Year 5, Day 227: Psalm 94

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Discipleship Focus: Guidance

• Guidance: God grants us His guidance.  Sometimes this guidance is God leading us away from temptation.  Sometimes this guidance is helping us to follow in a direction for which He has chosen.  Our default position should be to wait for God’s guidance and then follow when it comes.

I really wrestled with the topic upon which I should focus for this psalm.  Clearly the psalm is about the psalmist asking for help against the wicked of the world.  It would have been natural and easy to speak about God’s power or authority in this psalm.  It would have been easy to speak about God’s righteousness as He is king over creation.

However, I think the deeper undertone for me is guidance.  For while there are portions of this psalm that are certainly meant as warning for the unrighteous, the reality is that nobody through their words can impact anyone else unless they desire to be impacted.  The only person I can truly impact all the time is myself.  That’s the message that I hear running in the background of this psalm.  While the unrighteous need to be put on warning, we each need to make sure that we are listening to God ourselves.  We each need to make sure that we are making the most of God’s guidance.

This is why the psalmist says, “Blessed is the one whom God disciplines.”  It is God who teaches wisdom to the nations.  It is God who teaches us obedience.  It is God who guides us to rest when we are in need.  It is God who is our strength when our foot slips.  He does not abandon us in our trouble.

When we are in need, God is there.  When we create trouble for ourselves, God is willing to guide us out in a righteous way.  Yes, God is our judge.  Yes, God will cause us to give an account of our life.  But before any of that ever happens, God seeks to guide us into righteousness so that we can stand before Him in righteousness and not in wrath.

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