Psalm 119:167 Obey & Love

I obey your statutes,
for I love them greatly. 
Psalm 119:167

Seems so simple. And yet so often we get it so wrong. Which of these have you substituted for David's simple approach to life and the Word?

     I study your statutes, for they stimulate my mind greatly.

I organize and manage your statutes, for they challenge me greatly.

     I outline your statutes, for I love PowerPoint.

I interpret you statutes, for I love my opinions greatly.

     I stand firm on your statues, for I greatly love being right.

I turn your statutes into memes, for I love going viral.

     I critique your statutes, for I love being a respected and distinguished scholar.

I shrug off your statutes, for I love freedom from laws.

     I wink at your statutes, for I love my lifestyle more than I love your statues.

I sarcastically refer to your statutes, for I love being cynically woke.

     I twist your statutes into pretzels, for I love being both woke and spiritual.

I obey your statutes,
for I love them greatly. 
Psalm 119:167

Psalm 119:166 Wait & Follow

I wait for your salvation, Lord,
and I follow your commands.
Psalm 119:166 

I'll have to admit I've often been reading the scriptures and been baffled. Sometimes it's even a verse or paragraph or chapter I've read before and understood completely, but now, reading it with the benefit of additional years on the one road of life, the very same passage leaves me wondering what it means.

That's the way the Word works on your heart. Like Hebrews 4:12 says, "the word of God is alive and active; sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart" ... and it can be like a multiple procedure intensive surgical operation over an extended time period. Salvation is promised, but you might have to wait a long while to fully grasp its particulars.

When I had my heart attack in October of 2018, I learned a precious lesson about myself. As a lifelong believer, you'd think I'd be confident of my final destination when death finally comes. That would seem to come naturally for someone who has been a Christian since I was 11 and has been a preacher and teacher and counselor and writer and prison minister and small group leader for Christ in the 50-plus years since.

But you know as well as I do that it isn't that cut and dried. Can you honestly tell me you know for a certainty how you'll react when that moment comes and you're facing the very real possibility of imminent death, staring into its cold dark vacant eyes? Are you positive you'll be positive about what's next, without fear?

Of course you can't. If you've never been at the edge of the precipice and you claim to be certain, I don't believe you.

And yet, when that time came for me, I was sure. I'm not bragging, I'm just reporting what I felt because I want you to think about it for yourself.

During the hours they were preparing me to go into surgery for the heart catheterization, with a significant percentage possibility I wouldn't survive, I was sure. Even when the procedure stretched from one hour to two to three and almost four hours, with me waking up in the middle of it (which isn't supposed to happen), I was sure. 

As it stretched on an on, I remembered my wife, Karen, asking the doctor how long the procedure would take. His answer was that if it takes less than an hour, it probably means they immediately found out it's going to be a bigger deal requiring open heart surgery. If it takes two hours, that probably means it was a simple procedure with one, maybe two, stents. If it goes to three hours and beyond, it's not good at all and the odds of survival begin to drop.

Even as my catheterization went into the fourth hour, I was sure.

Now, I was afraid for what my death would mean for my wife and my children and others being left behind. But I wasn't afraid for my own future. I knew - I know - whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him until that day. (II Timothy 1:12).

That confidence comes from spending a life deep diving into the Word of God and doing my best to seize the opportunities He puts in front of me to live out that Word and share it with others.

I've wondered whether God had some greater purpose in putting me through the awful experience of a heart attack.

This past January, on the first Sunday of the new year, I picked up a man named Mike at the University of Missouri Hospital. The Lyft app told me he needed to go to Kirksville, Missouri, 88 miles to the north. The pick-up location and the long destination told me immediately this was a patient being released from the hospital and Medicaid was using Lyft to get him home.

I've learned to be very careful about which of those long trips to accept. The pay is great, but if it's the wrong day, the wrong time of day, or the wrong sort of passenger, it isn't worth it for a 63 year old guy who has had a heart attack. But something deep in my heart told me to go ahead with this trip.

This fellow was almost as old as me. He was dealing with cancer, of a type grown men don't like to talk about. The prognosis wasn't good and the next steps of treatment promised to be painful.

During that long trip north we began talking about trivial things, but soon I was talking about my experience with the heart attack. I've discovered people want to know exactly how it felt. They want the details. And Mike was no different, so I told him.

I told him how it felt to have every blood vessel in my chest burning like they were filled acid. I told him that still today I have PTSD-like nightmares about waking up and feeling the long catheter being pushed up through the blood vessel in my arm.

I also told him about my unequaled joy at discovering I really do believe with all my heart in the promise of eternal life.

In response, he opened up and shared his fears and his frustrations and a few graphic details of his own experience. And I was able to encourage him to open up to the people in his life who would be there for him in the weeks and months to come.

I'm certain I'll never see him again. I don't know his full name and have already forgotten his address.

