HE psalmist prays for an illumined understanding. “Teach me, O Lord, the way of Thy statutes.” We are so prone to be children of the twilight, and to see things out of their true proportions. Therefore do we need to be daily taught. I must go into the school of the Lord, and in docility of spirit I must sit at His feet. “O, teach me, Lord, teach even me!”
And the psalmist prays for rectified inclinations. “Incline my heart unto Thy testimonies.” We so often have the wrong bias, the fatal taste, and our desires are all against the will of the Lord. If only my leanings were toward the Lord how swift my progress would be! I strive to walk after holiness, while my inclinations are in the realm of sin. And so I need a clean mouth, with an appetite for the beautiful and the true. “Blessed are they that hunger after righteousness.”
And the psalmist prays for a strenuous will. “Make me to go in the path of Thy commandments.” He is praying for “go,” for moral persistence, for power to crash through all obstacles which may impede his heavenly progress. And such is my need. Good Lord, endow me with a will like “an iron pillar,” and help me to “stand in the evil day.”
MARCH The Twenty-third
THE DARK BETRAYAL
John xviii. 1-14.
UR Master was betrayed by a disciple, “one of the twelve.” The blow came from one of “His own household.” The world employed a “friend” to execute its dark design. And so our intimacy with Christ may be our peril; our very association may be made our temptation. The devil would rather gain one belonging to the inner circle than a thousand who stand confessed as the friends of the world. What am I doing in the kingdom? Can I be trusted? Or am I in the pay of the evil one?