4-5I’m not trying to get my way in the world’s way. I’m trying to get Your way, Your Word’s way. I’m staying on Your trail; I’m putting one foot in front of the other. I’m not giving up. (Psalm 17:4-5, MSG)
In Psalm 17:3, David shows us his willingness to invite God to drop by unannounced. David makes the case that when God visits him in the middle of the night, God will find someone who’s not trying to get his own way in the world’s way, but instead is following in the steps of God. Psalm 17:4-5 is about what God will find when God drops by. For me, the notion of not working toward our own way in the world’s way feels particularly relevant during this time. Perhaps, you are like me, in the times we live in, all I can think about is how badly I want to get my way. Like, I really, really want my way to prevail and I want my vision to prevail. Of course, I’m not the only one who wants my way. Lots of people think differently from me and they want their vision of the future to come true just as much as I want mine. Maybe my sense of how hard it is to not want my way in the world’s is why I find David’s confidence in his own motives so striking. Now, we know from elsewhere in Scripture that David is a man after God’s own heart (1 Samuel 13:14). He really loves God and does his best to follow God. So, did David have some special ability to pursue the way of God instead of his own way in the world’s way? I wonder if David’s ability to focus on following God has less to do with a kind of specialness and more to do with his step-by-step faithfulness. David describes himself as putting one foot in front of the other in order to follow the way of God. For this goal, David tells God that he’s not going to give up. He’s committed. We too can walk in the way of God by focusing our energy on the step-by-step faithfulness that David describes in this prayer. So, what does that actually look like? Sometimes following God looks like big choices. But so much of the time, following God looks like the daily choices we make. The choices to move toward God, to move toward others, to even move toward ourselves. This is a time when many of us will have a lot of choices. We’ll choose how to face the pandemic, for sure. But we’ll also choose how to talk about it with our friends or how to manage our anxiety fanned by the news. We’ll choose how to talk to our coworkers and our kids and what to talk about. We’ll choose what to post on social media and how to talk to people we interact with in the grocery store. We’ll make choices about how to celebrate or how to grieve. In all of these choices – and the countless others facing us – may we seek the way of God, and not our own. May we walk, putting one foot in front of the other, not giving up on the way of God. Dear God, it’s so easy for me to want to get my way in the world’s way. When I do this, remind me that You invite me to know how good and full Your way is. Help me delight in Your invitation to walk step-by-step as I follow You. Amen. Comments are closed.
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