Somewhere in the midnight fog of the Jet Blue terminal I completely lost the distinction between Tuesday and Wednesday of this week; thus, contrary to my last post, I need to make up for two missed days of psalming. First, Psalm 4.
How long, O you sons of men,
Will you turn my glory to shame?
How long will you love worthlessness
And seek falsehood? Selah.
But know that the LORD has set apart for Himself him who is godly;
The LORD will hear when I call to Him.
In what is a continuing theme in the Psalms - David’s lament against his enemies - I find myself slightly to the left of David’s position. His position is righteous anger, and confidence that his righteousness ensures that God will deliver him. I wonder if I am more like the worthless men he rails against.
I have been praying about this lately and seeing how my laziness has resulted in spiritual distance from God over the last few years. There have been good changes and progress that I’ve made, but generally, the vigorous progression of my late teens and early twenties has slowed significantly. Bad habits, especially in the realm of negative thinking and hurtful attitudes, have become hard in my heart.
In praying and asking God why this is, why I have been spiritually lacking, prone to these patterns, his answer was not what I expected.
“Draw near to me, and stop sinning.”
David was a man connected to God in the most spiritual sense. He understood “walking in the Spirit.” He loved God from youth, meditated upon his word day and night, was constantly relating to him in heartfelt, emotional prayer - as such, he understood godliness, chose godliness, eschewed unrighteousness. We all know that he was a sinner who messed up big later in his life, but generally, he was a man after God’s own heart.
Such loving devotion to God as a person - the kind of devotion that would lead me to spend time with him alone in prayer, to meditate on the reality (not just the theology) of his word, to do all from the heart - where has this been? Even as I think back to a season of revival last spring and summer, I can see how the business of the fall and winter put me down for the count.
When one is not connected to the Lord in this devoted, spiritual manner, it is nearly impossible to “stop sinning.”
On the other hand, I know I must not just develop new prayer and study habits - I must do so in the desire to mortify those things that keep me distant from God. If I don’t kill my sin, it will drive me away yet again.
Lord, I want to be set apart! I want to feel again the distinction that devotion to you brings! I want to feel that righteous anger against sin, enemies, adversities, knowing that they are all lies compared to your faithfulness; to feel again the confidence that you will always deliver, always be faithful to the righteous, always hear when I call upon you.
Help me to draw near to you, and to kill my sin, so that the Spirit might be strong in my life.
And thank you for keeping me through all my seasons, even ones of distance from you.
