Psalm 119:106 The Discipline of Yes

I know a young man who is an habitual No-Man (as opposed to a Yes-Man).

His brothers were both Cardinals fans, so he automatically decided he was a Royals fan. He doesn't follow the NFL at all, but if he finds himself at a Super Bowl party, he'll gauge the audience and quickly begin loudly and vociferously rooting for whichever team the majority is against.

No matter the topic of conversation - movies, music, politics, whatever - the only opinion I can count on him taking is the one opposite from the crowd.

I've concluded over the years that he does this just to attract attention to himself. He has no real opinions, but he's learned he can draw attention by being the naysayer. It's often negative attention, but it's attention nevertheless.

I don't think he ever consciously chose this approach. He just fell into it at an early age while squabbling with his older siblings. Now it's an unconscious habit.

I have taken an oath and confirmed it,
that I will follow your righteous laws.

Psalm 119:106

People in 21st century America don't take oaths very often. It's just not done, except in legal circumstances. Outside of legal situations an oath is an anachronism left over from centuries ago.

The  Bible warns against taking oaths (Matthew 5:33-37; James 5:12; Numbers 30:2; Deuteronomy 23:21-23). It's not that oaths are bad, but failing to keep an oath is strongly warned against.

Instead of resorting to oath-taking, it's better to develop the discipline of saying Yes and sticking to it. Practicing this habit of Yes on smaller things will make it easier to habitually say Yes to larger things.

Say Yes to remembering to brush your teeth each morning. Say Yes to the day ahead as you rise from bed upon waking int he morning.

Say Yes to choosing healthier food options. Say Yes to changing your habits of what foods you purchase and allow to sit on the shelves in your kitchen.

Say Yes to requests for help that comes your way. Say Yes to habitually keeping your eyes open for people who cross your path each day and for opportunities to plant godly seeds of kindness, love, sacrifice, and good news.

Say yes to the habit of church attendance. Say yes to paying attention to the sermon. Say yes to reading and meditating on the Bible each day.

Say Yes to developing intentional habits on the 1 road of life.

Say Yes.

Psalm 119:105 The Discipline of Walking

I remember walking for long distances.

During many of my years in grade school and high school I walked to and from school every day. It was never much more than a mile, but it was good for me, even if I didn't always think so.

During the summer between my freshman and sophomore years at Central Christian College I often walked to work, traveling from the south end of Morley Street to the North end, about 5 miles one way.

I recently bought a Fitbit. It tracks my heart rate, something I'm much more motivated to do since my heart attack a few months ago.

It also tells me I average a little under two miles walking each day. None of those miles come from walking any great distance along streets or on a track. My bad knee has severely limited my walking, to the point where I need a cane just to make it around Walmart for 20 minutes. My daily miles are mostly made up of walking around my house, my office building, and the grocery store.

And yet I still somehow manage a couple miles each day. That's around 4,200 footsteps each day, according to the Fitbit.

When I first saw the number of miles and footsteps I'm walking each day, I was sure the Fitbit was over-counting. It needs adjustment or calibration or maybe a trash can.

Then I realized that daily life for most people is made up of walking, most of it short distances, just in the course of normal activities.

I've only been up for about 90 minutes this morning. Most of that has been standing still at the sink or in the shower, standing at the kitchen stove preparing my breakfast and then sitting to eat, followed by the past 20-25 minutes sitting at this computer, writing this blog post.

And yet somehow I've accumulated 488 steps already today.

Walking is what we do. It's daily life.

Whether your day is spent charging around like the Energizer Bunny doing housework (like my wife) or sitting at a desk in an office for 8 hours, you're still racking up the walking steps. Your feet are driven along by your focus on all the things you do in your daily life, from the mundane (stepping into the bathroom to brush your teeth) to the minutiae of work life (walking from your desk to the copier and back), from the industrious (changing the linens on the bed) to the athletic (exercising on the elliptical at the gym).

Each of us walks a different path than everyone else around us, based on the choices we've made about our lives, our priorities, and our goals.

Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path

Psalm 119:105

My Fitbit vibrates on my wrist at 10 minutes before each hour, reminding me I still have steps to go to achieve the goal of 250 steps per hour. I'm learning to use that as a guide to step away from desk and walk around for a bit. I'm never again going to be a long-distance walker, let alone a jogger or runner. But with a little more attentiveness to the goal, I can become a healthier walker.

I also want to learn to be a more intentional walker in my spiritual life.

This past year has taught me I no longer have the physical capability of doing many of the soul-stretching ministries I used to do. We quit the prison ministry last June because we no longer had the physical endurance to match our spiritual ambitions. Then a heart attack and other health problems slowed us down even more.

I spent the final few months of the past year in a spiritual and physical funk, depressed about getting old and railing against these newfound limitations. No matter how hard I kicked against the restraints, I was getting nowhere.

My spiritual walk had become a spiritual sit-and-be-frustrated.

With the dawn of the new year, I decided to intentionally set aside that self-defeating habit in favor of a more productive habit.

I'm discovering the key to that readjustment is to refocus on the Word. I'm spending more time rereading the scriptures that have become so familiar to me over the years. Through them, God is guiding me in new directions for my spiritual walk.

Are you stumbling in your walk through life? Get back into God's Word and let him shine a new light on your path.

Psalm 119:105-112 Nun

Your word is a lamp for my feet,
 a light on my path.
I have taken an oath and confirmed it,
 that I will follow your righteous laws.
I have suffered much;
 preserve my life, LORD, according to your word.
Accept, LORD, the willing praise of my mouth,
 and teach me your laws.
Though I constantly take my life in my hands,
 I will not forget your law.
The wicked have set a snare for me,
 but I have not strayed from your precepts.
Your statutes are my heritage forever;
 they are the joy of my heart.
My heart is set on keeping your decrees to the very end.

Psalm 119:105-112

This section of Psalm 119 begins with what is probably the best known and most quoted verse of the chapter.

But without the practices David talks about in the other seven verses, that lamp for the feet and light on the path won't help much with navigating the 1 road of life.

In the end, every spiritual discipline is about developing habits to walk intentionally along the 1 road of life, with the Word as our lamp.

Psalm 119:104 Love of the Roads

Every rideshare passenger who lives in the Forest Village housing complex in Columbia quickly learns to tell each new driver that they don't actually live at Murry's restaurant. They're grateful when a driver is experienced enough to have learned not to trust the rideshare app GPS for directions to that neighborhood.

There are several parts of my city that the GPS gets wrong. I've had to learn to not be fooled when the app tells me to turn south on Old Highway 63, when it's actually Highway 63. There's a difference, one that will take an unwitting driver (and the unfortunate passengers) to the wrong place.

I was annoyed one evening after dark when the app gave me directions to an address on Ridge Road. Only after pulling up into the driveway of a darkened house with my bright lights on did I realize I wasn't actually on Ridge Road at all, but the next street over. the passengers were used to people getting lost in that neighborhood, but I was frustrated at how long they had to wait in the cold and dark.

The more I drive for ridesharing, the better I am getting at learning how to find my way even when the app gives me bad advice. Fool me once, it's the app's fault. Fool me twice, and I'm not paying enough attention as I meditate on my journeys through Columbia's streets.

I gain understanding from your precepts;
therefore I hate every wrong path

Psalm 119:104

The Bible gives me the destination plus many precepts on how to get there, as well as stories about how others have navigated the 1 road of life.

I've come to realize the Bible is not God's GPS. The GPS is far too unreliable to be compared to the scriptures.

Spiritually speaking, the GPS is the things other people tell me about how to navigate my journey through life. Their advice may be extremely reliable, especially if their wisdom is grounded in the Word and prayer. But true guidance comes when I devote myself to meditating on how the Word applies to my experiences, both my failures and my successes.

Psalm 119:103 Tasty

If you eat only the same types of food continually, you'll develop a distaste for anything different. People who have been raised on bland foods tend to have little interest in spicy foods. The opposite is just as true, with spicy eaters eschewing bland foods.

The best way to develop a taste for more flavorful foods is to try them. Work your way up to them.

Instead of going straight for the habaneros, try eating foods seasoned lightly with jalapeno. When I was much younger I wasn't at all fond of hot spices. I've slowly tried hotter foods, to the point where I now enjoy eating pickled jalapenos and fried jalapeno-and-cheese poppers, the hotter the better.

