Walk In Your Commandments

Make me walk in the path of your commandments, for I delight in it. Psalm 119.35

This has been my prayer from my younger days – that was over 6 decades ago! It still is my prayer everyday! For I have found that with all my desire and determination, it still is difficult to obey the Lord, especially when on every side I am tempted by every kind of temptation!

When I got saved, I began to like and love God’s Word. I knew it was good teaching and it was profitable. There is much wisdom in it for right living which pleases God and wins man’s approval. I realised that it is ‘a light to my path and a lamp to my feet'. But reading everyday and meditating on it ‘day and night’ as God commanded did not come to me easily or quickly (Jos 1.8). Keeping the instructions of the Word was yet another matter! If reading the Bible was difficult, obeying the commandments was a constant struggle. It is so even today!

I felt like the apostle Paul during his early Christian life. “For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out…For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do--this I keep on doing. …When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am!” (Rom 7.14-24).

Do you know that the psalmist King David too knew the power and pull of sin. He experienced the disobedience, defeat, the consequent judgment of God and the tragedies that dogged his life. He realised that there had to be a solution, a deliverance that came only from God, the Giver of the Law.

But he knew that it had to start with a deep and passionate love for God and His law. It led him to delight reading and meditating on it day and night (Psa 1.2). When we constantly read, then the Holy Spirit who inspired the Word will make it ‘the sword of the Spirit’ which can fight 'the tempter and the temptation' and give us victory (Eph 6.17). Jesus did it!

Dear friend, King David makes a desperate plea to God, “Make me walk in the path of Your commandments.” When we delight in God’s Word and pray like David prayed and cry like Paul did, God will fulfill His promise. The Lord said through the prophet Ezekiel, "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes, and you will keep my judgments and do them” (Eze 36.26,27). DO IT LORD!

Pray and practise with me: Dear Lord, thank You for Your Word. Help me read it daily and to memorise it in my heart. Thank You for giving me Your Spirit. Let Him make me walk in the path of Your commandments. Amen.