Psalm 119:80 Shameless

May I wholeheartedly follow your decrees,that I may not be put to shame.

Psalm 119:80

Not all shame is the same.

False shame comes from how people have treated you, the things they've said to you. It's a self-loathing that is taught in the most unkind of ways.

Brenda sat on the back row of the prison chapel, turning pages on her Bible, one after another. I sat next to her and asked what she was doing.

"A bad thing happened to me today," she explained, "and I'm trying to find what it was I did wrong that made God punish me."

Like many people, her image of God the Father was mixed up with her experiences with her own father. He had obviously trained her to feel shame for every small error, real or imagined, by harshly punishing her..

Others in the prison found themselves caught between the extreme expectations their family placed on them and peer pressure toward a life that promised a dangerous kind of freedom. False shame can also comes from failing to live up to a misguided idea of who you think you should be.

True shame comes from the failure to be the person God intends you to be. You know you've fallen short. You've sinned against His best intentions for you.

To deal with shame, first identify whether your shame is false or true. Set aside the false shame and focus instead on the true shame. It will be there, i promise you, hidden beneath all the other things you've been ashamed of.

Then wholeheartedly set about rebuilding your life around God's best way of living. Use II Corinthians 7:8-11 as your guideline. Godly sorrow - godly shame - leads to repentance and results in intentional actions that will reconstruct your life piece by piece, back to being the person God created you to be.

Psalm 119:79 Magnetic Faith

May those who fear you turn to me,
those who understand your statutes
Psalm 119:79

Do people who fear God turn to me? Do those who understand His statutes understand me?

Magnetic faith comes from developing a heart after God's own heart.

David took advantage of his early life as a common shepherd to put down deep roots of faith. Instead of wishing he was somewhere else, doing something more exciting, he learned the value of working hard to care for God's creatures. Instead of succumbing to the rebellion of boredom, he spent those long, quiet hours in prayer and meditation, attuning his heart to God's. He learned to be driven by faith in the slow times, and to practice quick, unquestioning obedience in the dangerous times.

Lord, make me to lie down in your green pastures and teach me to be content to spend time aligning my heart with yours. 

David's years in the green pastures taught him patience. Even though the prophet Samuel had anointed him as the future king of Israel, David was content to continue watching over his flock of sheep. And then he patiently waited for God to win the battles against King Saul.

Father, teach me to wait. Give me eyes to see the opportunities you put in front of me, a willing heart to say yes, and the patience to wait for your divine appointments

By the time David faced Goliath, he had trained himself fir quick, unquestioning obedience. While others were frightened and hid from the giant, David immediately assumed his God was greater than any enemy. When Saul tried to load him down with the usual weapons and armor of warfare, David instead chose the unconventional approach of trusting in God's power alone.

Dear God, may I put my trust solely in you. Everyone advises me to put my trust in a financial nest egg, political leaders, and conventional wisdom. But I know your people will turn to me because they see my unconventional life of faith.

David was far from a perfect king. He succumbed to the hubris of his status, a penchant for using violence to maintain power, and the same debasing lusts as any common man. And yet he continually returned to his roots, crying out to God for forgiveness and guidance. That humility before God was a magnet to others who shared his reliance on the Lord.

Lord, may people see in me a genuine humility that relies not on my own greatness but on your great grace. 

Psalm 119:78 Knee-Jerk

May the arrogant be put to shame for wronging me without cause;
but I will meditate on your precepts.

Psalm 119:78

At first glance this verse reads like a modern American tweet. Twitter is full of shaming, blaming, finger-pointing, and self-righteous truth-spinning.

I agree with the #walkaway movement, democrats should be ashamed of the lack of civility within their party.

— MandMvirtue (@Mark_virtue) July 2, 2018

Liberals are definitely the biggest enemies of our country. If you ask them, illegals are more important than our own citizens. They should be truly ashamed. In fact, they are protesting against their own nation, against peace and harmony.

Liberals = Traitors

— The Trump Guy (@TheTrumpGuy1) July 3, 2018

I’m ashamed of a lot of my guy friends. Absolutely heartbroken cuz I trusted you guys.

