“Lead me, O LORD, in your righteousness because of my enemies; make your way straight before me.” Psalm 5:8
Devotion:
We all know that feeling of giving in to our emotions in our anger. The pressure mounts up, and we just can’t take it anymore. Then before we know it, we are pushing back against an accusation, defending our own cause, or taking matters into our own hands to stand our ground. Sometimes this feels good and right, but often we sense that something has gone wrong. In our attempt to deal with evil, we have slipped down into the same kind of evil. We didn’t start it, but we were dragged down into the muck.
David understood that when there are people against us, we need God’s help for two main reasons. First, we need the Lord to lead us because having others against us is a confusing time. Life gets cloudy, and our sense of direction is blurred. The emotions of it all come flooding up in ways that can make us feel out of control and unaware of our surroundings. So, we need God to lead us to know His will for us. The reason we have enemies come against us is that they want to rock our confidence and put us down—so we need God’s leadership to know how to move forward. We must be humble enough to pray this prayer.
But probably more importantly, we need the Lord to lead us because we are tempted to respond to sin with sin. When evil comes against us, it is far too easy to react in ways that do not honor God. So we need God to keep us and lead us. Only when He is conforming us to His righteousness can we respond like Christ under attack. We need the Spirit of God to bear fruit in us so that we won’t follow the desires of the flesh.
We can imagine Jesus praying this prayer. The whole world gathered against Him, and He walked according to the straight way of God. Through these temptations, He became the righteousness of God, which we receive by faith as our salvation.
Prayer:
Lord, we are surrounded—at times by fierce spiritual enemies and at times by those we love who are sinners just like us. But whether it is the serious hatred of cosmic forces or just the clashing selfishness of family and friends, we aren’t very good at responding to conflict. We are humbled to the dust when we consider how many times we have responded poorly in our trouble.
So with genuine sincerity, we pray that You would lead us forward through conflict. Show us Your righteousness. Fill us with affection for Jesus that makes us want to be like Him and fill us with strength from Jesus that empowers us to be like Him. Please lead us forward when life is confusing and when our flesh is raging. We want to follow Your way no matter the cost. Have mercy on us. In Jesus’ name, we worship and pray. Amen.
