Psalms 119:71 - Good Affiction

Hidden Treasures of the 119th Psalm. We get to do another Whopper Verse today in the 119th Psalm. Today's verse is the seventh verse in the Tet section.

Tet, the Hebrew letter that means goodness in so many different ways. And so it being the seventh verse, if we continue on with this template that we've been using in the Isaiah 11 anointings of the Holy Spirit would have on each letter, as each letter is clearly Christ in so many different ways, it's really, really cool, especially when we get to this seventh anointing, which is the delight in the fear of the Lord. And I think you're going to just delight right here with me in what this verse says, although the goodness in it is very hidden, but it's very much there. And I think when you look back into your own life, you'll see what exactly the psalmist was getting at here. So verse 71 reads in English, It is good for me that I have been afflicted, that I might learn thy statutes. I mean, it's just one of those that is just pretty self-explanatory in a way.

But another way is like, whoa, what do you mean? It's good that I've been afflicted. Well, there's nothing like we talked about yesterday in understanding the fear of the Lord to like, whoa. From my perspective, the fear of the Lord is understanding that God is the boss.

He's got all this under his control and eventually it's all come in his way. But the neat thing in the delight in the fear of the Lord is like my dad is bigger and badder than anybody in the world in this. And I've got it. I've got it made here, even in affliction.

And in so many ways, I can point to that. So those who know my story know that I had lymphoma in 1996, and it was essentially five years after I'd become to Christ. So I was pretty much a baby Christian and and new to the idea of church and Sunday school and all those kind of things, because it certainly had not done that the rest of my life. And so at this point, I was very afflicted. I had like I said, I had lymphoma and I went through that. I went through the chemotherapy that and God miraculously healed me. And I've told that story on this podcast before a few times.

And I've even told the story, I believe, of, you know, when we were celebrating my last chemotherapy treatment, we went on a Jeep Jamboree up to the Murphy, North Carolina, beautiful mountain trip. The last day of the Jeep Jamboree, I was getting out of the Jeep to unlock the hubs. And the person above me allowed their Jeep not to stay in.

Well, they didn't put it in park. And so it came down the or didn't put their emergency brake on. And it came down the hill and crushed me between the two vehicles about severing my left leg. And so that led to really a long stretch of being afflicted. I was in the hospital time and again with surgeries and all sorts of things that were being fixed for that. And I was in a wheelchair for a good part of two years. And so what happened is I was in this wheelchair or before I was in the wheelchair. No, I shouldn't say before I was in the wheelchair and in order to get in my house was sort of a three story house. And we lived on the second floor and there was no wheelchair ramp. And so I had pretty much, you know, every day when I got home, if I'd gone anywhere to the doctor or whatever, I had to scoot up one stair at a time in order to get upstairs. And when your leg is in a bad way that it was in a cast, it was from the end of my foot clear up to my hip because there were issues with both bones and flesh and all sorts of problems. So nonetheless, without going into all the grody details, it wasn't exactly a painless experience to go up those stairs.

Even, you know, one at a time slowly. And apparently my wife or somebody had related this back to my Sunday school class. And so all of a sudden one day, not long after I'd gotten in the wheelchair and not long after I'd finished my first set of surgeries, all of a sudden this whole group of my Sunday school class is out there and they're building a wheelchair ramp on the back of my house. And this is no ordinary wheelchair ramp because my deck was probably, I don't know, 15 feet off the ground. And in order to get the wheelchair ramp long enough to where, you know, it wasn't too steep, I mean, they had to go out, I would guess 80 yards or something with this ramp.

This was, like I said, no ordinary wheelchair ramp by anybody's stretch of the imagination. And so here's all these men and they're building and hammering. And of course, this was not a gift set that I had to build something like this.

And I'm watching all these people do this and thinking of the cost of the wood and all that's involved. And I'm just my mind is blown. And so this was a statue that I learned, okay? And I wouldn't have learned it unless I'd been afflicted.

And it was actually somewhat humiliating. Like, why are all these people out here helping me? Because I've never done anything for any of them. I mean, yes, we're in fellowship in Sunday school, but it just felt like, man, I mean, nobody had ever in my entire life been this generous to do such a thing.

And so I went up to the Sunday school teacher. His name was Mike Ham and I said, Mike, I just can't believe you guys are doing this. You know, I've never done anything for you.

This is just blowing my mind that you're doing it. And he goes, Robbie, you don't know what a joy it is to do it for you. And he said, the challenge is, and I've never forgotten this.

He said, most people don't let us know they have a need and aren't willing to let us come out and build a wheelchair ramp on their house or whatever it is that they would want. And when they do that, they rob us of the blessing. Well, talk about learning a statute.

I've never ever. Of course, you know, when you hear the story, hopefully you can learn from it somewhat. But when it happened to you, it's down in your soul. And so, you know, today, as I have the Jesus labor love and a lot of different ways I get to help folks, I often think of what a huge blessing it is.

And if they don't raise their hand and tell me they have a need, they're literally robbing me of the opportunity to help them. And this is a statute that I don't know you learn just all that easy, but I can assure you it was good. Right. It was good that I was afflicted because I learned so much about life right there. You know, this is one of the 50,000 lessons I learned over the four or five year period of time between the lymphoma and then all the surgeries on my leg and getting where I could walk again. And then, you know, something came back to my brain. So there was plenty of affliction in that time.

And I felt like, God, you know, this is kind of like Groundhog Day. I keep living this over and what are you trying to teach me? Well, you know, some lessons are a little bit more difficult for the hard headed. But I can assure you in my own case, you know, you've heard it said it was the best of times. It was the worst of times, man.

I look back on it and I wouldn't trade those days for nothing. I mean, they taught me so much. They taught me so much about how people love me. And I really felt feel like that was an overarching thing that God was trying to show me was not only did he love me and he was going to send all these people to love on me when I was really hurting. But he wanted to see that he wanted me to see what love looked like, unconditional love, not just from him, but from all the people he sent to help me in so many different ways over that period of time. And so this particular verse is very, very precious to me. And I don't think it's an accident at all that it lines up with a delight in the fear of the Lord. Thank you. And oh, boy, tomorrow we get to do the miraculous verse, the eighth verse in the text section. And, you know, isn't it cool how this almost gives us these different annoyings, these different understandings of this letter so that we can get some more idea of the face of God throughout the scriptures. God bless.