— 🍇 (@Rukkkyg) July 3, 2018

It’s probably a good idea to have a dress code in Trumps WH. All the Republicans should wear standard KKK gear—it’s who they are and they’re not ashamed of it. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of these clowns had confederate flags stashed away in their basements!

— Debbie (@Dangchick1) July 2, 2018

And all the Christians who support trump should be ashamed of themselves as well.

— Terry Ann 🌊🌊🌊 (@TerryAnn1219) July 3, 2018

But look again at David's "tweet".

Yes, he's boldly stating what he sees as the truth about the people who have wronged him without cause. In that first half of the verse he:

• Describes them as arrogant. Based on what we know of David's enemies, he likely has good reason to describe them that way.
• Suggests they should be ashamed of their actions
• Claims he did nothing to provoke their wrongful treatment of him

Notice, though, what he does not do:

• He does not take it upon himself to shame them. He makes the one bold, supportable, statement, and leaves it at that. There's no name-calling, no mud-slinging.
• He does not take action against the wrong-doers
• He does not presume to use their arrogance and wrong-doing as an excuse to behave the same toward them

David's refusal to take advantage of King Saul when he was most vulnerable shows David's refusal to model his behavior on that of his enemies.

Instead David takes his queue not from the behavior of the people around him but from precepts of God. 

The best response to the arrogance and wrong-doing of others is to avoid becoming like them. Respond instead the way God would. 

This is hard to do when we're constantly surrounded by the arrogance of the world. Developing a different heart requires training, studying the precepts of God so often and so deeply that they become the default guide for our knee-jerk reactions, even in the most stressful of times. Meditate on the Word, not on the world.

Psalm 119:77 Delight

Let your compassion come to me that I may live,
for your law is my delight

  Psalm 119:77

As a fine, upstanding, card-carrying Christian, I refer to God's Word as the final authority on everything having to do with life and godliness.

But can you say, with  David, that God's law is your delight?

There's a difference.

I've come across several Christians who are dedicated to God's law, obsessed with God's law, and analysts of God's law. But many of them don't seem to delight in it.

To understand what David means by delighting in the Law, we need to go back to the beginning of the Psalms, where first uses that word.

How blessed is the person,
  who does not take the advice of the wicked,
  who does not stand on the path with sinners,
  and who does not sit in the seat of mockers.
But he delights in the Lord’s instruction,
  and meditates in his instruction day and night.
He will be like a tree planted by streams of water,
  yielding its fruit in its season,
  and whose leaf does not wither.
Psalm 1:1-3

If you say you believe in the authority of the Word in areas of theology, but in your daily life you tend to follow along with the advice of the predominant culture, your delight might not be in God's law.

If you've rationalized, minimized, and sidelined the scriptures in order to make you or your church appear more tolerant of cultural norms, you might be delighting is something other than the Law of the Lord.

If you're so zealous in your opposition to "alternate lifestyles" that you lead with judgment rather than love in your interactions with people, you might be delighting in something other than the law of love.

If your political leanings are causing you to speak and act in ways that are more in tune with the modern American bipolar political climate than with the Fruit of the Spirit, you might be delighting in something other than the Lord's instructions.

If your social media posts are filled with memes and videos and comments that mock the people and things you oppose, you might be delighting in something other than the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

If you make use of the Bible like it's a cudgel, laying waste to anyone who disagrees with your opinions - whether they be non-believers or believers - you might be delighting in your own brilliance rather than in God's law.

If you've allowed the Lord's instructions to plant their roots so deeply in your heart that your go-to response to everything is to bear fruit, then you are probably delighting in the Law of the Lord.

Psalm 119:76 Love & Slavery

May your unfailing love be my comfort,
according to your promise to your servant.

Psalm 119:76

David intermingles here two paradoxical word pictures that are repeated often throughout scriptures: God as the one who loves and comforts us, versus God as the one who deals with us as servants.

Many believers take this mixture for granted. For many unbelievers, it's an irreconcilable contradiction.

Most preachers have explained the differences between slaves and indentured servants in biblical times, and explained how servants often became like cherished family members.

But to the modern skeptical mind, any talk of bond-servants and slavery triggers all sorts of alarms. American progressive culture cannot abide the concept of servant-like submission, whether to a god, to an owner or boss, or to -- especially to -- other people. It's seen as totally demeaning, regressive rather than progressive.

