Threads from Henry's Web

Tag: delight

  • Psalm 119:92 – Delight

    Psalm 119:92 – Delight

    If your instruction had not been my delight,
    I would have perished in my affliction.

    There was a time when my pursuit of Bible study was a matter of duty, or perhaps even more a “good work” by which I would find the inside track with God. Besides hearing God’s voice in the registration line (another story), my reason for getting to know more and more about the Bible was to get to know the real truth, not filtered through any other people.

    Surrounding an actual desire to know God was the desire to know God better than other people did, and to do so without relying on those other people. I wanted to find the truth for myself. I was out of graduate school before I began to realize that I knew many things about God, but that I did not actually know God.

    More importantly, however, I resisted the God that I could potentially have known, had I been willing to go there. I didn’t like that God, who did do things according to my will, and demanded a full commitment. I fled from that knowledge.

    When, in God’s own time, I was drawn back, it was not a change of technicalities in my mind. I didn’t suddenly find God easier to believe in. I found no new proofs of God’s existence. What I found first was that I did, in fact believe. Then I surrendered to the God I had found years before and found that there was a new freedom on the other side.

    God’s word, which I passionately pursued in order to make divine favor points, became a delight. This was not something I accomplished. It happened to me. Nothing that I did got me to that point.

    But in extremely difficult times since then I began to realize that I was making it through because of the delight brought to me by God’s word. Time in scripture has become an activity that energizes me and helps me do all the other things I need to do. it is the foundation.

    Now unlike what many recommend, I don’t have a specific time of the day set aside to study scripture. There have been periods of time when I take that approach. For example, I aim to check the next verse of Psalm 119 before I go to bed, and then review it multiple times over the next 24 hours in order to write these meditations. But most of the time, my Bible study is scattered through my day.

    You could take this verse as a call to a certain effort you should take, a formula for survival. “If I just read enough scripture, and I put on a convincing happy face while I do so, I’ll make it through whatever I’m facing.” That’s not it.

    It’s the realization that you have an anchor, that you have an identity, and that you have a mission. All of that is based on a relationship with the creator of everything who can take care of you in all cases.

    Can you take hold of that today?

    Featured image credit: Patricio Nahuelhual, Licensed from iStockphoto.com.

  • Psalm 119:35 – Make Me Do What I Want To

    Psalm 119:35 – Make Me Do What I Want To

    Make me walk in the path of your commands,
    For in it I take delight.

    On first read, this verse can sound very strange. Some translations and some interpreters tend to take a less forceful reading of the first verb, the one I translate “make me walk.” We sometimes think that we do what we want to do when we turn of our good judgment and our will and just go with the flow. But often following the path of least resistance leads to regret and to doing things we very much do not want to do.

    That sounds a bit complicated. Let me illustrate.

    When I was in college and yes, even in graduate school I was a good student getting good grades. The records bear this out. But I had some less than excellent study habits. So I’d end up the night before some assignment was due with nothing in hand and I’d have to work all night. I wanted to have the assignment done earlier. I wanted to work with less tension. I wanted to do a better job.

    But I didn’t.

    I remember the Monday morning when I had a five page discussion of the literary form of French “fabliaux,” a particular form of poetic short story. I would likely not remember the name except for the way I did this. I woke up, realized I have about an hour to produce five pages, get to class and present it to the class–in French, no less. I read one story, wrote five pages, arrived at class out of breath, and presented the paper. I did OK, but I wonder what I might have discovered had I done more study.

    This verse speaks to me in that sort of situation. Following the best path makes everything better, even though I may have to force myself to do it. The path of least resistance may feel good, but it’s not the delight. I join in the Psalmist’s prayer to ask God to put him on that delightful path, the one that comes out with the satisfying result. That call to the best path falls under what we Wesleyans call prevenient grace.

    While we may wish for the good result without following the good path, we generally realize that doesn’t work, and we live with the occasions on which we have followed the easy path instead of the best one.

    Let this verse be a prayer. Lord help me to get where I really, under the guidance and prompting of Your Spirit, want to go.