Sweeter Than
“I have not departed from your laws, for you yourself have taught me.
How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!”
Today’s Text: Psalm 119:89-104 (Living Life Daily Devotional)
I’ve departed from the word of God. Haven’t you? And King David, who wrote this, did too. So what in the world? Was he just straight up lying?
And I have departed from the word of God because, to be perfectly honest, the word of God has not always been sweet to my taste—certainly not “sweeter than honey to my mouth”—but rather, bitter.
When the word of God tells me to forgive and to love my enemies, that never seems sweet.
When the word of God tells me that my heart is corrupted by sin and therefore to lean not on my own understanding, that hardly ever seems sweet.
When the word of God tells me to be still and to just put my trust in the Lord, that hardly ever seems sweet.
So maybe these words are more like a rhetorical question.
Have I departed from Your word, Lord? I mean, they are Your words, after all. Are Your words sweet to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth?
Yeah. That makes more sense.
Because more than anything, these words are a reminder—a reminder that the word of God is … well … the word of God, the Creator of heaven and earth, the Giver of life, the Author of salvation, the Forgiver of sins, the Redeemer of souls, the Alpha and the Omega.
Why in the world would I ever want to depart from the word of that God? I don’t know. There is something about the sin that we all inherit that somehow makes us all a little stupid.
Wow! What a gracious and loving and merciful God we worship.
Father, You are beyond gracious and king. You have given us Your very word, which Your very heart, to us. Forgive me for when I get stupid and make Your word irrelevant and powerless in my life, when I should be making my life relevant to Your word and tapping into its power. So thank You for Your patience with me. Continue to be patient with me. Grow me in understanding. Make me hunger and thirst for Your sweet, sweet word. In Jesus’s name. Amen.
