In 5:8 David prays a prayer that is a theme throughout
Scripture, “Lead me, O Lord, in your righteousness.” In the 23rd
Psalms David spoke of the Lord, his Shepherd, who “leads me in paths of
righteousness for his name 's sake.” And in the Lord’s Prayer Jesus taught us
to pray “lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil,” i.e., lead us
in righteousness.
This is the true desire of every heart that knows God, to
live a life that glorifies and pleases him; to walk a straight path before the
Lord (8b) not turning to the right or left away from God’s intended leading.
David’s heart was clearly hungry for this kind of righteous living.
We must remember that we have been made righteous by the
work of Christ on the cross. “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no
sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Corinthians
5:21) We do not seek to live a life of righteousness so that we can become righteous. No, rather we live
righteously because we are righteous
in Jesus Christ. (Philippians 3:9)
Simple illustration: when my dad said, “You’re my son, act
like it,” he wasn’t exhorting me to do something to make myself his son. No, he
was reminding me to live out who I really was. So the cry of our hearts today
for God to lead us in his righteousness is from a deep desire to demonstrate
who we truly are in Christ.
Prayer: Father, thank you for the righteousness we have in
Jesus our Savior and Lord. Thank you that you took us in our unrighteousness
and transformed us by your grace to true righteousness. Help us…lead us…cause
us to live out that righteousness daily.
No comments:
Post a Comment