Psalms 119:128 Which Way Do I Go

Hidden Treasures of the 119th Song. Amazing is the miracle verse, in my view, of the I-N section. It is verse 128. And as we talked about yesterday, there's a couple of therefores, like verse 126 laid this out. It's time for the Lord to work, for they have made void that law.

And then there's two therefores because of that statement. And so the first therefore we said yesterday, which was therefore I love thy commandments above gold, yea above fine gold. And today, which would be the miracle verse in the I-N section, as we begin to review this, he says, therefore I esteem all thy precepts concerning all things to be right, and I hate every false way. So if you could just climb to 10,000 feet for a minute and go, okay, what's God's vision here? It's that we go his way and not the bad way. And if we could do that, that would be a miracle. And how cool would it be if we could catch his vision and take his path, so to speak? And what is the secret of that path? Well, it's the precepts.

And so you're left with that ever-ending question is what in the world is a precept? And so if we dig into this for a minute, I love the beginning where it says therefore, because it's time for God to work. The stakes are high.

You know, things are coming to a head. We need to engage. Well, part of engaging is clearly these precepts. And there's the therefore. But he's saying here that in his heart, he's, he's, he's steaming these to be right, which is in Hebrew. You know, this, this verse only has about 10 words, where in English, it has about 20. So it's kind of neat, really, when you, when you condense it down the way they do in Hebrew, because the word esteem right is actually the word that's used. So it's rather than esteem all things to be right, but esteem right, all thy precepts with the idea in my heart being, and again, this is my view of what precepts are, is that they are these essentially meetings with God.

In other words, where you're consulting God in his word often, or you might be just consulting him in prayer. But this is where you're going to find out what direction to go through the Holy Spirit. And all this is if, if you need to know the right way to go, you're going to get that from God and you got to meet with God and you've got to be close to God in order for all that to happen. And that again, would be a miracle if we could, you know, get going in the right direction all the time. So, you know, cause this one says all things, in other words, we want to not just go the right way. Sometimes we want to go the right way all the time. And so it's beautiful that we can ask for that in this verse and in this eye and idea of having the vision to see the right way to go every single time.

Okay. That's really beautiful. And then, you know, the, the backside of that is I hate the false ways.

I hate those that are, you know, they're disguised to take me some direction that's going to give me life and it doesn't. And so here we have just clearly this idea of discernment and, you know, what does this look like? I actually go back and maybe you've heard me talk about this before that I had in my early walk with Christ, the five slam a jam, a cat's pajama prayer, which that was just essentially taught to me by, you know, a pastor of the first sermon I ever heard, um, that I was actually paying attention, you know, after I married my wife. And he said that you're supposed to sit and listen, that prayer has to do with listening twice as much as hearing, which to me, this is pakuta on steroids.

Like, yes, that's it. When we can hear from God, um, often through his word, but sometimes just in, as the case, I'm going to explain here in a minute, this wasn't from his word. He just gave me, he gave me a word in my consciousness of the right way to go with something. And it made the hugest difference in my life.

Let me explain. So, um, when I first married my wife, Tammy, I'd been married previously. And you may have heard me talk about my wife who was mentally ill. She was schizophrenic. And we, she had a son that I raised as my own has my name, actually, Leslie does.

And that son, um, um, stayed with me as, as I had custody of him after I divorced his mother. And I started to date Tammy. And as you might imagine, this happened, a lot of families that from Leslie's point of view, you know, all of a sudden, dad who had all his attention didn't have all his attention anymore. And so, you know, there was difficulties between her him and Tammy almost immediately. And in his attitude, Tammy took offense. And so we had a bad situation.

And the situation grew worse and worse. And so I remember it got to a boiling point, where actually in the same week, I had both of them come to me and say, it's either in Tammy's case, she said, it's either him or me. Either he goes or I go. And Leslie came to me and said the same thing. Either she goes, or I go. And he'd run away a couple times, as we talked about before.

So this is somebody who's very capable of finding a way to go. And I felt like, oh, my goodness, I was in, in such a predicament, because here are the two people I love the most in all my life. And they are telling me I need to choose. And, and I felt that obligation. And so I went to God with a five slam. I'm like, what do I do?

And I can remember sitting in my room, praying, praying, praying, God, I just don't know what you got to help me here. This is beyond my ability to choose between the two people that I love the most in life. And people that know me well know me that is faithful. And it just is not in my wheelhouse that I would make this kind of choice. I just couldn't.

And so what God gave me that I'll never forget, it like lifted 40 million bricks off my shoulders. As God just told me very clearly, Robbie, you don't have to choose. This is not your choice. You choose them both. You love them both as best you can. And if one of them decides to make a choice, they will make it. And Leslie did make that choice, unfortunately, but it was probably two or three years later after my son Robbie was born. For maybe other circumstances and other things, you know, we'll never know. Leslie and I still have relationship to this day. It's not as close as it once was. I wish it was.

Of course, my wife and I have been married now for almost 35 years and delighting in each other. And I'm so grateful for what God gave me that day. I didn't have to make a choice that I didn't want to make. And that the reason I know that he gave me that word, you might say, Well, Robbie, that's just logical.

Well, it wasn't logical, because I completely believed that I had to make a choice. But then all of a sudden, I heard something that was clearly not something I ever would have thought of. It was just like, wow, where did that come from? Where did that thought come from? Well, I clearly knew because I was praying where it came from.

It came from the Holy Spirit. I mean, it came from God telling me here, here's what you got to do. Again, you know, it's hard to pray like that when the pressure is on and when you feel all the heat and all that other stuff. But to me, this is what this home to say right here, right? I esteem my meetings with you God, where you will tell me which way to go as the right way to go. And I hate ways that lead to death, which my choosing would have would have led to horrible stuff that never happened because God gave me this, in my view, piqued him in the moment of truth when I desperately, desperately needed it. So I hope that at some point in your life, you know, maybe it happened yesterday and it happened 10 times today. I hope it does, that you just have the pure joy of meeting with God and having him show you, you know, the way to go and being able to see it and also be able to hate the false way. That's a miracle, in my view. I love it. Thanks for listening.