When You said, “Seek My face,” My heart said to You, “Your face, LORD, I will seek.” Do not hide Your face from me; do not turn Your servant away in anger; You have been my help; Do not leave me nor forsake me, O God of my salvation. When my father and my mother forsake me, then the LORD will take care of me. Teach me Your way, O LORD, and lead me in a smooth path, because of my enemies. Do not deliver me to the will of my adversaries; for false witnesses have risen against me, and such as breathe out violence. Psalm 27: 8-12, NKJV.
My LORD and my God, we are so grateful to be in Your presence to study Your Word! Please speak to our hearts as only You know how. We are waiting to hear from You, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Teach me Your way, O LORD[.]” We have come to a very crucial lesson in the life of every Christian, Learning God’s way. Perhaps the reason we believe that God is not listening to us; that He has turned a deaf ear; that He is ignoring us, may be because we are not acquainted with His way of doing things. This should not surprise us, because we read in His Word, the following: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways declares the LORD. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it” (Isaiah 55: 8-11, NIV).
It is no small wonder that we spend our days in futility, trying to fit the infinite God and His unlimited ways into our minuscule little box. We try to put him in a test tube to see if we can figure out how He functions, and understand what He is doing. That method does not work, my friends. He and His ways are too big for our minds, our boxes, and our test tubes. Listen to Solomon as he contemplates building a house for the LORD: “But who is able to build him an house, seeing the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain him? Who am I then, that I should build him an house, save only to burn sacrifice before him” (2 Chronicles 2: 6)? Are we getting the picture? Our picture of God is too small! Perhaps that is the reason that “the things of earth” cause us to develop ulcers, and auto-immune diseases, and have migraine headaches and suffer from feelings of despair! Sacred Scripture informs us that, “[Human beings] will faint from terror, apprehensive of what is coming on the world, for the heavenly bodies will be shaken” (Luke 21: 26, NIV). We need a new picture of God to hang upon the temple of our souls and look at constantly!
The psalmist mentions specifically, one of the main reasons for his feelings of anguish and despair, his enemies. Now you must understand that this is a man, who, as a youth, defended his little flock of sheep, single-handedly, against a lion and a bear! He also faced a giant with only a slingshot and five smooth stones (1 Samuel 17: 40)! Listen as he tells his story to Saul: “But David said to Saul, “Your servant has been keeping his father’s sheep. When a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock, I went after it, struck it and rescued the sheep from its mouth. When it turned on me, I seized it by its hair, struck it and killed it. Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear; this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, because he has defied the armies of the living God. The LORD who delivered me from from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine” (34-37a). This is the same David pleading with God to deliver him from his enemies!
My friends, enemies that you can see are not a very big threat, it is when you don’t recognize them as enemies, or when you can’t see them, that you really have a problem! You can’t defend yourself against something, or someone that you cannot see, no matter how small that thing, or person, might be. The real danger of viruses and bacterias, is not merely their capacity to do us bodily harm, per se; it is more so their invisibility to the naked eye! Usually, when they are detected, they have already invaded our bodies and done their damage. Perhaps David was dealing with unidentified enemies. Nevertheless, he went to the right Person – Jesus! And he did the right thing – he prayed!
Tomorrow, God’s willing, we will continue with the topic, Learning God’s Way!