For the first fifty years of my life I hated the taste of coffee. Then I experienced a sudden coffee conversion during a mission trip to Mexico. My best friends and my family were all shocked at the seemingly overnight change.

Although it felt like it happened suddenly, my new taste for coffee had taken a gradual and natural progression. I've always loved chocolate and developed a taste for dark chocolates. My favorite is now chocolate bars with 85% cocoa, sprinkled with crumbled cacao bean nibs!

I had also gotten hooked on Arby's Jamocha milkshakes, which is basically a chocolate shake with a hint of coffee flavoring. Today a Jamocha would seem very little like actual coffee, but at the time it was a gateway drug for me, leading me from the bitterest of chocolates to the bitterness of coffee.

I've spent a lot of time over the years around college students, and many of them learned to love coffee when they arrived on campus, but they began with frothy cappuccinos containing about 20% coffee, mixed with sugar and dairy products and assorted flavorings. It takes them a while for their taste to adapt to actual coffee.

How sweet are your words to my taste,
sweeter than honey to my mouth!

Psalm 119:103

New believers sometimes experience a similar gradual change in their spiritual taste buds.

Prior to conversion, many people find any talk of spiritual matters distasteful. God-talk makes some uneasy, while it causes others to respond with outright disdain. Those silly Christians and their make-believe God.

But as the Spirit works on their hearts, the God-talk elicits a confusing mix of sorrow and joy. Sorrow as they come to realize the many ways they've been turning away from God. Joy as they discover God has always known them and is waiting for them with open arms.

But even then, the scriptures can take some adjustment. The millenia-old terminology and sentence structures are off-putting, even when translated into modern English. The counter-cultural doctrines elicit shock and even horror among some. If they had a bad experience with religion and church earlier in life, it will take hard work to see through those ingrained legalistic or licentious interpretations and discover the truth of God's love.

And for some it can take a long while to stop seeing reasons why God should hate them, in spite of His repeated promises of grace and mercy and love.

Only by steady devotion to meditating on the Word will they develop not only a taste for the words and ways of the Lord, but a delight in their sweetness.

If you're struggling to develop a taste for the scriptures, build up to it, just like you'd gradually acclimate yourself to coffee or tea or habaneros.

Begin by reading the Gospels. The straightforward stories of Jesus' life are the most welcoming parts of the Bible. Also spend some time in Psalms, which will tug at your heart, and the Proverbs, which will season your mind.

Then move on to the shorter epistles, from Galatians through Philemon, where your mind will be challenged and opened. Eventually you'll move on to discover the more complex flavors of Romans and Corinthians, Isaiah and Jeremiah.

Through it all, remember your goal is to learn to love the words of God, which will deepen your love for God himself.

Psalm 119:102 Student and Teacher

I first saw Roy Weece preach when I was 8 years old and he came to Westside Christian Church to speak at a revival. Over the following 40 years I had many opportunities to meditate on Roy and his teachings.

When I was 8, I was fascinated by his deep voice, his height and posture, and his hair. I wanted to grow up to have his hair. My grandmother's hair had turned white prematurely, and I loved her snowy hair. Roy was the first person I had seen besides her who had hair like that, and it gave me hope that I would inherit my grandma's hair and look like Roy.

Instead, I inherited my uncles' hair - or their lack of hair. But for years I studied on Roy's hair, which always seemed perfectly coiffed.

As I grew older I was more focused on Roy's personality. His confidence and courage and commitment to evangelism was an inspiration to me. As an introvert I often was too timid to speak up for myself. Studying his way of approaching people and situations helped me to develop greater confidence.

I also began to study his ways of teaching and preaching. My analytical, outline-oriented mind was impressed with his preaching outlines, always with their cleverly crafted section headings. His goal was that by memorizing his outlines, we might better remember the content.

The longer I meditated on his style of teaching, I came to realize it wasn't the outlines that made his teaching so powerful. It was the stories. All preachers tell stories, but Roy's were not anecdotes designed to elicit a chuckle or illustrate a point. His stories were about the way Roy and others had lived out those teachings in real world situations, always focused on God's mission.

