I had been told at one time that if I wanted to learn to praise God I should read a Psalm each day and if I wanted God’s wisdom I should read a Proverb each day. Therefore, my prayer time began with a Psalm and a Proverb because, of course I wanted God’s wisdom and I certainly wanted to praise Him as He deserves! In one of my Martha-like busy days, I told the Lord, “Lord, I don’t have a lot of time this morning to spend with you, so instead of my usual hour of Scripture reading and prayer I am going to simply sing my Psalm to you today.” This was the first time through the Psalms for me. I opened to Psalm 119 and began to sing the Psalm to the Lord. I thought that I was so clever to do this for the Lord! I began to sing and sing and sing- I didn’t know that Psalm 119 was the longest Psalm in the Bible! Psalm 119 had a total of 176 verses, which is 7 pages long in my Bible!
God has such a sense of humor, don’t you think? I’m sure He began to chuckle the moment I proclaimed din my arrogant way that I had no time for Him that morning and I would sing to Him to make up for my lack of time in His loving presence! As I sang and sang and sang all of a sudden and heard myself singing, “In earlier days I had to suffer, I used to stray,” (“Boy”, I thought, “that’s the truth!”) “It was good for me to have to suffer, the better for me to have to learn your statutes. I put the law you have given me before all of the gold and silver in the world.” By this time, I was in tears before the Lord. Would this Word have ever have pierced my heart had I been simply reading it? I don’t know the answer, yet I know as I sang this Word, I knew it to be true. Yes, I had strayed far from the Lord and I had suffered in many different ways. Some ways because of my own choices and other ways as well. I realized at that moment as I fell on my face before God that He is everything to me. If I had not suffered I would not have known my great need for His love and mercy and redemption in my life. Yes, I am glad I had to suffer.
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