This isn't a new problem. Paul's reference in Romans l to the ones who, "though they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him," is a description of people who balk at submitting to God. Behind their philosophy and politics is a more elemental reason for their disdain:
they want to be their own masters. They don't want to adapt their behavior to the wishes of anyone else, not society, not moralists, and certainly not God.

They're either unaware or stubbornly ignoring the universal truth that everyone serves someone or something.

You may be an ambassador to England or France
  You may like to gamble, you might like to dance
You may be the heavyweight champion of the world
  You may be a socialite with a long string of pearls
But you're gonna have to serve somebody, yes
  Indeed you're gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
  But you're gonna have to serve somebody

      Bob Dylan, Gotta Serve Somebody

I've met numerous women in the prison chapel who will admit they were servants to their impulses and addictions. They'll also tell you their master did not love them. And their masters failed to fulfill their promises eventually.

For people who have been abused by their masters, it's hard to believe their could be a different sort of master, one whose love never fails, one who keeps every promise.

It's not about legitimizing the many faces of slavery and servitude that humankind has known throughout history. Those are merely a fact of life, the way of the fallen world.

People who embrace their identities as servants of God will - or perhaps I should say they should - be actively engaged in not only opposing all other forms of slavery but rescuing the enslaved.

Rescuing is, after all, the Master's primary mission.

Psalm 119:75 Big Picture

I know, LORD, that your laws are righteous,
and that in faithfulness you have afflicted me.

Psalm 119:75

The simple lesson from this verse is that knowing and trusting God's faithfulness in the midst of suffering is easier if you understand and trust God's purpose for you.

It's seldom that simple, though.

This verse, like many others in God's Word, requires a bigger concept of God and His purposes than many Christians possess. In 21st century America we like to have everything outlined neatly, with an abundance of comforting and inspiring catch phrases and memes.

But the God we encounter in His scriptures is not bound by outlines or catch phrases. Life on the 1 road is seldom neat and orderly. The scriptures meant to be our guide are often unsettling and even disturbing.

We're so accustomed to packaging things in pleasant wrapping, we tend to over-sentimentalize a verse like this. We gloss right over the startling paradigm shift of the second half of the verse.

in faithfulness you have afflicted me

That may actually be too much of the verse still for some people, who will fixate on God's faithfulness and blur out the blunt truth that follows.

you have afflicted me.

Don't rearrange the words in your mind. It doesn't say you have allowed me to be afflicted. God doesn't want to be let off the hook that easily. He's the one who inspired David to write these words. He wants it said clear and to the point.

you have afflicted me.

Is David simply personifying the affliction, tagging God as the source even though he knows very well God doesn't actually afflict anyone? You might convince yourself of that, if it weren't for the dozens of other scriptures that declare with similar blunt plainness that God is the author and cause of much affliction.

There's not room here to list them all. I recommend you check out the appendixes in Joni Eareckson Tada's fantastic book, When God Weeps: Why Our Sufferings Matter to the Almighty. In the back of the book she includes a long list of verses that clearly say God causes suffering.

If you're going to trust, as David does, that His laws - as represented by His scriptures - are righteous, then you're going to have work on stretching your mind to encompass an understanding of God as one who actually causes suffering.

Joni's book also includes a lengthy list of scriptures that explain God's many and varied purposes for suffering.

• Suffering is used to increase our awareness of the sustaining power of God to whom we owe our sustenance (Psalm 68:19).
• God uses suffering to refine, perfect, strengthen, and keep us from falling (Psalm 66:8-9; Hebrews 2:10).
• Suffering allows the life of Christ to be manifested in our mortal flesh (2 Corinthians 4:7-11).

The list in her book goes on and on. That's a good thing.

The only way you're ever going to fully incorporate a God who afflicts into your mental framework of faith is to also embrace Him as the God who is always faithful to His greater purpose for you and for all the world and all of history.

Which means you've also got to come around to a grand vision of your own place in His plan. He did not send His Son to die for you just so you could settle into a comfortable life of church-going and passive piety. He's got plans for you and to prepare you for what's coming He may put you through some tough times.

It's the big picture of a big God with a big purpose that will enable you to persevere through the dangerous adventure of saying Yes to the part He's assigned you.

Psalm 119:74 I See You!

