"Sweet Surrender"

"Stand in awe, and sin not: commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still. Selah." (Psalms 4:4) If you thought that I was taking you for a ride, and had somehow veered off of the tracks, then maybe a little quiet time would be in order right about now! The general point to what I was saying, was how easy it is for us to accept the worlds view about what path or direction we should take; heck, we could be twisted up thirty times a day, if we are not paying attention! The path of least resistance is usually the one that the world would instruct us to take; but in God's economy of almost all areas of our life, His ways are not exactly what the world would consider as logical and wise choices. In the verse above, David is using six words to describe something that is really quite complex. The first three words are "Stand in awe", which is easy enough to read, and then accept it as something which means what it says; but, what is it saying? Is this a deer in the headlights kind of moment? Or is this a principled position that we are to take as we serve the Living God? (Here you go again Rich!) Okay; because we know that we are chosen, and because we know that God has set us apart for His workmanship, then we can rest assured that He is going to do something spectacular in our lives; especially when we are walking by faith, and not by sight! Therefore, we stand upon His promises, knowing that He is going to complete in us that which He has established for our lives; which is where the "awe" comes into play, because in this, we are excited to see what God is going to do, what He is doing, and what He has done; each and every moment of every day! However; the second three words, which are, "and sin not", are the potential 'wrench thrown into the gears' part of the path that we are on! In other words; when we do set out to serve Him, and as we walk by faith and not by sight, then we must be very careful as to what we do, by not letting sin be a part of our lives, as we trust in Him for the direction of our life. In this, again we have a colon placed after those six words; which informs the reader that what follows the mark proves, explains, or lists elements of what preceded the mark. And with that, we have, "commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still"; which is a round about way of saying, don't go to sleep with unconfessed sin in your heart! It is a matter of making a conscious examination of our hearts, as we lay there examining the endeavors of the day, and paying strict attention to account for any sins that might have been committed; then asking for God's forgiveness for those sins, prior to going to sleep. The "and be still" part of this practice, is waiting for God to answer; whereas, we lay still before the Lord, and waiting for His absolute peace to come upon us. But wait; there's more!!! Because, if for some reason we are awakened during the middle of the night, then we should practice it again, because there may be something that we missed!!! Selah...