"To Be Pressed Upon"

"Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me." (Psalms 139:5)

  Whether or not you can accept this, my statement regarding lust, as spoken of the other day, it was not something that I am proud of, it is just something I am aware of in my heart. I have found a way to overcome it, as many others have, I am sure: to first and foremost pray; pray for my God to forgive my heart, and to pray for those to whom my eyes looked upon. Secondly, I count the cost; something that I wish many others I know would have done, to seriously examine the consequences of the sin, and run away, whether that is physically or mentally! I am sure that there are many of you who have testimonies of what God can do in many of those situations; because if you surrender over to God and ask Him for strength, then He always will provide a way of escape; 100% guaranteed, He will put up a wall, throw you a rope, or punch you in the gut, whatever it takes! As to the title of today's post, I was looking up that word, "beset," which is where this title came from. It is a word that speaks of being shut is, to confine; to press with siege, to besiege; to urge, to press upon any one in pursuit; to cut, to divide, and to form! This is simply amazing to me how David sees God's hand upon his life; he is not only called and chosen, but he is molded and formed by God; as if he is a lump of clay! If you know anything about working with clay, before you can easily mold it, you must press it and work it out. As a kid, I had several cans of Play-Doh, and I remembered how it was hard at first, but the more you squeezed it and mashed it, the softer it became and the easier it was to rolled up and shape into just about anything you wanted to make. Something else I remember doing, that might sound a little odd, was taking the doh and pressing it on the Funny Pages of the newspaper and lifting the image of the comic onto the clay. God is so good! We might not understand everything that He allows us to go through, or anything that He might cause us to withstand; but the one thing we never need to worry about, ever, is the weight of His mighty hand...

"Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ and become one with him. I no longer count on my own righteousness through obeying the law; rather, I become righteous through faith in Christ. For God's way of making us right with himself depends on faith. I want to know Christ and experience the mighty power that raised him from the dead. I want to suffer with him, sharing in his death, so that one way or another I will experience the resurrection from the dead!" (Philippians 3:8-11) NLT