Psalm 119:17-24Amplified Bible

Gimel.

¹⁷ 
Deal bountifully with Your servant,
That I may live and keep Your word [treasuring it and being guided by it day by day].
¹⁸ 
Open my eyes [to spiritual truth] so that I may behold
Wonderful things from Your law.
¹⁹ 
I am a stranger on the earth;
Do not hide Your commandments from me.
²⁰ 
My soul is crushed with longing
For Your ordinances at all times.
²¹ 
You rebuke the presumptuous and arrogant, the cursed ones,
Who wander from Your commandments.
²² 
Take reproach and contempt away from me,
For I observe Your testimonies.
²³ 
Even though princes sit and talk to one another against me,
Your servant meditates on Your statutes.
²⁴ 
Your testimonies also are my delight
And my counselors.

The Word of God for the Children of God. Gloria! In Excelsis Deo! Alleluia! Amen.

Let us begin with a short prayer from today’s biblical text for this devotion,

¹⁷ 
Deal bountifully with Your servant,
That I may live and keep Your word [treasuring it and being guided by it day by day].

In the name of God, the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. Amen

The prayer of the Psalmist is for God to deal “bountifully” with His servant.

We read this prayer because we opened our Bibles, and we opened our eyes.

When we opened our eyes, we gave God full and unfettered access to our souls.

Except,

When we never open up our Bibles, what will we consistently never find?

When we sporadically open up our Bibles, what do we consistently expect to find?

When we consistently open up our Bibles, what do we consistently expect to find?

When we habitually open up our Bibles, who do we consistently hope to find?

When we habitually open our eyes to read our Bibles, what is likely to happen?

If like David, we could, would, should, expect to discover “wondrous things.”

If we are like David, we expect to discover “wonderful things” done by God.

Remember, David only had a small portion of the Bible God’s given us today!

The reality is this…

There is no wasted moment reading God’s Word!

Let me qualify that statement a bit – there is no wasted moment reading God’s Word when we do with consistently open eyes, consistently open hearts, souls.

Even if you only read a single verse, you are hearing from God himself.

And you have the chance to “behold wondrous GOD things” in his Word.

From now on, starting today, learn a new habit, never let a single day pass without consistently reading at least one verse.

We can do that, right?

With consistent practice, then “enlarge thy tent”- read two… Three… Four…

And before you know it, you are consistently reading whole entire chapters.

This tiny habit, consistently done will consistently snowball and change your life.

Will we do this?

Perhaps and then again, perhaps not ….

Psalm 1:1-2Amplified Bible

Book One

The Righteous and the Wicked Contrasted.

1 ^[a]Blessed [fortunate, prosperous, and favored by God] is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked [following their advice and example],
Nor stand in the path of sinners,
Nor sit [down to rest] in the seat of ^[b]scoffers (ridiculers).
² 
But his delight is in the law of the Lord,
And on His law [His precepts and teachings] he [habitually] meditates day and night.

Perhaps we are in that moment of life when we are not consistently feeling so blessed, not feeling so very fortunate, or so prosperous and so favored by God.

And that is why we have our eyes and our hearts, and our souls closed off now.

Psalm 13:1-4Amplified Bible

Prayer for Help in Trouble.

To the Chief Musician. A Psalm of David.

13 How long, O Lord? Will You forget me forever?
How long will You hide Your face from me?
² 
How long must I take counsel in my soul,
Having sorrow in my heart day after day?
How long will my enemy exalt himself and triumph over me?

³ 
Consider and answer me, O Lord my God;
Give light (life) to my eyes, or I will sleep the sleep of death,
⁴ 
And my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,”
And my adversaries will rejoice when I am shaken.

Have you ever spent seasons where consistently getting into the Bible felt more like ceaseless drudgery than ceaseless delight?

Where you perhaps have felt guilty, because you knew you should be studying God’s Word every day, but you just simply never felt like consistently doing it?

If so, you’re not alone.

Many “steadfast, stout hearted” Christians said that their biggest struggle in their devotional life was a lack of desire to “read the Bible and to pray daily.”

This certainly isn’t something to feel guilty about.

Instead, it’s a consistent reality a lot of us will consistently face every day.

One has to wonder – if we consider all of the intrigue David experienced on a daily basis, if we recall all of his efforts to hide from Saul, avoid his enemies and avoid his own son, Absalom, his hours, days and weeks spent hiding in caves,

Did David really have the time to consistently read and study God’s Scriptures every single day – or have them read and then interpreted to him “on the run?”

