Expositions of Holy Scripture: PsalmsMaclaren, Alexander
Religion
Expositions of Holy Scripture: Psalms
Maclaren, Alexander
Bible. Psalms -- Commentaries
Then the counsel of our text prescribes the submission of our _judgment_
to God, in the confidence that His wisdom will guide us. Committing our
way unto the Lord does not mean shifting the trouble of patient thought
about our duty off our own shoulders. It is no cowardly abnegation of
the responsibility of choice which is here enjoined; nor is there any
sanction of lazily taking the first vagrant impulse, wafted we know not
whence, that rises in the mind, for the voice of God. But, just because
we are to commit our way to Him, we are bound to the careful exercise of
the best power of our own brains, that we may discover what the will of
God is. He does not reveal that will to people who do not care to know
it. I suppose the precursor of all visions of Him, which have calmed His
servants' souls with the peace of a clearly recognised duty, has been
their cry, 'Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?' God counsels men who
use their own wits to find out His counsel. He speaks to us through our
judgments when they take all the ordinary means of ascertaining our
course. The law is: Do your best to find out your duty; suppress
inclination, and desire to do God's will, and He will certainly tell you
what it is. I, for my part, believe that the Psalmist spoke a truth when
he said, 'In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy
steps.' Only let the eye be fixed on Him, and He will guide us in the
way. If we chiefly desire, and with patient impartiality try, to be
directed by Him, we shall never want for direction.
But all this is possible only if we 'delight in the Lord.' Nothing else
will still our desires--the voice within, and the invitations without,
which hinder us from hearing the directions of our Guide. Nothing else
will so fasten up and muzzle the wild passions and lusts that a little
child may lead them. To delight in Him is the condition of all wise
judgment. For the most part, it is not hard to discover God's will
concerning us, if we supremely desire to know and do it; and such
supreme desire is but the expression of this supreme delight in Him.
Such a disposition wonderfully clears away mists and perplexities; and
though there will still remain ample scope for the exercise of our best
judgment, and for reliance on Him to lead us, yet he whose single object
is to walk in the way that God points, will seldom have to stand still
in uncertainty as to what that way is. 'If thine eye be single, thy
whole body shall be full of light.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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