Psalm 86:11-12
Once someone accepts the salvation that Jesus Christ offers through the watery grave of baptism their journey to Heaven is far from over. The old saying “once saved always saved” is simply just not true and this belief is proven to be incorrect throughout the New Testament. A good example of this is 2 Timothy 4:10 when Demas fell in love with the world rather than the work of a Christian and fell away. The truth is when one is baptized their work is just beginning. I say all of that to make this point: Christian’s need to have a desire, a passion, for learning all that they can from God’s word so that they may continue to walk in the truth of the Lord.
In this verse the writer of this Psalm, who is considered to be King David, asks the Lord to teach him His way. The Psalmist then gives the Lord reason,and his reason is a humbling one, so that he could walk in the way of the Lord. The writer had his heart in the right place when he penned those words and that is exactly the mindset that we too should share. Notice too that how he writes that he gives thanks to God with his whole heart, this is a very interesting statement because it shows the level of his commitment. Many individuals would agree that we should love the Lord but how many put everything else away and love God with all their heart. God requires that type of love because as we find in Matthew 6:24. This isn’t to say that we cannot love and be thankful for other things but what it does mean is that we are to love God and give thanks to Him above everything else and have no love for worldly things. There is a remarkable change though between the time of the writing of this psalm and today; that difference is that we have the complete written word of God.
This difference is amazing and truly beneficial for us. Of course,during this time there were written copies of God’s word and if the writer was David, as the King, he would have had his very own copy. The difference though is that we have the complete word of God. We have the teaching of Jesus Christ and we have the inspired writings of those who followed Him. It is also much more easily accessed then it was during the time that this psalm was written. So if we have the complete and perfect word of God and have the ability to access it so easily why would we not seek the teachings that it hold within its self?Like the psalmist we too have a need to be taught so that we may walk in the way of the Lord but if we are not actively reading the word of God, if we are not honestly striving to be the best servant that we can be, then we are not fulfilling our duties as a servant of God; we are not doing what it means to be a Christian. We need to have the mind and heart that this psalmist did and seek to be taught the way of the Lord so that we may walk in that way and understand what it truly means to have Him in our hearts.
-Corey Tackett
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