Turn My Eyes, Give Me Life

Psalm 119:37

Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things;
and give me life in your ways.

A verse that has quickly become one of my favorite passages in Scripture. I’m beginning to consider a side project centered around this verse. “Turn My Eyes, Give Me Life.” This verse is an anthem for Christians. We are to turn our eyes, our focus, from anything and everything that does not bring us eternal life in heaven. We are to turn from anything that will not matter in eternity. Your wealth will not matter, your success will not matter, your extensive traveling will not matter. Your love will matter. Your discipleship will matter. Your utilization of the gifts that God has blessed you with, will matter. That is turning our eyes. Turning our eyes is a lifestyle, not just an action. It is a mentality, not just a physical movement. The second part of this passage says “Give me life in your ways.” This needs to be our prayer as disciples of God. If we are finding life anywhere aside from God and God’s will for us, then we are finding it in the wrong places. In Christ alone do we find life! In Him alone can we find our true meaning and purpose. In Him we receive our name and calling.If we find it anywhere else, it is a waste and is not what God wants for us. Also, only by looking to God’s ways can we find true life. That means that we must be seeking His will for our lives and then follow that will. The verse means that we must know His ways before we can follow them. Only through prayer and the Word of God can one know the ways of God. 

TURN MY EYES GOD, AND GIVE ME LIFE

-Ryan Scott

Finding Answers

Psalm 119:26

When I told of my ways, you answered me;
teach me your statutes!

God listens to you when you talk to Him. God also answers you. He may not answer with the answer you are listening for or in the way that you expect Him to answer, but nonetheless, He answers. God works in ways that we can’t understand, but we are just people with limited knowledge. However, God will move, God will answer you. Throughout the Bible, God says to ask Him for whatever it may be. Sometimes He says yes, others He says no, many times it seems like the answer is wait. He has something better in store for us many times. We just can’t see it yet. However, regardless of the answer, we must be willing to conform our will to God’s. Why? Because that is the cost of discipleship. Replacing yourself with Christ. Following Him and His will for you. Jesus conformed His will to the Father’s and if we are called to be Christ-like, we must do the very same. When we seek God out for requests, we must also seek Him out in His word. We must dig into it because the Bible is what God spoke and continues to speak, we just have to listen. Many times, I’ve found that the most common way that God speaks to me is through His word. He reveals things to me, He displays His glory and His plan through His word. When we cry out to God in prayer, may we be seeking God and kneeling before Him in full surrender, when we do, we will grow closer to our King and His will shall become ours. May we seek His will and His ways in His word and on our knees.

-Ryan

Longing

Psalms 119:20

My soul is consumed with longing
for your rules at all times.

We often hunger for food. Especially in America, when we haven’t had food in the last 6 hours, we feel like we are dying. Our bodies ache, we are tired, maybe even get dizzy, are irritable, overall not good. My question is, do we long more for physical food to satisfy our bodily hunger, or do we hunger more for spiritual food? Our hunger for God’s word should be so immense that we are never satisfied. We should be thinking about it, searching through it, reading it all the time. In this Psalm, the writer says that his hunger for God’s law consumes his soul at all times. Is this a way that we could describe our walk? One that is consumed in God? I fully believe that if this was true, Christians would be under a new reputation in this world, not for blending in and condemning others, but for loving limitlessly and always being focused on God. I know which reputation I want. However, when we are blocking out God’s voice with TV, Facebook, our busy schedules, etc. We also are blocking out our hunger for Him. Those things are not bad at all. They can be used for God’s glory or simply for entertainment. But, when these things consume us more than God, we have an issue. When we “can’t find time” for God’s Word (as we spend 3 hours on Facebook, 1-4 watching tv, and the entire time that we are awake doing what WE need to do), there is a problem. When we hunger and long more for earthly food than we do for God’s Word, a change is needed. When we can go for days or weeks without being plugged into God’s word and aren’t striving to change that, there is a problem. What is a Christian without the message of Christ? They are nothing. We need to be CHRISTians. Seeking God with all that we are, longing for Him and His word, never being able to get enough of it. Plug in to His word daily. Crucify yourself daily and sacrifice for Him because He gave His life for you. 

Blessings,

-Ryan

The LORD is my shepherd, but do I let Him guide me through the reading of His Word?

