Just a couple of challenging things to think about this week…

A couple of weeks ago I passed along some thoughts about dealing with the stresses we face in this life; Fret Not. Those thoughts came to me while I was studying Psalm 37, and the Lord has kept me there ever since. Last week as I was pressing Him on a couple of issues I am dealing with He had me focus once again on the message David delivered to us. He showed me that there are some keys we need to keep in mind when we are seeking answers to the questions that are troubling us; when we are seeking the desires of our heart. Here are several key conditions that the Lord has set before us that are directly related to our successful walk with Him.

• 3 Trust in the Lord…  
• 4 Delight thyself also in the Lord…
• 5 Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in him…
• 7 Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for him…
• 8 Cease from anger, and forsake wrath…

Trust in the Lord requires us to be confident, bold, and secure in Him. It implies that we are to avoid the opposite, which is leaning on our own understanding. 

Delight in the Lord requires us to be soft, pliable, and delicate in our approach to the Lord. It means that we are not to come before Him rigidly locked into our natural side. If we don’t come before Him in spirit and in truth we’ll never be able to hear His voice; hear His answers to our petitions.

Commit our way is to remove or roll away our preconceived ideas of where the Lord wants us to walk. And to successfully commit our way to Him we have to Trust and Delight in Him.

Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for Him is to be dumb and astonished before Him. It means that we are to acknowledge what He has already done and stop, be silent and stand still while we wait for Him. Resting is probably the most difficult thing the Lord has asked us to do beyond Trusting in Him. I explore this in detail in my book Wake Up and Rest.

Cease from anger means to forsake it and leave it alone. This is the arena that the enemy constantly plays in because he knows that we can easily become frustrated as we wait for the Lord to answer.

Easy words and concepts to say but challenging for the one who is truly seeking after the Lord. But they are so very critical for us in our quest to fulfill God’s plan. Once again I come back to the verse the Lord has given us to build our foundation upon…

Rom 8:29 For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.

And as the fundamental element of that predestination (preordination) God gave us His “Righteousness.” And our walk with the Holy Spirit here on earth is the process by which we allow Him to reveal that righteousness to the unsaved world around us so that the Lord is glorified. That is the process of being conformed into His “image,” His “character.” David tells us that in verse 6…

6 And he shall bring forth thy righteousness as the light, and thy judgment as the noonday.

Who will bring it forth… The Lord. What will He bring forth… His righteousness. The Lord will give us the desires of our heart (the very desires He has placed there) as part of our walk with Him through this life. The very desires that were preordained in order for us to become like Jesus. But we need to remember what precedes that?

Trusting, Delighting, Committing, Resting, Ceasing