But what if it could be different for us?

Imagine this…

Changing your mindset …. use what we have learned from our consistently inconsistent efforts at reading and studying and praying through the Bible,

To learn a new habit – we can consistently and habitually get our hearts, minds and souls into…… letting God open our eyes, revealing, teaching us about trust.

Psalm 13:5-6Amplified Bible

⁵ 
But I have trusted and relied on and been confident in Your lovingkindness and faithfulness;
My heart shall rejoice and delight in Your salvation.
⁶ 
I will sing to the Lord,
Because He has dealt bountifully with me.

A great place to begin learning and practicing this new habit is with Psalm 119.

This lengthy but beautifully written Psalm has its entire focus on the Word of God, which contains the instructions of our Heavenly Father for His Children.

How we consistently need the Word of God, for it is our daily food, and it is refreshment for our souls.

Psalm 119:1-7Amplified Bible

Meditations and Prayers Relating to the Law of God.

^[a]Aleph.

119 How blessed and favored by God are those whose way is blameless [those with personal integrity, the upright, the guileless],
Who walk in the law [and who are guided by the precepts and revealed will] of the Lord.
² 
Blessed and favored by God are those who keep His testimonies,
And who [consistently] seek Him and long for Him with all their heart.
³ 
They do no unrighteousness;
They walk in His ways.
⁴ 
You have ordained Your precepts,
That we should follow them with [careful] diligence.
⁵ 
Oh, that my ways may be established
To observe and keep Your statutes [obediently accepting and honoring them]!
⁶ 
Then I will not be ashamed
When I look [with respect] to all Your commandments [as my guide].
⁷ 
I will give thanks to You with an upright heart,
When I learn [through discipline] Your righteous judgments [for my transgressions].

When I slowly, subtly, begin to give thanks to God with an upright heart ……

When I slowly, subtly begin to learn ….

When I slowly, subtly, begin to discover ….

When I slowly, subtly, begin to change what I believed to be unchangeable ….

When through discipline, I start to realize it is God who is consistently trying to reveal something indescribably wonderful – to “shock open” my eyes and soul.

How we should consistently treasure the Word of God, for it is our #1 guide and #1 teacher, our strength, and our #1 sure and certain and consistent defense.

How we should consistently read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest the Word of God, for it is consistent life and health, it is peace and light, it is joy and hope.

And as the Psalmist trawls the depth of its treasures, his whispered prayer is: “Open my eyes, that I may behold Wonderful things from Your Law.”

We are not only servants and students of the Word, but we are sons and daughters of its Author, and so that should stir our hearts to search the Scriptures daily to discover the truths in which the Lord desires to teach and train us, as well as the areas in which He seeks to guard and correct us.

As His children, we should treasure His Word in our heart that we might not sin against Him, and as we reach for our Bible, our prayer should mirror that of the Psalmist: “Open my eyes, that I may behold Wonderful things from Your Law.”

We need to ensure that our eyes are wide open to all that is in the Word as we saturate ourselves in His wonderful ways, reflect on the beauty of His person.

We should crave for the milk of the ever-Living, ever transformational, Word of God so that we may continually grow in grace and in a knowledge of the Lord Jesus, and we should habitually meditate upon the meat of the Word so that we may walk in spirit and truth and live in submission to the guiding of the Spirit.

Day by day, our prayer should consistently be: “God, my Father, God, my teacher, open my eyes, that I may behold Wonderful things from Your Law.”

When our eyes are open and earnestly looking to Jesus, they are not searching out the things of this world.

When our heart is gasping for the Lord, it is not lusting after the things of the flesh.

But when our eyes are consistently closed in disinterest or discouragement, our own imagination can be consistently, tragically, funneled in a wrong direction.

Let us continually, consistently look to the Lord in excitement, open our eyes in prayerful expectation that we WILL see the wonderful things that are written in Scripture and contemplate on the glories that are contained in the Word of God.

In the name of God, the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit,

Let us Pray,

Heavenly Father, I pray that You will open my eyes, that I too may behold wonderful things from Your Law. Open my eyes so that I may contemplate the glories of Your person and gain nourishment from Your instruction. Open my eyes, I pray, to see the consistently wonderful truths in the precious Word of God. In Jesus’ name, AMEN.

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