Bending the Rules

You have commanded your precepts
to be kept diligently.
Oh that my ways may be steadfast
in keeping your statutes!

-Psalms 119:4-5

“Rules were made to be broken” is the theme of our generation basically.... We all know it’s true. We love to break or bend the rules; speeding rules, school rules, rules prohibiting phones, ignore common etiquette, whatever it may be, we love to bend the rules at some time or another (or all the time).  However, with God’s rules it should be different. God should be feared in our life. We picture Him as this cute and cuddly teddy bear so often without remembering that He is capable of enforcing His rules to any extent because He demands us to honor them. God is powerful. We need to remember that. He loves us beyond all comprehension, but He has sooooo much power that we can’t begin to even describe or imagine it.  However, the real point of this post is to say that if we don’t know God in true way, how can we know His rules? If we don’t understand the intentions behind each rule, what good does the rule do us? We would end up like the religious leaders of Jesus’ time, knowing and obeying the law, but missing the point. Let us not miss the point of the One who ought to be our Master. His words need to flow through us. We need to meditate on His law day and night (Psalms 1). We need to give Him all of us. We need to surrender to Him completely. However, if we don’t know what to live like, how can we do it? We need to dig into the Word all the time to know what God wants from us in order to bring glory to Him. This life is about Him. Time was created for His glory. Yet we so often live as if time was made for us to be glorified. We live to be immortal through fame and success. However, we forget that the biggest icon of immortality is our God and He created time. We live to be remembered, He gave you life to remember Him. His intentions were not wrong, so it must be ours. We need to seek His intentions out. We can start by making Him center of our life. We are lost without Him. We need His precepts (laws, direction) in our life. How else can we live as He calls us to? It starts in the heart. You have to want Him to take control and you need to seek Him out, crying out to Him to satisfy you. 

Let Him take control and cling to His precepts

-Ryan Scott

Whole Heartedly

Psalm 119:9-11

How can a young man keep his way pure?
By guarding it according to your word.

With my whole heart I seek you;
let me not wander from your commandments!
I have stored up your word in my heart,
that I might not sin against you.

the question is, do we seek God with our WHOLE HEART, or do we let anything and everything stand in the way? Only when we seek God with our entire life can we keep our ways pure. Only when we are seeking God completely does scripture truly become guarded in our hearts because it is treasured and is more than words to memorize or small sayings to attempt to validate our faith in the eyes of the world. This has been something that I have been seeing more and more in scripture. This theme of completely giving yourself over to God, yet how often do we actually do it? The Christian life needs to be more than a fad or a part time commitment to us, however, reality is that we often look to ourselves and the world more than God and his word. The Bible says "blessed is he that endures" many times through scripture but I have seen it frequently in revelation. The question is, do we seek God with our WHOLE HEART (as opposed to most or none of us) and do we FIGHT TILL THE END EVERYDAY (as opposed to a Sunday, Wednesday, or partial commitment)? Everyday and every part of your life matters to God, does it matter to you enough to give it to your King?

-Ryan Scott

Willing to Travel?

Matthew 2:1-2

Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, saying, “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.” 

In job applications, many times a question will be “are you willing to travel if needed?” The wise men, rich rulers that lived a great deal away, came to seek out Jesus. They did not have luxurious travel accommodations. They likely rode camels through the scorching hot desert. This was no easy trek. Often times, this passage is glanced over and only one part is remembered, the wise men saw Jesus and were almost tricked by Herod. However, when I read this, I thought about our willingness to seek God. I must ask myself, and hopefully you will do the same, “How far am I willing to go to find God?” I have to be willing to go through long spells through the desert, I have to be willing to go for lengthy periods of time, I have to be willing to give all of my effort in order to find Him at times. Life will throw every possible distraction towards us to prevent us looking for/to God, the question is, how do we compensate? Do we cave under the pressure, evaluating the costs and deciding that they are too great for our liking, or do we put more effort in, striving to find the Creator of the Universe in order to experience Him and His presence and to have the hope of being able to bless Him with our gifts, just like the wise men did. This question of one’s willingness to abandon all for God is what determines where we stand with Him. Do we pursue Him with reckless abandon and seek Him even though the cost may seem ridiculous to everyone around us at times? If not, what is holding us back, and why? Let’s bless Jesus by going to whatever lengths needed to find Him in our lives.

-Ryan