Adverse Winds

Adverse Winds

Psalm 119:32 (ESV)

I will run in the way of your commandments

          When you enlarge my heart!

What is to be done with a fifteen-minute drive? This question is a peculiar one? Yet it is one that Christians have to answer every single day. As fifteen minutes of “down-time” are often given. It may be in the car, waiting outside of a school, walking someplace, waiting for dinner, or a mechanic to finish his work. What will a Christian do with the small portions of time he is given? In one of William Wilberforce’s journal entries, he notes quoting the ENTIRE 119^th Psalm on his walk from Hyde Park (approximately 15 minutes) and being greatly blessed by it. As Wilberforce was in the midst of the greatest battle for the sanctity of human life the world had ever known he found it necessary to commit to memory the longest chapter in the bible. To press the words of this chapter on his heart to bless and mold his heart.

The composition of Psalm 119 is a major work of mind, soul and strength in and of itself. (If you don’t agree attempt it an acrostic poem of this magnitude devoted to God and his scripture, and see how soon your mind is pushed, your will wanes, and your body wants to stop sitting!)  The author fulfilling the greatest commandment in his composition then hands the baton to the reader and asks the reader if they would dare to commit their mind, body, and will to the memorization of it.

As the reader walks through the text he finds that all his ability depends on the hand of God. This section of the acrostic, the Daleth portion, overwhelms with the persistence of our inability apart from God. Notice that in seven of the eight verses in this section the petition to God (give me, teach me, make me, strengthen me, teach me, let me, when you). The Author accepts his in ability apart from God to please him. He also is sure of God’s goodness and sovereignty so he petitions him. Coming into his throne room to change his mind! Asking him to change the way things are and to do something miraculous! Giving the sinner the strength to please God! This complete inability to please God apart from God granting the ability is what some call Total Depravity. We need God to “enlarge our heart” to make us able to desire him! The question for everyman woman and child is will they recognize their inability to please God apart from Christ, or will they persist in rebellion to reality?

William Wilberforce found memorizing this Psalm necessary to fight the political and economic realities of Slavery in the empire on whose land the sun never set. The reality that God was sovereign over every situation provided him with the strength to persist in his battle for the destruction of the slave trade over two decades and slavery itself another two and a half decades. As life seems to overwhelm rest in the Psalms. Try and fail to commit them to memory. Trial and fail again, and again and again step by wearied step you draw closer take a breath and join dear Christian traveling up The Hill Called Difficulty. When the adverse winds of life are set against you these treasures of God will sustain you. Recognize that the most valuable things in life require the greatest struggle to achieve.

CRUCE, DUM SPIRO, FIDO