Psalm 119:10
With my whole heart have I sought thee: O let me not wander from thy commandments.

One day we made a decision to give our lives to God.  We gave Him our hearts and committed to follow Him all the days of our lives.  We have sought to know Him and to know Him better.  We have searched His Word with diligence to know what He would speak to us.  We have learned His commandments and His expectations.  We’ve met and known Christ as our Savior.  We’ve traced the path of His life that is revealed in Scripture and sat at His feet to learn of Him.  We’ve heard Him speak His words of love and ask us to love others and forgive others and treat them differently than perhaps we would be naturally inclined to.  We’ve dedicated our lives to Him, submitted and surrendered.

But we are so prone to wander, as the hymn says so truthfully.  Our hearts of flesh will fail.  Our feet will go astray.  Our eyes will lose their focus.  And so in these moments and in these times, may the Lord not let us wander.  When, like a foolish or a stubborn sheep, we start heading away from His pasture, away from His will, away from His purpose, may His shepherd’s crook pull us back.  May He remind, chastise and convict us when we direct ourselves to wrong paths.  And may we always be sensitive to the convicting presence of His Spirit within us when sin or lust or something else pulls us from His set path for us.

When our hearts are filled with such love for our Lord, when we are striving to be faithful to Him, when we are serving Him as He’s asked and spending quality time with Him every day, especially then, may we be all the more alert to Satan’s subtlety and our own fickleness of heart.  May we not become prideful, but ever more humble and willing to be corrected and challenged by God’s Word and what we find there.  And when we’ve walked that road a long time, may it not become a mindless routine to the point where we can head off in some wrong direction without even realizing it.

Let us be honest with ourselves and honest with God that we know we will mess up no matter how much we don’t want to.  Just because we obeyed perfectly before does not guarantee we will do so the next time.  Trials and challenges come into our lives.  Temptation is a real danger.  So may this prayer of the psalmist be also on our lips, and may we be aware of the things that cause us to wander in our own lives so that we may stick to the narrow path our Lord has led us down.