But I know for certain it wasn't the Lyft algorithm alone that paired that passenger with me for that trip.  I'd been waiting for the Lord to reveal His reasons for putting me through that extended nightmare on the procedure table. I kept myself open to follow His lead, and was prepared for the divine appointment he had in store for me on that long Lyft ride.

Since then, God has provided several similar opportunities to share with friends and the strangers who populate the passenger seats of my car. 

And I'm certain the best thing I can do is to continue to wait for Him to act and follow where and when He leads.

Psalm 119:165 Steps to Peace

I used to have a general attitude of peace about life and my future. When I laid down in my bed for sleep, I could drift off into slumber with a peaceful feeling. If I woke up in the night, I'd roll over and drift back into the stages of sleep.

During my days, I'd go about my business with a vague sense of well being, comfortable in my habits. My diet and exercise were based on a general understanding of what all the self help books recommend.

I had peace like a river.

Until the night my my river plunged me over the edge of a massive waterfall and dumped me into rapids that threatened to pull me under.

A heart attack messes with that vague peaceful feeling. You no longer trust your heart to keep on beating like it's supposed to. You begin to seriously question your habits.

I have a different kind of peace now. It's based on a fully awake awareness that, as my cardiologist says, I am now a heart patient and always will be. There's a lot to be said for knowing exactly where I stand and what my circumstances are.

I also have a confidence that comes from knowing there's a stent in my heart, helping to keep things pumping along. That horrific three and a half hour heart catheterization was no fun, but at least now I know the doctors have taken a long (really long) look inside my heart and done the invasive and intricate work my heart needed.

That experience gives me motivation to eat and exercise and live with a more realistic approach.  Oddly, that gives me a sort of peace about my health I didn't have before.

Great peace have those who love your law,
and nothing can make them stumble.

Psalm 119:165

The more I dedicate myself to spending time in the Word of God, the greater I open myself to the expert work of the Great Physician. He implants His Word - the expression of His very own heart - into my heart. With His Word written on my heart, I have a greater confidence each day to  be in tune with His plans for me. I'm better able to notice the opportunities He places before me to exercise my spiritual fitness in my world.

Fruitful Politics: Self Control

In the prison chapel I encountered quite a few believers who have been convinced that the Holy Spirit has taken up residence in them for the purpose of helping them lose control. And so they let the Holy Spirit "set their feet a-dancing." They impulsively say things the Spirit has "given" them, or they find themselves suddenly "slain in the spirit." I've never witnessed anyone barking or fainting or rolling in the aisles in the prison chapel, but I've been told it happens in some of the other services there.

Among the fruit of the Spirit is self-control. It's a paradoxical fruit, since the scriptures clearly tells us the best way to have self control is to put God in control. The Holy Spirit was sent to assist us in this difficult pursuit, but not by staging regular re-creations of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers"

I'm not judging whether the Holy Spirit will actually do such things in the modern church, although I do have some definite opinions about the matter. My chief issue with this sort of uncontrolled behavior is that it seems to fly in the face of the things Jesus said, recorded in John 14-17, about the reasons he was sending the Spirit to inhabit his church.

Jesus clearly explains to his disciples that the Spirit is to be a counselor, an advocate, a guide. He lays out the Spirit's job description clearly in John 16:8-11

When he comes, he will prove the world to be in the wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment: about sin, because people do not believe in me;  about righteousness, because I am going to the Father, where you can see me no longer; and about judgment, because the prince of this world now stands condemned.

You can read more about those three job description bullet points here, here, and here, but altogether they're describing the Spirit's task of pursuing the gospel mission of Christ through the people of the church.

The Spirit helps us to control our emotions, our motives, our words, and our actions by helping us maintain our focus on the mission.

Self control is hard. Raise your hand if you think it's easy. I didn't think so.

And yet, there are situations when self control is easier to summon.

When my kids were smaller, I found it easier to control my words and my actions when they were around, because I was motivated to set a good example. When I'm at work, it's generally easier to control my tendency toward sarcasm because I'm focused on working together professionally as a team. When I'm driving in rush hour traffic, I'm highly motivated to be aware of everything around me and am able to adjust and control my actions accordingly.

Every one of those scenarios has in common a mission, some sort of purpose or goal that helps me maintain self control. We all know people who don't control themselves well in those situations, and the result is kids who grow up with potty mouths, workers who have difficulty keeping a job, and road rage.

Keeping my mind on God's mission helps me maintain self control, aided by the Spirit within me.

Maintaining control during political season is especially difficult.

Every morning I check Facebook to learn what's going on in the lives of my friends and family, only to frequently find rude and inflammatory political memes and links. Every day at work there are people who persistently try to provoke a political argument. I check out the latest news or tweets and I'm aghast at the things I read.

I want to sarcastically respond to some of those silly Facebook posts. I want to rise to the bait and tell that obnoxious co-worker exactly what I think about the cockamamie conspiracies he finds on his favorite obscure websites. I want to react to every hot take with a flaming tweet of my own.

Sometimes I do. The snark side is strong within me.