May those who fear you rejoice when they see me, for I have put my hope in your word.

Psalm 119:74

God made you who you are and He has a plan and a purpose for you.

Part of that plan includes all the other people who He made, all the others  for whom He has a plan and a purpose.

You are not alone!

I know it sometimes feels like you're alone. I've certainly fallen prey to the Elijah syndrome (I Kings 19:9-18), thinking I'm the only faithful one left.

Actually, my sense of self-importance tries to convince me that I'm the only one who actually gets it. Unlike Elijah, I'll acknowledge that many others have faith. But to me they're like sheep, just wandering along, stuck in their tired old churchy habits. They don't really get it. Not like I do.

But I'm not alone, and neither are you. God is at work in the lives of many people, some of whom might surprise you.

So how do the people who fear God recognize one another on the 1 road of life?

They're the people who do things that make you rejoice! Just in the past few weeks I've rejoiced to see . . .

• Church members showing up early and staying late through two Sunday morning services, eager and willing to do whatever it takes to make un-church and de-churched newcomers feel welcome and comfortable.
• Career ministers saying Yes to God's leading to leave a comfortable and productive ministry to take on a new job in a new place, outside their comfort zone.
• Young couples who have returned to faith and to the church, but haven't been content to just passively sink into the comfort of a family-focused congregation. Instead they are actively and eagerly looking for ways to stretch themselves to serve God as a family, to be willing to step outside that comfort zone together.
• Women in a prison chapel who want more than a jailhouse faith and are willing to learn spiritual disciplines that will sustain them in following God when they return to life outside.
• College students who are willing to let God lead them where they should go, rather than letting the American Dream determine their path

They're the ones who put their hope in God's Word.  I rejoice to see people with their hope in the right place . . .

• Believers who resist the pressure to trust in the post-modern philosophies and morals of 21st century culture as opposed to the timeless truths of God.
• But also, I rejoice in believers who can rise above simply finding their sense of self-importance in the Word and instead go deeper into the Word to train their hearts toward love, kindness, patience, peacemaking, and meekness.
• I rejoice in those who see the many problems in a world gone mad and yet put their trust and hope in God and His Word, not in politicians and their platforms.
• My soul leaps with joy when prisoners learn to stop trusting the old habits that landed them in prison and replace them by diligently practicing new routines grounded in God's Word.
• My heart is warmed by Christians who go beyond collecting favorite verses to prop up their personal preferences and choose instead to use the scriptures as a guide to the heart of God. 

You are not alone! Look around you and take notice of the ones whose fear of the Lord is radically changing their lives. And tell them.

I see you! I see you following God and it gives me joy!

Psalm 119:73 Reprogrammed

Your hands made me and formed me;
give me understanding to learn your commands.

Psalm 119:73 

People who have learned to think of themselves as worthless need more than a pep talk. They need to be reprogrammed.

Jan's mother didn't just treat her like she was worthless. She said so, in no uncertain terms.

If only you were prettier, you'd be able to get a better boyfriend. It's too bad you inherited your father's bad hair and not mine.

When Jan tried to use makeup and a new hairstyle to look more beautiful, her mother ramped up her insults, using words like slut and whore.

When she began acting out her desperate need to prove her self worth, she fell into patterns of behavior that degraded her even more. We met her in prison. For women especially, there's often a direct line connecting a life of constant debasement and a life behind bars.

There's a temptation for groups who lead chapel services in the prison to focus on one of two things. They want the women to know, without a doubt, that they are sinners in desperate need of salvation. Or they want the women to get all excited: singing, jumping, shouting, and high on Jesus. Both of those are based in scriptural principles, but they don't fully address what these ladies need.

Like one who takes away a garment on a cold day,
or like vinegar poured on a wound,
is one who sings songs to a heavy heart.
Proverbs 25:20

People who have been trained to believe they're worthless need to be retrained to understand their true identity in the eyes of God. They don't need pep talks. They need to be educated, taught to understand the height and depth and breadth of God's plans and expectations for them.

Jan enjoyed the exciting worship and it was good for her to be aware that her chief failure lay in falling short of the glory of God. But what she grew to desire most was to know the heart of God. Only by knowing the Word would she know what God intended her life to look like.