Through decades of studying on Roy's teachings I learned that outlines and the depth of content behind them are important. But demonstrating the real life application of that content carries more lasting weight.

During the later years, when I was around Roy more often and ministered alongside him, I meditated on Roy's character. I learned what made him tick, the things he enjoyed, the inner motivations that drove him. I meditated on his faults and on his faith.

I was meditating on Roy as a person, rather than as an ideal with perfect hair and brilliant teaching.

I have not departed from your laws,
for you yourself have taught me.

Psalm 119:102

The greatest benefit I've received from meditating on the Word has come from meditating on the teacher behind the Word.

I study the Word to deepen and heighten my awe at His majesty. The greater my understanding of His splendor, the higher I set the bar for my personal spiritual growth.

As I meditate on the scriptures, I focus on God's character. I dive deep into His priorities. I bathe in the understanding of what He loves and hates and desires. I catalog the ways He exhibits the fruit of His Spirit.

I meditate on the Heart of God so I might become a man after God's own heart.

I examine the way God teaches His people. His commands and laws are vital, but He tends to teach His people to understand and live out those laws by leading them to experiences that stretch them to new ways of being His chosen people. He walks beside us and trains our eyes to see people who need Him, trains our feet in eagerness to move toward people in need, and trains our hands to lift up those who have fallen.

By meditating on God the teacher, I'm continually growing in my understanding of God's teachings.

Psalm 119:101 Knowing the Road

There's a street in my hometown of Columbia, MO, called Carter Lane. It's basically just an access road, what some would call a frontage road, It runs parallel to one of the city's primary arteries, South Providence Road.

Most of the local people who read this are probably thinking they didn't know the name of that road, or that it even exists. It's so insignificant, the few businesses actually along that road have Providence Road as their address, not Carter Lane.

I barely knew Carter Lane existed until I began seeing it on my rideshare destinations over and over. I've lived in Columbia for nearly my entire life since I was eight, but I never knew how many people live on the streets leading off Carter Lane. There are several apartment complexes, plus numerous neighborhoods of duplexes and single-family homes.

Those Carter Lane neighborhoods are among the most confusing neighborhoods I drive to.

The last connecting street off the north end of Carter Lane is Campusview Drive. There's an apartment complex at the very beginning of that drive called Campus View Apartments, with 173 units. Bumped up against that complex is Boulder Springs, a 208 unit apartment complex. Further down Campus View Drive are hundreds more houses and duplexes.

The machine intelligence that powers the rideshare app GPS has trouble figuring out the difference between those neighborhoods. Whenever they send me to the Campus View area, I know there's a good chance it's going to take me to the wrong neighborhood or the wrong building.

The regular passengers in those neighborhoods have become aware of this problem. The smart ones will send me a text while I'm on the way, with very specific instructions on how to find them.

One college student called me when I was hopelessly lost and asked if the annoying speed bumps I was driving over were single speed bumps or double speed bumps. If it's not the double ones, she said, you're in the wrong neighborhood.

I'm getting better at it. I'm learning to take a close look at the instructions and compare that to the pin on the map that identifies where the passenger (or the passenger's phone) is located. I've learned to navigate around the complicated neighborhoods through trial and error. And I'm even taking notes on the things I'm learning about that neighborhood and others.

I'm meditating on the road map of Columbia.

I have kept my feet from every evil path 
so that I might obey your word.

Psalm 119:101

People talk about trial and error a lot, but for most people it's just a lot of haphazard trying and plenty of making errors. Only accidentally do they learn lessons for their trial and error.

The way to turn trial and error into trial and transformation is to intentionally see mistakes as an opportunity to learn. And that requires meditation.

Meditate on the teaching, rebuking, correction, and training provided in God's Word.

Meditate on the experiences you've had - today, over the past week, the past year, and throughout your life.

Meditate on your mistakes and your successes.

Meditate on how your experiences have transformed you, for better or worse.

Blend your meditation on your trial and error with your meditation on God's Word, allowing the scriptures to inform your experience and your experience to inform your understanding of the scriptures.

Meditate on the 1 road as you travel through life.