Princes persecute me without cause, But my heart stands in awe of Your words. I rejoice at Your word, As one who finds great spoil. I hate and despise falsehood, But I love Your law. Seven times a day I praise You, Because of Your righteous ordinances. Those who love Your law have great peace, And nothing causes them to stumble. I hope for Your salvation, O LORD, And do Your commandments. My soul keeps Your testimonies, And I love them exceedingly. I keep Your precepts and Your testimonies, For all my ways are before You.
(Psalms 119:161-168)
I do love the Bible, but wonder why at times it stands between me and Jesus. This great book of revelation and divine inspiration often is the closest I get to abiding in Christ Jesus. I want to be in fellowship with God and not just His written word.
In reading this passage I saw that I do not love Jesus as much as this author loved the law of God. It seems hard for me to see how anyone can love the law. I still see obedience more as a requirement than a blessing to my life. By this I mean obedience to things I do not what to do. Of course I love to do the things I love to do, but that is more selfishness than loving obedience in my life at this time.
That phrase “my soul keeps your testimonies” is a challenge too. I live in a time when most people think they cannot live a holy life let alone believe God can be testified in their thought life, emotions and will. How did this Old Testament Guy get so converted, so transformed? Do we need a little more legalism to smack us around some?
I think the answer of inner and outward transformation is all about living in a culture. The more we live in the culture of heaven, the more we live in the way our Father lives, the more we are transformed. In the Old Testament there was a city, a region and a nation that sought to live out the culture of heaven. Sure it failed often, yet is did exist. The world we live in has little authentic Christian culture. The best we have seems to be a culture of a church or community. These are great as far as they go, but they tend not to go into the world where we go the most.
I need friends, family and others to live the life Christ desire of me. I cannot do it alone. Sure I am responsible to live for God no matter what, but I forfeit the glory of God in my life to the degree that I walk out my life outside of His culture, His family. We stand in a world full of evil and darkness, yet we daily choose to partake of the tree of life. We are those who are living in this age of evil and yet turn our hearts to the good one, to the only good one.
If you want to build a transformed life, you need to build others and not just yourself. Sure I do think you can make it on your own, but why would you even try! Maybe there is a reason that the second command is to love your neighbor as yourself.
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