Hoping and trusting and delighting

Once again, I'm watching an old episode of Emergency! as I write this. The paramedics, Gage and DeSoto, have rescued an escape artist who seems to be trapped in a trunk hanging on a crane over the water. Just when DeSoto told Gage the artist's secret (he wasn't in the trunk), Gage realizes that somehow the artist must've gotten out of the trunk and hidden himself without any of his magician friends noticing after they had locked him in, but can't figure out how.

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I was supposed to go to the DMV yesterday to see about renewing my learner's permit. Late Friday night, I decided to break the appointment. I realized that I wasn't ready to take the test, and it would've been less of a strain financially if I waited another week, until after I got paid again.

When I went to the DMV website earlier today to set a new appointment, the system was temporarily unavailable. Oh well.

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This morning, I got back to church for the first time in a few weeks. Our message was out of Psalm 119, on the spiritual revival we can gain from Scripture. Repeatedly, the psalmist emphasizes the comfort he can take in God's Word. He seeks the good Word of God over the vain things of mortal life.

I was deeply convicted by the fact that I was failing to take delight in the Word of God, and had been choosing worldly pleasures instead. I wasn't trusting God and I wasn't trusting His Word. I was struggling to feel God's love when His love is meant to be experienced and shared with others, not kept to oneself as I had been. It seems like this few months have seen slowly start to withdraw from my brothers and sisters in Christ, and because I haven't been loving others as I should be, my love for them, and for The Lord, has grown so cold. It's been wrong for me to do this; I'd been so self-involved with my work issues, I failed to even realize what I was doing, or rather, not doing.

I ask that you who read this, pray that I would choose to love and honor God and His Word. Pray that I would continue to confess distrust and bitterness in my own life, and that I would turn from it. Sometimes, it's so discouraging to keep confessing the same old sins, but 1 John 1:9 reminds us that "(i)f we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness". (NIV) Pray that I would trust in God's faithfulness to forgive me of the sins I confess to Him, and that I would be faithful to confess.