Psalm 101:6

⁶ My eyes shall be on the faithful of the land,
That they may dwell with me;
He who walks in a perfect way,
He shall serve me.

Summing up these preceding verses in a quick paragraph, we are to sing about God’s great mercies, behave wisely, walk with a perfect heart and the deeds of the evil will not cling to us as our own heart’s perverse ways are removed and we do not know wickedness.  Those who work to push wickedness onto the righteous; those who purposely slander their reputations and character to destroy; those who create perceptions for the cause of looking down upon the righteous and teaching that the ways of the righteous are wrong will be destroyed and not tolerated.  

Today we see this in our culture in such a way that it is almost too big to describe.  Every Christian teaching is condemned.  Life is devalued.  Freedom of choice is restricted.  All of that in the United States, the supposedly land of the free created by the God-fearing as a place to escape persecution.  Around the world Christians themselves are slaughtered, imprisoned, and enslaved.  Today I read where up to 60 women are committing suicide per day in the areas controlled by ISIS because of their treatment by those Muslims as sex slaves.  My mind cannot comprehend it all.  I know that my God can.

How do we respond to this?  We worship and sing about God’s great mercies, behave wisely as instructed in His Word, walk with a perfect heart and the deeds of the evil will not cling to us and we will not know wickedness.  We rest in God’s promise that He loves justice.  We stay focused on Him and we reach for a stronger faith, willing to trust completely to every cell of our physical body and every mental impulse of our thoughts, even in our trial.  We thank God for the stumbling blocks, that we might learn a greater faith.

God’s “eyes shall be on the faithful … that they may dwell with me.”  God will not forsake us; He will deliver us.  May we take rest in His promises.

 “He who walks in a perfect way, He shall serve me.”  This could obviously be written as prophesy to Jesus.  He was the only one who walked perfectly and He made many statements indicating that He served His Father in heaven.  The most obvious while in the Garden where He cried “not My way but Thine”. 

Personally, I believe I might need some breaking in this area.  I’m not sure how I feel about the sentence, “You shall serve me.”  Even though I may be working as well as I think I can to walk in a perfect way where the perfect way is by the instruction of the one and only holy God, I wonder how receptive I am to the command, “He shall serve me.”  What a wretched man I am!  How double-minded can I be?  How can there be an intentional effort to have a character designed by God but an inborn stubbornness at such a demanding call?  Who am I to consider that I serve because I choose to serve and not because He commands my service!!   If I do not fully submit, then I am no servant at all.  If I cannot be commanded, but choose to review every instruction to see if it meets my review, then I am no servant at all.  How can I even claim to be a Christ follower if I cannot first claim to be a servant of God?

The most fulfilling part of living is knowing you are performing and completing your purpose given to you by your Creator.  When we reach that we know that we are living in a perfect way and we are serving Him.  Our joy and our completion is in the worth of our contribution, no matter how small, to His purpose.  That He would use me for anything is such an overwhelming consideration and my fulfillment is made in my service to Him through the perfect life of Christ.  I am compelled to serve.

 

May we know today that we do not choose to serve at our leisure, but that we are compelled to serve because of the character of our Lord.