"For Our Benefit"

"His soul shall dwell at ease; and his seed shall inherit the earth." (Psalms 25:13) I really have nothing new to present to those of you who know God's peace, because once you have His peace you have something to judge what real peace feels like. Besides, if you have been following this blog for any length of time, then you know that my situation is one that takes what could be considered the odd way of looking at things, and is one that portrays our response to God in a lot of different arenas. Let me remind you about something special with this Psalm, that it is "A Prayer for Guidance And Protection"; and being that it is a prayer, it portrays communication towards God. That should be fairly simple to understand: Right? I Hope so! If I could just transfer my thoughts onto this page, things would be so much simpler; but, unfortunately, I am required to type out the words, most of which are only a portion of what is swirling around in my head. Now then; as I thought about this verse this morning, I was reminded what prayer does in our lives, and how it gives us a way to communicate our heart and our emotions to God. As with any relationship, if there is no communication within that relationship, then there really is not much of a relationship taking place. We know that God does listen, and when we pray to Him, we express our heart in a manner that portrays Him to be a God that cares what we are saying; it's really just a matter of common understanding of who God is, and that He loves us; that we have already established. But, how often do we come to God in prayer as if all He is there for is to answer our request for this or for that? Come on; don't pretend you don't know what I am talking about; because we pray for our meals to be blessed, our travels to be safe, and our day to be free from temptation; that is our primary prayer day in and day out. My point is, that for a prayer about asking for guidance and protection, there sure isn't a whole lot of asking God to do this and do that for me; it's more like, do this to me, so that I might learn to trust and obey. Our guidance and protection by God is determined by our response to Him and His great mercy: if we accept Him at His word, then we know His mercy is great, and if we know His mercy is great, then we will respond according to the magnitude of His forgiveness: the bigger you are, the harder you fall kind of experience; only in this instance, the fall means to fall on your knees and thank Him for His great mercy! Beyond that, we are subject to God's direction upon our lives, and we should get over the notion of being the one who is in control; because if we think that we are the ones driving our lives, and we are just asking God for directions on our journey and protection along the way, then we are missing the point of giving God the wheel..."Whoso keepeth the commandment shall feel no evil thing: and a wise man's heart discerneth both time and judgment. Because to every purpose there is time and judgment, therefore the misery of man is great upon him. For he knoweth not that which shall be: for who can tell him when it shall be? There is no man that hath power over the spirit to retain the spirit; neither hath he power in the day of death: and there is no discharge in that war; neither shall wickedness deliver those that are given to it." (Ecclesiastes 8:5-8)