Anchored to God’s Law

 

Psalm 119:92–93

If your law had not been my delight, I would have perished in my affliction. I will never forget your precepts, for by them you have renewed my life.     NIV

One thing is certain in this world, we’re not going to escape affliction forever. At some time or other, each of us is going to know the meaning of that word affliction. In the New Testament the apostles told the new Christian congregation that we must, through much tribulation (or affliction) enter into the Kingdom of God.

So don’t try to find a way through life that bypasses affliction, because if you do find it, it won’t take you to heaven.

But in your affliction, you need an anchor. And that’s what the psalmist says in those words that I read: If God’s law had not been his delight he would have perished in his affliction. When the pressures, the waves and the billows swept over him, when it seemed that his tiny little vessel was going to be carried away on those monstrous billows, he had an anchor. It was God’s law and that kept him.

And so he says, with gratitude, looking back on that experience, “I will never forget your precepts, for by them you have renewed my life.” As we turn to God’s law in the midst of our affliction we receive from it life, new life, life that wells up in spite of all the opposition and the pressures against us. Out of God’s law and God’s Word there comes a life that is a stronger and more powerful than all the forces that oppose us.