in His Spirit, so we can pray with a whole and sincere heart, Make me to go in the path of thy commandments.

Isaiah 45:11 Thus saith the LORD, the Holy One of Israel, and his Maker, Ask me of things to come concerning my sons, and concerning the work of my hands command ye me.