Psalm 37:5-7 “Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him and he will do this: He will make your righteous reward shine like the dawn, your vindication like the noonday sun. Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him; do not fret when people succeed in their ways, when they carry out their wicked schemes.” This episode talks about how we can commit our ways to the Lord. Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Commit Your Way To The Lord
Psalm 37:5-7 “Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him and he will do this: He will make your righteous reward shine like the dawn, your vindication like the noonday sun. Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him; do not fret when people succeed in their ways, when they carry out their wicked schemes.”
“Commit your way to the Lord: trust in him and he will do this.” There is that word trust again. It keeps coming up. It looks like we are not going to be able to get away from it. The Lord is calling us to trust Him. I don’t see anyway to deny that. According to the Revised Standard Version Bible the word “Trust” 147 times. Old Testament 134 times. This is something that keeps getting repeated over and over again. I think it is something we might want to pay attention too.
The beginning of this verse says to commit your way to the Lord. What does this mean? How can we do this. We can decide we want to follow the Lord. We can decide that instead of trying to handle things on our own, we will turn them over to the Lord. Committing our way to the Lord can look different for each one of us. Maybe for some of us that means we will start each day sitting in silence and praying with Him. For other people it might mean praying the Liturgy of the Hours. Some people may decide that committing their way to the Lord means they want to volunteer at various places in their community. It doesn’t have to look the same for each of us.
What will be the same for all of us, is our love and commitment to the Lord. If we decide to commit our way to the Lord that means we are committing to following His laws and living the way He calls us to Live. The Lord knows where are heart is at and He knows what we want to do. By committing to the Lord’s ways, we are saying that we will try to do whatever we need to do to follow Him and to live by His rules. This will mean that we need to learn what the Lord wants from us and how to live the way He wants us to live. We can’t commit our way to the Lord if we don’t know what that looks like. It would be like trying to follow the rules of a game that you have never played before. If you are going to truly commit to the Lord then you are also committing to learning more about Him and His ways.
The next part says, “He will make your righteous reward shine like the dawn, your vindication like the noonday sun.” God will reward you for your faithfulness. If someone attacks your character, God will give you vindication. He says in the next verse, “Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him; do not fret when people succeed in their ways, when they carry out their wicked schemes.” “Be still before the Lord,” that is not something that comes easy too many of us. Many of us have a hard time coming before the Lord to pray, never mind coming before Him to be still. We live in a world that is constantly busy and filled with so much noise. How can the Lord call us to come before Him and be still? Is that even possible? Maybe it is not possible on our own, but all things are possible with Christ.
As if coming before the Lord to be still wasn’t hard enough the Lord calls us to also “wait patiently for Him.” Patience is definitely a virtue and it is one that is becoming harder and harder to find in today’s world. So, how can we be still before the Lord and wait patiently for Him? We can set aside a few minutes a day to just sit and be still. I know this may be hard at first, but guess what? You can do hard things! I know the enemy doesn’t want you to think you can, but you are a child of God, of course you can do hard things. Set aside time whenever it is best for you. Sometimes we can get stuck in trying to do things perfectly, or the correct way, or at least I do. God did not say be still before the Lord for 5 hours a day. He just said be still before the Lord. So, even if you start with 5 minutes a day, that would be great! It doesn’t have to be first thing in the morning, at lunch, before bed, it can be whatever is best for you. I remember hearing a story about someone asking their mentor when the best time to do it was and their mentor said, “Whenever you are actually going to do it.” Meaning, don’t decide morning is best if you hate to get up in the morning. Don’t pick right before bed if you know you always fall asleep at that time. You’ve got this, you can find 5 minutes in your day to be still with the Lord.
The second part of that was to wait patiently for Him. That doesn’t mean that you sit there and ask the Lord to hurry up and come before your thoughts wander off. It doesn’t mean that you get impatient because the Lord hasn’t shown up yet. If you ask the Lord to come, He will. Just believe that is true and then wait patiently. If thoughts come to your mind, that’s fine. You can either dismiss them gently, or incorporate them into your prayer. Whatever works best for you.
These verses end with, "Do not fret when people succeed in their ways, when they carry out their wicked schemes.” This brings us back to the beginning where we started a few days ago. We don’t have to worry about those that are doing wicked schemes, even if they seem to be successful. God will take care of them. It is His job to judge not ours. Our job is to commit our ways to the Lord and then trust that He will do what needs to be done. When we commit our ways to the Lord, remember part of that is turning our worries over to Him and trusting that He will take care of them, trusting He will take care of us. We don’t have to worry about those with wicked schemes. God promised us He would make our vindication like the noonday sun. We know God always keeps His promises. So, are we going to believe Him, or are we going to worry?
Dear Heavenly Father, please bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask that you continue to help us to trust you. We ask that you help us to be still before you and to wait patiently for you. We struggle with all these things and we know if we were on our own we would fail. However, we are not on our own, we have you Lord Jesus, please help us. Help us to see that we don’t have to worry about evil doers because you are in charge and you have it all under control. We love you Lord and we thank you for all that you do for us. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.