Daily Devotional
Word of the Day
Turning to the Word
Pastor Scott
Saturday, June 19, 2004
Listen to this teaching | Related Teaching | Bible Teaching | 
Print
"Before I was afflicted I went astray: but now have I kept thy word."
(Psalm 119:67)
The psalmist says in Psalm 119, verse 67, "Before I was afflicted I went astray: but now have I kept thy word." Have you spent hours meditating on that passage? If you haven't, you should. It could be understood even better this way: Before I was afflicted I went my way. I wasn't aware of what God's eternal purposes were or what He was doing in my life.
Proverbs 3:11 says, "My son, despise not the chastening of the Lord; neither be weary of his correction: For whom the Lord loveth he correcteth; even as a father the son in whom he delighteth." Why all this discipline? Why is somebody on your case all the time? Because they see good in you; they are not just giving you a hard time. Kids, if your parents are always requiring of you excellence, do you wonder when they will ever be satisfied? If what you are asking is, "When will they get off my case?" the answer is never. You misunderstand what is happening. You are not trying to gain their approval; you have it. They are sowing this correction into your life because they love you, see worth in you, and know that you can bring forth glory to God in your life.
"My son, despise not..." If you are my son, you will not despise the chastening. You will understand that you are accepted and loved. You will understand that you are not trying to gain approval that you are mutually working together for your perfection. Not enough of that is taught or promoted by child psychology or sociologists today. What's being promoted today is tolerance--"Tolerate me like I am." No, you will not stay like you are; you are going to be better. I don't mean a parent, because they were a failure, living vicariously through their child to make them a star. The parental role is one of bringing conformity of the child to the image of Jesus and not sparing for the crying. Effectively communicating this can be difficult, but it is communicated by being a living example. Not just speaking, but doing and saying, "Follow me as I follow Christ."
"Before I was afflicted, I went astray, but after I was afflicted [disciplined], now have I kept thy word." Affliction and trials in our lives cause us to gravitate to the Word of God. The Word becomes our solace. We get our comfort, our peace, our strength from the Word of God in the affliction. There's no other place to turn. How easy is it to leave the Word of God on the nightstand when everything is going well? How easy it is to pick it up in the wee hours of the night to gain your solace when your kids are on drugs, when you don't know where they are, when there's no way to pay the bills, or when you don't know whether you're going to live or die? As you're in His presence, His peace and faith rise in your heart that regardless of what happens in time and space He's gone to prepare a place for you. You delight in the eternal and in the invisible. The salve that's been given for your eyes causes you to see in the realm of faith where others can't see, and you call things that are not as though they were.
"Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now have I kept thy word." Don't despise, son, this chastening. Don't be weary in your well doing. Don't be weary of His correction. God, your good Father, is not going to let up. If you're being chastened, it's because He delights in you.