Psalm 119:147 Cry & Hope

I rise before dawn and cry for help;
I have put my hope in your word.

Psalm 119:147

There are days I get up in the morning and have trouble summoning up hope for my day.

Today was one of those days.

I didn't sleep well.

Sometime around 2:30 I woke up and went to the bathroom, a regular occurrence for me and mos other men my age. Usually I fall back to sleep within a minute or two. Today my mind began churning through minute details of something I know I'm going to be asked to do within the next couple of weeks. It's not a task I dread. I have confidence I'll do it well. But the analytical part of my brain chose this moment to fire off the neurons and organize all my thoughts on the topic and try to put them into a workable order. At the same time, another part of my mind was telling the rest of my brain to settle down and let me go back to sleep.

I eventually went back to sleep, but that sort of half-awake mental gymnastics always leaves me exhausted.

I would also realize, as my body tried to get going this morning, that part of why I felt so sleep-deprived is that the sniffles of the past few days are shifting into full blown winter cold. Not good.

My bad knee has also been aching more than usual due to the colder winter weather, to the extent that I'm never not dealing with some level of pain.

I looked in the mirror this morning and saw the face of an old man in obvious discomfort. I wondered to myself, who is this person I've become?

This combined mental and physical toll isn't helping the emotional and spiritual troubles I've been struggling with for several days. I've realized that I'm allowing my curmudgeonly habits to take control of my interpersonal relationships at work. Last week a woman in a nearby office group said, "You're a jerk!"

She's right. I have been a jerk. I really don't like the version of me that has been dominating my life the past few weeks.

It would be easy to just give in to the persona of the old curmudgeon. It seems to be what people do. The older people get, I've always said, the more they become the very people they always were in reality behind the mask they were wearing when they were younger.

Is there any hope of not being that person?

And yet God's Word tells me there is always hope.
Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.

II Corinthians 4:16

Wow! That's a powerful promise! Do I dare hope it's true?

So then, banish anxiety from your heart and cast off the troubles of your body, for youth and vigor are meaningless.

Ecclesiastes 11:10

Lack of youth is no excuse for descending into anxiety and hopelessness. The Lord will give strength and power and hope.

Do you not know?
Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He will not grow tired or weary,
and his understanding no one can fathom.
He gives strength to the weary
and increases the power of the weak.
Even youths grow tired and weary,
and young men stumble and fall;
but those who hope in the Lord
will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
they will run and not grow weary,
they will walk and not be faint.

Isaiah 50:28-31

Psalm 119:146 Call for Salvation

I call out to you;
save me and I will keep your statutes.

Psalm 119:146

I will never tire of encountering this statement of grace over and over in the scriptures. David states it as simply here as Paul lays it out in Ephesians 2:8-10.

For it is by grace you have been saved [save me], through faith [I call out to you] —and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God. not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do [and I will keep your statutes].

Calling out to God is an act of faith. Without at least a kernel of faith, no one would cry out to a God who is not visible and often elusive. By opening up a conversation with God, even the most hesitant of agnostics allows the possibility that "he is there and is not silent", as Francis Schaeffer often said. There's no point in calling out to a God who does not exist or who has so dissociated himself from humanity that there's no possibility of a response.

Faith is also required in order to believe God will save and that he has indeed saved. I know I personally never saw a dove descending from heaven at the time of my baptism, nor did I hear God express that he is well pleased with me.  I simply have to believe the promises I read in his scriptures and have faith in his intent to follow through on the promise that we are saved by grace through faith.

As the seed of faith grows into whole hearted trust, we become what God has had in mind all along, the sort of people who don't need to be bribed into keep his statutes but who eagerly seek out the good works he has prepared for all of us and each of us to do.

My voice, your voice, the voice each person walking on the 1 road of life, when directed toward God, opens not only lines of communication with God and with each other, but opens doors into the confidence that comes from grace and pushes us onward along the road of life with God.

Psalm 119:145 Call & Response

I call with all my heart;
answer me, Lord, and I will obey your decrees.

Psalm 119:145

Studying the Word is transformed into something living and active when it's combined with whole-heart communication with God.

Prayer erupts into concrete action when it's rooted in and responds to the words of God in the Word of God.

Two way communication, between God and a disciple, is a source of awesome power.

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

The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. Hebrews 5:16b

That's a lot of activity and power! Combine the two together in your life and be ready to change your world!

