To Encourage You

Psalm 119:165 “Great peace have those who love your law; nothing can make them stumble.”

What’s better – anxiety, fear, depression, turmoil – or GREAT PEACE? What’s the key to the latter? It’s loving the law of God, i.e., the Word of God, the Bible. That’s what we’re told in the verse above. 

So, what does it mean to love the Word of God? What does it mean to love anything – or any one? When we love someone, we want to spend time with them. We look forward to time alone, time one on one, intimate time. We think about that person all the time. They are often front and center in our mind. If someone says anything to us remotely connected to that person, we are quick to defend them or share good things we know about them. We want to know more about them, because we care about them. We are interested in how they are doing. We want to do for them, to please them, and not out of obligation, but out of love. If someone disparages someone we love, it bothers us or even hurts us. We want to believe and trust those we love. If they ask us to do something for them, we don’t hesitate. If they need something, and if it’s in our power to give that thing to them, we give it.

So, to test ourselves as to whether we love the law of God, we can simply substitute “the word of God” for those aspects that speak of the love of other things? Do we look forward to spending time in it? Do we regularly spend time alone reading and meditating on it? Is it front and center in our thinking? Do we enjoy talking about it to others? Do we want to obey what it says not out of a sense of obligation but out of a sense of gratitude and love? Do we believe it and trust in it? Do we want to know as much as we can about it? If someone speaks against it or mocks what it says, are we quick to defend it?

In reality, the attitude we have about the Bible is exactly the same as our attitude about Jesus. Our love for it is exactly the same as our love for Jesus for it is He and He alone that is “the Word made Flesh (John 1:14).” And the reason that those who love God’s Law have “great peace” as the psalmist says in the verse from Psalm 119 above is that it is these people who have a loving relationship with Jesus Christ, and it is He, alone, Who IS our Peace (Ephesians 2:14).