Word vs. Walk

"Purity in our way and walk is the truest blessedness." ~Charles Spurgeon~

I love theology. I always have since I was very young. I love to study the Bible and have been very blessed to grow up in a church that fed me spiritually from a very young age. However, my greatest difficulty has always been to put into daily practice what I know to be right from the Scripture.

Psalm 119:1 speaks about those that "walk in the law of the Lord". The Christian life is not lived in an easy chair at a desk surrounded by Biblical commentaries and theological works. It is a walk, lived out in the daily grind of normal life. It is good to be able to read the Word of God with understanding , but how much better it is to be able to live it out in our daily lives.

The Christian walk is not static, but is a steady moving onwards and upwards. Spurgeon said, "The holy life is a walk, a steady progress, a quiet advance, a lasting continuance". It is not a sudden burst of flame that soon dies out, but a steady glow that grows in strength and intensity. Proverbs 4:18 says that "the path of the just is like the shining sun, that shines ever brighter unto the perfect day." Our light needs to grow in brightness as we become more like our Saviour until we reach glory and the process of sanctification ends in our glorification when "we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is" (John 2:2).

The law of God needs to be our guiding star. We need to live in it, not just consult it every morning in our devotions or seek its comfort in times of trouble.

What would our lives look like if we truly walked in in the law of the Lord?

Psalm 119

For my 21st birthday I received the full 7 volume Treasury of David by Charles Spurgeon. It should keep me busy for a while. :-) I picked up the volume on Psalm 119 and have just started reading it.

Psalm 119 has always seemed to be a favorite Psalm of many godly men and women both past and present and, though I have read it many times, I have sometimes wondered what was the unique treasure that they found within its lines. I found a sound rebuke for my own lack of depth in Spurgeon's words, "Many superficial readers have imagined that it (Psalm 119) harps upon one string, and abounds in pious repetitions and redundancies; but this arises from the shallowness of the reader's own mind..."

So I have begun to go over Psalm 119 again with the aid of Spurgeon's commentary and I am eager to see if I can dig below the surface of its sacred verses. Augustine said of Psalm 119, "In proportion as this psalm seemeth more open, so much the more deep doth it appear to me; so that I cannot show how deep it is. For in others, which are understood with difficulty, although the sense lies hid in obscurity, yet the obscurity itself appeareth; but in this, not even this is the case; since it is superficially such, that it seemeth not to need an expositor, but only a reader and listener."