Matters of the Heart - Pt 5

Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep your word. You are good and do good; teach me your statutes. The insolent smear me with lies, but with my whole heart I keep your precepts; their heart is unfeeling like fat, but I delight in your law. (Psalm 119:67-70 ESV).

We’ve been looking at a few verses that describe how we can be “heart-healthy” spiritually. Today I’ve chosen a reading from the longest psalm in the Bible. In fact, with 176 verses it is also the longest single chapter in the Bible. Most scholars can agree that it was written by David, Daniel, or Ezra. Whoever the author was there can be no doubt they understood suffering from a very personal perspective. These verses are not written from an ivory tower scholar sheltered from the difficulties of pain and rejection. It is replete with a sense of desperation. From that perspective we hear the voice of God with the remedy to our every need. We have all heard the common wisdom expressed with “Desperate times call for desperate measures.” I would assert that is wrong. I cannot deny there are those times in life where hopelessness looms on the horizon. These are the times when there’s a darkness that falls fresh on the heels of hopelessness. It is a desperate time. The answer is not doing something desperate, but being desperate. This is when your situation seems to be so hard that it seems as if there is no end in sight. That’s when being desperate calls to God from the depths of despair in prayer. Our prayer lives take many forms. Some are quiet others are loud. Some are simple and others are desperate. Desperation drives us to prayer that keeps pressing in with feelings rooted in the appearance of enemies that seem to be prevailing. It is this kind of prayer that presses on when it seems like the arrogance of God’s enemies will prevail. This is the type of prayer that while it’s plain the situation is perilous, God is not powerless. God is not quietly obliviously to my plight. God is not ignorant of the uproar from His enemies. God is not blind to the rising up of arrogance against Him. He hears my prayers and answers them according to His will, His timing, and His purposes. With every prayer, my trust only grows in my God who loves me and I love Him. My heart check today is in the examination of whether I am willing to do whatever it takes in my desperation to draw in closer to God. I need that kind of desperate action because I tend to wander when I stop feeling my need for Him. I have found the dawn breaks when I do this and I begin to see the goodness of God poured out in my life like a healing balm. How about you? Are you desperate?