Psalm 119:145-152 Qoph

I call with all my heart; answer me, Lord,
  and I will obey your decrees.
I call out to you; save me
  and I will keep your statutes.
I rise before dawn and cry for help;
  I have put my hope in your word.
My eyes stay open through the watches of the night,
  that I may meditate on your promises.
Hear my voice in accordance with your love;
  preserve my life, Lord, according to your laws.
Those who devise wicked schemes are near,
  but they are far from your law.
Yet you are near, Lord,
  and all your commands are true.
Long ago I learned from your statutes
  that you established them to last forever.

Psalm 119:145-152

We live in an age of nearly unlimited communication.

If I'm a fan of an obscure regional band, I can go online and find other fans from around the world who are tweeting, talking, blogging, and arguing over which band member is the best and which songs are most worthy of a wider audience.

If I'm a follower of a sports team that gets little recognition and scarce attention, I can become a one-person megaphone, blogging, tweeting, and commenting. By slowly building a following, I can single-handedly help the team get more fans.

I've actually done that one.

While we're all taking advantage of the sound stage called the internet, there's one line of communication that remains underutilized.

Among all your tweets and posts and comments about sports and music and hobbies and politics, how much voice do you dedicate to calling out to the Lord?

Psalm 119:144 Righteous Understanding

Your statutes are always righteous;
give me understanding that I may live.

Psalm 119:144

Which statutes do I strip clean of their righteousness?

The statutes of God don't stand on their own, a bare set of words and phrases connected together.

When you dissect and analyze the scriptures, do you dive deep into the definition and historical usage of the words? Diagram the sentences and the relationship between phrases? Great!

But are you ignoring the statutes' roots in the righteous character of God? Are you failing to place the context in the righteous history of God at work in the world? Not great.

When you study the last half of Romans chapter one, do you get lost in the list of sins, building a systematic doctrine of right and wrong? There's certainly a place for understanding what each of those sinful acts means. But if that's all you do, they can become nothing more than bricks in your personal wall of  religious opinions.

Look more closely at those verses in Romans 1. Search for the heart of God in what Paul is saying. See how that list is a reflection of God's righteousness, both his wrath against sin and his compassion and patience toward people.

These verses are not so much about a list of forbidden acts, but instead a description of a God who has revealed himself to us at many times in various ways (Hebrews 1:1), only to be willfully ignored. It's the story of a God who step by step gives people up to go their own way, hoping their deepening mess will jolt them into awakening from their self-imposed ignorance and will turn them back toward him. If they continue to run away from him, he finally lets them go all the way.

When you encounter people who have depraved minds, so depraved they do what ought not to be done, people who have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity, ones who are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice, are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful, people who invent ways of doing evil, who disobey their parents and have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy ... how do you respond?

With judgment only? Or also with compassion and patience? Is your reaction limited to the wrathful side of God's righteousness? Or do you seek out ways to righteously show compassion and build bridges of reconciliation?

Psalm 119:143 Delightful

Trouble and distress have come upon me,
but your commands give me delight.

Psalm 119:143

Which commands do you think aren't all that delightful?

This might seem like a somewhat odd question. Well of course, you say, all his commands are delightful.

Really?

I have to admit I have trouble always delighting in I Peter 2:13-17.

Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every human authority: whether to the emperor, as the supreme authority, 14 or to governors, who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right. For it is God’s will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish people. Live as free people, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as God’s slaves. Show proper respect to everyone, love the family of believers, fear God, honor the emperor.

There are some government leaders whose behavior tempts me to rant and rail at them. My sarcastic side wants to ridicule them with the same sort of untruths and insults the politicians throw at each other. It would delight my worse self to join in on the ignorant talk of foolish people.

But that's not what God is about and it's not what I really want to be about. So instead I'll delight myself in being unique, approaching my freedom as an opportunity to do do things for the Lord's sake.

God commands his people to love their spouses and their children. We're to love our friends and neighbors and fellow believers. He even says to love our enemies.

Not all of those commands are easy or even comfortable. But if we give ourselves over to obeying for his sake, we will come to delight in his commands.

Psalm 119:142 True

Your righteousness is everlasting
and your law is true. 

Psalm 119:142

Which laws do you think aren't true?

Well, of course I think all God's laws are true! 

But do you really?

But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you...

Matthew 5:44

Wait, really? Even the spouse who has been so oppressive/unfaithful/obnoxious that I don't think I can live with them any more? Even the politician who stands for everything I abhor and seems bound and determined to take away the rights and freedoms of religious expression?

Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

Matthew 7:1-2

... except on social media, where no one can hear me dishing about the way that person always wants everyone to thinks they're so perfect on Facebook or this other person obviously has hateful and unholy motives for every opinion they tweet about. Unless in my "righteous indignation" I decide to post something to passive aggressively put them in their place.

Which laws do you think aren't true?