I turned to Psalm 101 yesterday, and was greatly blessed as I meditated on these eight verses penned by King David.
He begins, with a song of praise in his heart, and he considers God’s CONSTANT AND CONSISTENT grace and mercy and loving-kindness that is poured out on him. The potential danger is, and I believe David realised it, was that you can take all these blessings for granted. I believe he realised personally, the powerful truth penned by Jeremiah the prophet many years later, that “the heart is heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked, who can know it? (17:9) and David had learnt to do certain things.
In verse two David says (ESV) I will ponder (meditate) and not listen to my own selfish motives and attitudes, but will behave and act wisely and walk blameless (with integrity of heart) before my house.
In verse three, David is so aware of the impact our eyes can have upon us for both good and evil, he declares he will not set anything that is worthless (sinful) before his eyes, that will cause him to sin.
In verse four David makes the conscious decision that a perverse heart ( wicked, disobedient, unmanageable, uncontrollable, rebellious) will not be a part of his life, he says he makes a choice that he will KNOW NOTHING OF EVIL.
David realised we are in a battle, and must make conscious decisions daily to choose to do that which is right according to the Word of God, not what our depraved heart tells us to do.
Again, how important Biblical Discipleship is, to encourage a new believer to do this, the Apostle Paul on his teaching in Ephesians 6 that we must earn to PUT ON the whole armour of God, so that we can recognise, both the deception of our own heart, as well as the deception, and discouragement of the evil one. Paul describes these as the “fiery darts” that our enemy wants to hurl at us.
So this simple blog today, is a reminder, that we cannot relax for a single moment, because of the depravity of our heart, and the “wiles” of the evil one. We have a complete set of armour available, we must learn to put on, and know how to use each piece of armour, that way, we can live and move, in victory and please the lord in all we do and say and think.
29 July 2016