With the Holy Spirit's help, though, I'm becoming more focused on the kingdom mission every day. With his help I'm becoming more self controlled.

I'm still easily opinionated, but I'm not easily offended. Anyone with a mind that is at all analytic will form opinions. But with the mission in focus, I now realize it's not about me.

Being offended means I take things personally. Being missional means I listen not only to the opinion but to the heart of the person sharing that opinion. Then I can respond in a way that plants seeds to grow the kingdom of God.

A missional focus also has taught me to be in control of my response when political disagreement occurs. The truth is, hardly anyone is ever convinced to change their mind because someone argued them into it, or because someone posted a rude meme or gossipy half truth about a candidate. And even if I was able to win a political argument through such means, the result would likely have the opposite effect on my effectiveness at winning people to the truth that's most important.

One way I'm learning to exercise self control when I feel the urge to respond is by choosing not to respond on a public forum. If someone says something on Facebook or Twitter that really bothers me, the most effective response is to either send them a private message or e-mail or to talk to them in person. Airing my frustrations in a public forum generally just stirs the pot even more rather than providing an opportunity to plant seeds.

If you want to grow in the spiritual fruit of self control, it's not about letting go. It's about sowing seeds to the Spirit's garden in your heart. It's about keeping in step with the Spirit as he leads you on mission for the gospel.

Psalm 119:164 Obsessed

Seven times a day I praise you
for your righteous laws. 

Psalm 119:164

You can read the Bible.

Or you can apply yourself to being a student of God's righteous laws.

You can make the Word your obsession, the habit you turn to every chance you get.

You can open the pages of God's revelation not just once a week on Sundays, not just every morning before breakfast, but frequently and repeatedly throughout your day.

You can simply peruse the scriptures or you can wrestle with it, deal with it, allow it to use its sharp edge on your heart, eagerly open yourself wide to allow the Word to judge the thoughts and attitudes of your heart.

Like David says, seven times a day you can be so absorbed by your encounter with God's laws that you cannot help but sing and shout out your praise and gratitude for the way the Lord has opened His heart to us for inspection and transformation.

Repetition and habit, digging deep and bathing in righteousness, builds a depth of wisdom and experience to carry you through every day and through your whole life.

Psalm 119:163 Been There, Done That

Because I'm a rideshare driver in Missouri, occasionally I have to drive on unfamiliar road that are hilly and curvy. Turns out the best way to learn to drive hilly curvy roads by driving hilly curvy roads.

I've had to take a passenger from Columbia to California, MO, and another to Dixon, MO. Both involved back highways with extremely steep hills and constant curves. Worse, both trips were timed so that I was making the return trip in the dark.

I'll admit to be a bit nervous during those sojourns. But I wasn't anywhere near as nervous as I was the first few times I ever drove on roads in the backwoods of the state.

I've gained experienced and learned some good tips for navigating hills and curves over the years.

• Don't be in a hurry, even if you're in a hurry. Yes, there are locals who come up behind you like they're driving the Autobahn and are obviously frustrated by being stuck behind some outsider who doesn't know how to drive in the Ozarks. That's okay. They'll deal with it. There's no reason to drive faster than feels safe to you.


• On the other hand, don't drive so slowly you're causing accidents. Work consciously at gradually increasing your speed to the fastest you can feel comfortable with.


• That said, be aware this isn't the time to set your cruise control, because you're going to need to continually adjust your speed. Slow down a little as you enter a curve and then speed up when you're in the middle of the curve and about to come out of it (I learned that from my Driver's Ed instructor when I was 16). Slow down a little when you're topping over a blind hill, because you don't want to hit the down slope out of control. Some of those rural hills turn into sharp curves without warning.


• Make sure you stay in your lane, as far to the right side of the road as is safe, especially when topping over a hill. Some people get overconfident driving those roads and will speed down the middle of the road, even as they come over the crest of a hill.

I could go on, but you get the idea. You'll learn, but only by taking advice wherever you can get it and by driving on some curvy and hilly roads a few times

I hate and detest falsehood
but I love your law.

Psalm 119:163

David is saying, in effect, "Been there, done that, prefer this."

The best way to learn how to deal with people who are liars and whose lives are filled with falsehood is ... wait for it ... by dealing with people who are liars and whose lives are filled with falsehood.

There's really no substitute for experience. I'm pretty good at spotting liars, but only because I've been around several liars. I used to work with a man who would lie just for the fun of it, even if there was no other reason to lie or anything he could possibly gain by the falsehood. His whole life was one falsehood after another.

Having spent a few years around him helped me not be fooled by other habitual liars. There are some salespeople and quite a few politicians who are obviously habitual liars, but people who haven't studied liars are easily fooled by them.

Along with experience, though, you've also got to be a student of both falsehood and truth. There are some good books about body language and about liars.  The best, though, is the Bible. And the more you read the Word, you'll appreciate its richness of truth and reliability compared to so much of what is written and said in the rest of the world.

For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.

Hebrews 4:12