Psalm 37 – Commit Your Way to the LORD

“Commit your way to the Lord;

trust in him, and he will act.

He will make your vindication shine like the light,

and the justice of your cause like the noonday.”

— Psalm 37:5-6 (NRSV)

The solemn subtleties of obedience have about them both a promise and a joy.

When we align ourselves with the agenda of God, we find ourselves happy and content as well as prepared to be blessed. And though that time may tarry, blessing will most certainly be ours as we commit our way to the Lord.

This process of alignment, of congruence with the divine agenda, is not about cutting off our purposes of need so much as it is about allowing God divine discretion within the faculties of our personal and interpersonal lives. God knows our needs better than we do. The moment we admit this truth, not just in our minds, but it resonates in our hearts as well, is the moment we believe in the promise and accept this divine joy that cannot be mistaken.

Actually Committing Our Way to the Lord

Many may say within their minds, at a private level, “How is this to be achieved?” There may be an incredulous personal circumstance of wonder, in the negative sense, for how this new state of belief might actualise.

We may have all experienced the want to go a certain way, yet experienced also the lack of commitment to go that way—to continue in that way, sustainably.

We know that committing our way to the Lord is our answer. We know it at a head level. But this truth has not yet resonated to such a degree as to become part of us.

Then, one day we decide to actually commit something, even against ourselves seemingly, to the Lord. We feel we have nothing to lose. We roll the dice. We give this thing away with happy abandon. And the moment we do it, God shows us something we can hold within our hearts. This something changes us. It’s the miracle we had always prayed for.

Then, we chose to adopt this way of committing ourselves to the Lord when life seemed all against us; when foes were about. We trusted God’s vindication. In that matter of trust we experienced the truth of the promise and a down payment of joy. When we got out of God’s way we found ourselves vindicated without effort.

We discovered that this faith-thing works.

The step of faith, to trust in God for our vindication, is blessed by an experience of the truth in the promise: when we are committed to God, our cause becomes vindicated. Even before this takes place we have joy; like noonday sunlight!

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.