For you created my inmost being;
 you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
 your works are wonderful,
 I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you
 when I was made in the secret place,
 when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed body;
 all the days ordained for me were written in your book
 before one of them came to be.
How precious to me are your thoughts, God!
 How vast is the sum of them!
Were I to count them,
 they would outnumber the grains of sand—
 when I awake, I am still with you.

Psalm 139:13-18

Psalm 119: 73-80 Yodh

yodh

Your hands made me and formed me;
 give me understanding to learn your commands.
May those who fear you rejoice when they see me,
 for I have put my hope in your word.
I know, LORD, that your laws are righteous,
 and that in faithfulness you have afflicted me.
May your unfailing love be my comfort,
 according to your promise to your servant.
Let your compassion come to me that I may live,
 for your law is my delight.
May the arrogant be put to shame for wronging me without cause;
 but I will meditate on your precepts.
May those who fear you turn to me,
 those who understand your statutes.
May I wholeheartedly follow your decrees,
 that I may not be put to shame.

Psalm 119:73-80

That graphic of the letter yodh is deceptively large. It's actually the smallest letter in the Hebrew alphabet. Hebrew reads from right to left, so yodh is at the right end of the first word in this stanza: יָדֶ֣יךָ

It's smallness led Jesus to use the letter yodh as an illustration in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:18) when He said "till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled."

Yodh is most often used as a palatal approximant. That's a linguistic term meaning its sound is less distinct, less noticeable than most other consonants or vowels. Generally the letter yodh is pronounced similar to the English Y.

Yodh also has an effect on the tense of a word, depending on whether it's found at the beginning or end. In this stanza of Psalm 119 it's at the beginning of the first word of every verse, thus making all of them third person singular. Except for the words that start with yodh and end in vav: those are third person plural.

Got that?

It doesn't matter whether you do or not. Yodh will be itself regardless of our thoughts about it.

On the 1 road of life I've encountered many fellow travelers who have learned to see themselves as a yodh. Their voice among the crowd is indistinct. Perhaps they add a little flavor to their surroundings but even that blends in and gets lost.

I say they've learned to be a yodh because no one is born with an approximant identity. It's a nurtured nature, often acquired through a lifetime of being overlooked and underappreciated. Born into a social, racial, or economic status on the fringes of society, every interaction has pressed them down until they accept their role as an insignificant jot in the world's narrative.

They fall into the habit of walking through life aimlessly, believing they don't matter. Life is a third person narrative for these yodh people. It's all about what others are doing. Their role is to find their way amid the lives of more important people.

Nearly fifteen years in the prison chapel taught me what happens when people see themselves as small and inconsequential. Most of the women in state prisons are there because their lives have become dominated by drugs and alcohol. Their travel through life turned into a never-ending struggle, continuously beaten down and tripped up by the rest of the world. So they drink and they take drugs. And they commit crimes, either under the influence of their drug of choice, or in order to obtain more of it.

Their miserable journey eventually leads to prison, where many of them learn to give up on any shred of self-worth or hope they ever had.

David, the king, begins each of the eight verses of this stanza with yodh. Each of these eight jotted verses reminds us no one is small and insignificant.

The Kings of Kings didn't design anyone to be a jot. Every person on the road of life was created and molded to be a child of the King. He invested each one with a royal status, but also a royal purpose. Every newborn begins life as a Soldier-Prince or Soldier-Princess.

But then they're told they're just a jot.

Look around you. How many of your fellow wayfarers don't even know who they are? How many have never been told they can walk the 1 road with the purpose and confidence that comes from knowing who they were intended to be?

I constantly remind the ladies in the prison chapel they can be more than what the Department of Corrections wants them to be. The state of Missouri is trying to rebuild them so they can be normal, productive citizens when they get out. But God wants so much more for them.

After their term is complete, some of those women will return to society with a higher goal, one we've tried to instill in them. They want to be soldier princesses, to live a life of adventure, pursuing the purposes of the King.

Sadly, when they go looking for a church home they're likely to find many of the Christians there have allowed themselves to settle into the false normalcy of a religious lifestyle. They're the normal, productive citizens the Department of Corrections has been talking about. But there's no adventure, no zeal to do battle for the Kingdom.

Dare to be who you are. Live a big life for the King.