Psalm 25:4-5 “Show me Your ways, O Lord, teach me Your paths. Lead me in Your truth…” Oh, how we need to echo David’s prayer in this psalm to know the Holy Spirit’s guidance in our daily walk! If we do not set our rhythm for life, (God’s paths), then the world will dictate and set it for us. The world’s way is based on sense knowledge from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, (Genesis 3). God never intended his highest creation, man, to know good and evil, but to know God. How many wrong decisions have we made believing them to be good for us, resulting in failure and disorder? We eat from the tree of knowledge, judging our decisions to be good for us, instead of consulting God first. Much can be learnt from the record of Abraham’s journey through life, especially concerning Ishmael! He listened to his wife’s opinion and direction based on sense knowledge, birthing Ishmael, the consequence of his wrong decision to help God out to fulfil the promise God gave him. How many of us have birthed our Ishmaels and have had to live with the consequences of those choices?
As we learn to refuse sense knowledge, (eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil), we can develop sensitivity to hearing from the Lord. Our spiritual hearing can develop as we seek to hear what God says. God intended that we should know Him, and not believe that we know what is good for us. We were created to know God, not good! Oh, how we want to know everything, instead of trusting God!
“Show me Your ways, Lord. Teach me Your paths. Lead me in Your truth….” As we embrace God’s ways, we often find we have to unlearn many of our behaviour patterns that have become stronholds of wrong believing in our lives. “Walk in the light as He is in the light”, (1 John 1:7)
Proverbs 14:12 warns: “There is a way that seems right to a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death” God’s word encourages us “…acknowledge Him in all your ways and He shall direct your paths”, (Proverbs 3:6) “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding”, (Proverbs 3:5).
When we consider the wonders of God’s creation, the animal kingdom, the plants, the planets, they all declare the glory of God. The planets and stars are all set in order by God’s mighty hand. The instinct given to birds, fish, animals and insects are amazing. Consider the migration of birds, the little fish that cross mighty oceans to spawn in a particular place, the wonder of the changing seasons. In spring the sap begins to rise in plants and trees and all that lay dormant in winter, suddenly springs into life producing a glorious array to welcome the new season. Everything is in order, just being what it was created to be.
When Adam and Eve first disobeyed God in the Garden of Eden, the Fall of man resulted from their disobedience. They listened to the devil’s words and succumbed to his temptation producing disorder. The highest creation of God flopped because of disobedience. We know that Almighty God sent His beloved Son, Jesus Christ, to redeem and restore all that was lost in Eden. When we entered into salvation, we were born again spiritually. Our earthly journey through life now is an incremental restoration of God’s order in our lives. Little by little, line upon line, the order is restored as we obey God’s word, keep the commandments of Jesus and obey the Holy Spirit’s direction.
Many think they fail because they are weak. The truth is our failures come out of the strongholds in our lives because we do not choose to walk God’s ways and confusion results, the devil’s ground. The Lord requires of us: “to present our bodies a living sacrifice”,(Romans 12:1). The sacrifice is a choice to surrender our will to the Lord, just as Jesus had to in Gethsemane when He prayed: “nevertheless, not My will, but Thine be done” I find I cannot live the Christian life in my own strength. We have all tried and failed miserably! Then the Lord reveals the mystery of the answer: Christ in you, the hope of glory, (Colossians 1:27). Only Christ in me can live this Christian life. As I choose to die to self, surrender to the Lord in every situation, ( that is surrender to God, but before men), I find the life of Christ can flow freely through me, bringing a disobedient heart into joyful obedience as I become the will of God. In this position of surrender, I can wake in the will of God, speak in the will of God, become the will of God – but it is all of Christ – Christ in me, the hope of glory- all the glory belongs to God as He restores His order in my life. Change requires movement. Right choice, surrender in humility, enables Christ in me to flow freely through me, bringing glory to His great name. “For of Him, and through Him, and to Him, are all things, to whom be glory forever”, Romans 11:36.
God is restoring His many sons/daughters to glory. His purpose will only happen where my choices are in order with His, as I present my body a living sacrifice – redeemed and restored into the perfect order of God, to be filled with all the fullness of God, our divine destiny. Our wrong choices in stubborness limit the Unlimited One. All the time we have breath in our bodies we have daily opportunity to make right choices in surrender to the Lord, to reach the goal of His divine purpose for us. Only in yielding can we be filled with all His fulness, relating correctly to God and our fellow men, demonstrating His order and purposes from a God centred life – Christ in me, the hope of glory!
“Show me Your ways, Lord, teach me Your paths. Lead me in Your truth…..”
Photo by Jenny Hill on Unsplash
