Psalm 119:10 English Standard Version (ESV) With my whole heart I seek you; let me not wander from your commandments!

Psalm 119:18 English Standard Version (ESV) Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law.

Psalm 119:41 English Standard Version (ESV) Let your steadfast love come to me, O Lord, your salvation according to your promise;

Thousands of years ago this writer cries out for help. Seeking God with the whole heart did not allow him to obey, so he cries out make me. The law was written as plainly as any man could ask and he cries out, “I don’t get it.” God said He loved them yet they did not feel it.

That was the other side of the cross and here we are two thousand years later after God kept His promise and sent all the help we will ever need. Yet mankind cries out just as loudly today as they did in Psalm 119. “Help me, I just don’t get it.”

That is not true for all of us and some of us have had all our fears and doubts answered. The truth here is that the help they seek abides in us and wants to touch their lives in meaningful ways. We feel it and we want to help and still with all we know and are in Christ, it doesn’t seem to be enough.

Satisfaction will only come when they accept that free will offering of Christ. There is nothing we can do to make people accept it. Over the years I have heard people say thank you only to discover they accepted intellectually and not with their heart.

God wants to abide in the heart, not the head.

Try as I might I cannot tell anyone how to accept Christ into the heart. Only that broken heart can say what it will take.

2 Corinthians 3:3-5 English Standard Version (ESV)

³ And you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. ⁴ Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. ⁵ Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God,

Ego is a part of the human psyche that allows us to perform to the best of our ability and seek to reach loftier achievements. Ego that will not submit to a higher authority is pride. We know that God resists the proud according to His word. (James 4:6 and 1 Peter 5:5) Grace is given to those who can humble their ego.

Given that the ego is part of our makeup, it can be and should be a part of our ability to serve God with the confidence that comes from knowing we are in God’s will. I have chosen the opening quote in order to reflect on the essence of confidence in verse 5. Our sufficiency is from God. We do not have to seek to achieve more, to reach higher, to stoke our ego, because it is God in us that is our confidence.

There are times when we may find ourselves saying or thinking, “look what I have done”. Touching greatness is a consuming fire if we seek to steal His glory. Whenever thoughts come our way that even begin to lean in that direction, look back to Old Testament servants and their words.

Genesis 24:12 English Standard Version (ESV) And he said, “O Lord, God of my master Abraham, please grant me success today and show steadfast love to my master Abraham.

We serve Christ and success comes from God the Father.