Learning and Keeping His Covenant

Friday, June 23

Learning and Keeping His Covenant
Anna Williams

“The Lord is good and does what is right; he shows the proper path to those who go astray. He leads the humble in doing right, teaching them his way. The Lord leads with unfailing love and faithfulness all who keep his covenant and obey his demands.” Psalms 25:8-10

“The Lord is a friend to those who fear him. He teaches them his covenant.” Psalms 25:14

Last week I wrote about how our lives can become rather counter-cultural when we genuinely seek to live according to God’s word instead of the prevailing relative moralism surrounding us. Then I ran across this passage above and it feels like such a great continuation of that thought. 
The first step for us in following him must be recognizing we have gone astray – admitting we are lost. This requires humility in a culture that elevates pride as though it is an admirable trait. American culture says, “Follow your appetites and shout about it from the rooftops. If anyone dares to challenge your choices, cut them out or cut them down.” But as evidenced by so many accounts in the Bible, pride was a sinful, adversarial position against God that always led to destruction. (Adam & Eve, Pharoah, Saul, Nebuchadnezzar, etc)

I have an 8-year-old son who thinks he’s 18 some days. When he gets it into his head that he already knows something, it is almost impossible to teach him the correct way. He has even tried to argue against the correct answer for a math problem because maybe we don’t know how to do math as well as he does. (…the computer scientist and the finance manager!)
We can all get hard-headed and hard-hearted at times in our life and we need the Holy Spirit to convict us of this. Not to fill us with guilt and shame but to help us gain the true perspective of how desperately we need Jesus as Lord of our lives. Once we reach or return to that place, we can start hearing, internalizing and following God as he teaches us about his covenant and how to keep it. I love the promise in this scripture that “The Lord leads with unfailing love and faithfulness…”