"Thou hast commanded us to keep thy precepts diligently. O that my ways were directed to keep thy statutes!" [Psa 119:4-5]

The LORD has commanded us to keep His word, and to those who truly desire such a thing, they cry out, “O that my ways were directed to keep thy statutes!” O saint of Christ, do you cry out with all your bones “O that my ways were directed to keep His Statues!”? If not, view His word, consider its delightful purity and value. For God’s words “are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times.” [Psa 12:6] His words are precious: as “apples of gold in pictures of silver.” [Prov 25:11] Do you see the beauty and purity of His words and desire to obey them? Do you see how sweet they are? For God’s words are “sweeter than honey” and “more to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold.” Oh precious saint, do you hunger and thirst and long after His words? Do you strive for our Lord as a child to its mother for nourishment? For we are to “desire the sincere milk of the word” as newborn babes. [1 Pe 2:2] Oh that our ways were directed to keep His statutes! How great is His word, which He has “magnified…above all [His] name.” [Psa 138:2b] It should be our earnest desire to obey it, though we often struggle to. Even as Paul cried,

"I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me. For I delight in the law of God after the inward man. But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" [Romans 7:21-24]

Saint of Christ, do you find yourself yearning after His all-encompassing word, yet you do not know how to obey it? Yet you feel as though you cannot? Praise be to God! For you find yourself where Paul did. Let us keep reading!

"I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord." [Rom 7:25a]

Jesus delivers us from this body of death! Jesus is our answer. We look to Him and strive after Him; “with the mind [we] serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin. There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh but after The Spirit.” [Rom 7:25b-8:1] What glorious truth found in Jesus the Well of Life. Do you strive to obey? To you wish to obey? Do you have a heart which has been changed by God, and He has implanted these precious desires deep within every beat of that regenerated new-creation? Praise be to God! O precious Saint, there is no condemnation to you when you fall! Keep pressing toward the goal and don’t look back!