Psalm 119:67

Today’s verse from Psalm 119 contains a sobering fact about ourselves and how we learn to submit to God in obedience to His word.

Psalms 119:67  Before I was afflicted I went astray: but now have I kept thy word.

The psalmist teaches that in the absence of affliction he went astray.

Astray – Out of the right way, away from the proper path, wandering.

It was not until after he was afflicted that the psalmist changed his course into the right way of keeping God’s word.  We are no different than he.  We generally fare better spiritually when we undergo affliction.  This explains why the psalmist will tell us later in verse 71 that it was good for him that he had been afflicted.  In the absence of affliction we tend to get careless with regard to God and His word; in fact, we can become downright spoiled and rebellious.  We are too much like Jeshurun as he is depicted in this passage:

Deuteronomy 32:13  He made him ride on the high places of the earth, that he might eat the increase of the fields; and he made him to suck honey out of the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock;

14  Butter of kine, and milk of sheep, with fat of lambs, and rams of the breed of Bashan, and goats, with the fat of kidneys of wheat; and thou didst drink the pure blood of the grape.

15  ¶But Jeshurun waxed fat, and kicked: thou art waxen fat, thou art grown thick, thou art covered with fatness; then he forsook God which made him, and lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation.

In her excellent book, Total Truth, Nancy Pearcey wrote:

“All of us discover at some point that the most profound spiritual growth typically comes through crises.  Because we are fallen creatures living in a fallen world, the winnowing of our character is usually a painful process.” 

Growth means change and change can be painful.  That is the reason we have coined the phrase growing pains.  But when do people with a problem seek change?  When do they seek a solution?  People seek change when the pain of the problem becomes greater than the pain of change.  Bishop Fulton Sheen wrote:  “We generally do not strive to solve a problem until it hurts us to leave it unsolved; many of us would not move unless the unsolved problem hurt us badly.” 

It often takes affliction to get us to realize our transgressions, to see the lines we have wrongfully crossed.  When speaking of the righteous, God’s own children, Elihu said:

Job 36:8  And if they be bound in fetters, and be holden in cords of affliction;

9  Then he sheweth them their work, and their transgressions that they have exceeded.

10  He openeth also their ear to discipline, and commandeth that they return from iniquity.

Recall that it was when the prodigal son was in the affliction of great want that he came to himself and returned to his father (Luke 15:14-20).  Before that affliction he went astray. 

Manasseh was one of the most errant and evil kings in the history of Judah.  And yet even he redirected his course in the way of God’s word after he was afflicted.  Here is the moving account of this:  

2 Chronicles 33:11  ¶Wherefore the LORD brought upon them the captains of the host of the king of Assyria, which took Manasseh among the thorns, and bound him with fetters, and carried him to Babylon.

12  And when he was in affliction, he besought the LORD his God, and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers,

13  And prayed unto him: and he was intreated of him, and heard his supplication, and brought him again to Jerusalem into his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the LORD he was God.

14  Now after this he built a wall without the city of David, on the west side of Gihon, in the valley, even to the entering in at the fish gate, and compassed about Ophel, and raised it up a very great height, and put captains of war in all the fenced cities of Judah.

15  And he took away the strange gods, and the idol out of the house of the LORD, and all the altars that he had built in the mount of the house of the LORD, and in Jerusalem, and cast them out of the city.

16  And he repaired the altar of the LORD, and sacrificed thereon peace offerings and thank offerings, and commanded Judah to serve the LORD God of Israel.

Now we are well on the way to greater spiritual growth when we recognize for ourselves that we need to change our course and we choose to make that change even though it means afflicting ourselves with the loss of pleasure and things we desire.  This is precisely the path our Saviour taught us to take when He said:

Luke 9:23  …If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.

We all face a choice when it comes to growing through pain and affliction.  We can choose to ignore what we need to change and wait until pain is forced upon us such as the pain of bankruptcy, sickness, injury, lost relationships, or exclusion from the church,  Such afflictions force us to change if we want to improve ourselves and our situation.  Or we can choose to inflict upon ourselves the pain of self-denial and make the needed changes.  We can afflict ourselves or be afflicted by God.  Please allow me to let you in on something:  the pain you inflict on yourself in order to keep God’s word is far easier to bear than the pain He inflicts upon you when you rebel against His way.  As Paul wrote in 1Corinthians 11:31:  “For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged.” 

So whether you have afflicted yourself through self-denial or whether the affliction has been visited upon you by God, it is good for you that you have been afflicted when the result it this:  now have I kept thy word.