Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path. Psalm 119:105
Psalm 119:41-48
Psalm 119:45 I walk about in freedom, for I have sought out your precepts. NIV.
For much of my early life I adopted a defective perspective on God’s law, the regulations and guidance provided in the Bible as the guide for what type of person I should be and how I should life. I viewed all the divine instructions as restrictive and confining. In my desire for self-determination, I felt God was limiting my rightful decision-making prerogatives. Compliance became an external formality, not so much for acceptability with God, but for other people including my family and church community. Ironically, I could provide all the “correct” theological jargon and explanations about God’s sovereignty and grace, but I lived following my own self-deception.
Perhaps, though, it wasn’t merely self-deception. Is this not the same argument the Serpent provided our original parents when he encouraged them to doubt God’s good intentions for them and decide right and wrong for themselves? From my current situation in life, I can clearly see that I exchanged God’s truth for a lie and reaped years of dissatisfaction and disappointment before I learned the core truth about God: That He is good, all the time.
My prior attitude could be like that of a locomotive which finds riding on two parallel rails restrictive and limiting. Are there not pleasant pastures on either side; and pleasant streams and forests? Aren’t there beautiful mountains and quint villages? Yet, the instant a train leaves the “confines” of the track it is a wreck! How could I have expected anything but disappointment when I attempted to craft my own, as they said in my corporate world, Standard Operating Procedures?
After much pain and frustration, I have come to see that God instated the guidance in His word for my good. He who created me knows best how I can live in conformity to the laws of nature He instituted. In His word He also provides the description of what it means to live in His image. That illustration is Jesus, who came to do His Father’s will. In so doing He not only provided salvation through His death and resurrection, He also provided instruction, lived an exemplary life, and sent the Spirit to indwell and guide us. How much more fulfilling is this life in which I seek to remain on the rails of God’s precept.
In fact, I am only truly free, when I follow God’s rails for life.
Father, thank You that for caring enough to provide me with great and precious promises and instructions so I may live and serve You with all I am. Amen
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