November 6, 2018 - - Psalm 31:6b-8 - - Wide mercy

But I trust in the LORD.

I will be glad and rejoice in Your mercy,

For You have considered my trouble;

You have known my soul in adversities,

And have not shut me up into the hand of my enemy;

You have set my feet in a wide place.

Psalm 31:6b-8 NKJV

How many of your apologies to your friends began with: "I am so sorry, I was not at my best because..." Then you fill in the reason, the excuse, the mitigating circumstance. When our soul is in adversity, what we have stored up in the core of who we are pours out. It can be ugly. It can poison friendships. The ugliness of our hearts can bring sour times into marriage. The twisting of adversity can damage our relationships with family members.

The LORD our King has seen our worst--in fact, He sees beyond just the outward evidences of our trouble. He sees not only our bad deeds and hears our stinking words, His penetrating graze stares into the utter blackest regions of our soul so that He knows all our troubles, our weaknesses and our failures and sees to the source of the foulness that flows out of us. Here is the glory of this brief text, the evidence of the cleansing salvation: He set my/our feet in a wide place.

Consider this wonderful New Testament passage which for me, shows the wide place of God's mercy to us:

For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom the whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Ephesians 3:14-19 NIV

This is the wideness of His mercy: The treasure of Christ and His immeasurable forgiveness and healing love directed by the Spirit cascade ceaselessly into the depths of who we are. Sin is displaced at its source and the beauty of Jesus takes hold. As long as we live trusting in Jesus Christ our hearts changed. We are a new creation, the old has passed and the old habits at being put to death at their source. Blessed be Jesus, our Righteousness.

Lord Jesus Christ--You are the Peace treaty between my sin-darkened soul and the Holy One of heaven. By Your glorious riches I am called a child of God. Spirit of the Living God continue to strengthen my inner being in Christ so that the darkness will be cast out and the Light of Christ's presence will fill me to the measure of all the fullness of God. Amen.