Psalm 86

Lamentation (individual) / Wisdom

            Teach Me Your Way

            11 Teach me Your way, O LORD;

            I will walk in Your truth;

            Unite my heart to fear Your name.

·         How blessed is the thought that in condescension no less than in majesty God is infinite.

·         Our poverty and misery furnish a fit occasion for the display of God’s rich mercy.

·         Let nothing, however sad or dark, hinder us from crying mightily to God. “That despair may not overwhelm our minds under our greatest afflictions, let us support ourselves from the consideration that the Holy Spirit has dictated this prayer for the poor and afflicted.” (Calvin)

·         But what shall they do who are conscious of ill desert both from God and man? Let them plead for grace, let them cry for mercy. There is forgiveness with the Lord. Jesus died for the chief of sinners.

·         Earnest, importunate prayer will be heard. For a while God may seem to disregard our cries. But in his own good time he will show himself gracious.

·         When all goes wrong outwardly and inwardly, when foes beset and fears betide, we must be sad, we cannot rejoice till God appears. He is our light.

·         All our hope and all our confidence must ultimately rest on the known nature of God revealed in holy Scripture.

·         Surely the spirit of missions is the spirit of the gospel.

·         God may take the will for the deed, where the deed was impossible, but he will never take the deed for the will.