STAYING RIGHT IN A WORLD GONE WRONG (Psalm 141)

The great difficulty in life is not GETTING right with God. It is STAYING right with God.

Getting right with Him is a simple thing. You just acknowledge your sin and His mercy, and the moment you look to the Lord, He forgives and cleanses. That is a very simple process.

For me, the great challenge is to stay right with Him every day, battling this flesh and the world around me so I can stay on the victory side. Would you like to be victorious today and stay right with God in a world gone wrong?

Psalm 141 will help you do that. It was written by David at a time when most people believed he was being driven out of his home and was on the run for his life. It seemed as if everything was coming apart at the seams. Yet when you read this psalm, you see the words of a man whose heart was set on God. He was determined to stay right even if everything around him went wrong and everyone else did him wrong.

How is that possible? Let’s walk through Psalm 141 and make a list of ways we can stay right in a world gone wrong.

Stay in Prayer

Verse 1: “Lord, I cry unto thee: make haste unto me; give ear unto my voice, when I cry unto thee.” It doesn’t get any clearer than that. Keep talking to the Lord.

Verse 2: “Let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense; and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.” Remember that in the place of worship, the incense burned continuously. The cloud of incense rising to God was symbolic of prayers being offered at all times to Heaven.

The idea here is continual prayer. Stay in a spirit of prayer. The Psalmist was striving to remain in tune with God, in a place where he could pray at any moment. There was a regularity and a discipline to this, as evidenced by the comparison to the evening sacrifice. He was saying, “Every day, I am going to pray to the Lord.”

Use your imagination for a moment. If David was not at home, he was not near the place of worship. Hiding in caves and living in the wilderness, it had to be special for him to know that even though he couldn’t be where he wanted to be, he could still be in God’s presence. He couldn’t burn the incense, but he could talk to the Lord. He couldn’t be there for the evening sacrifice but could still lift his hands to God.

You can pray anywhere, and you should pray everywhere.

Ask God to Control Your Words

Verse 3: “Set a watch, O Lord, before my mouth; keep the door of my lips.” The Psalmist moved from talking to God to examining how he speaks to others. Isn’t that where we sin so often? Our mouths get us in so much trouble.

As children, we get in the most trouble by talking too much. It wasn’t always saying something bad; usually, it was simply speaking at the wrong time. The battle continues as we become adults.

That is why Paul wrote to Timothy in I Timothy 4:12, “Let no man despise thy youth; but be thou an example of the believers, in word …” It is the very first thing on the list because your words tell on your heart. They reveal what is in you. Jesus said in Matthew 12:34, “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.”

If you want to stay right day by day, watch what you say. This is what pure religion looks like. This is where real Christianity has to live, where life comes out of your mouth and not death.

That is such a struggle for all of us, but the Lord can help you. David did not say that he would set the watch; he asked God to do it.

Stay Unencumbered by the Sins of this World

Verse 4: “Incline not my heart to any evil thing, to practise wicked works with men that work iniquity: and let me not eat of their dainties.”

There are so many things that appeal to the flesh, and the Psalmist said he did not want his heart set on any of them. He knew that if he let that happen, he would want to take part in them.

Stay as far away from sin as possible. Don’t live as close to it as you think you can, and get away with it. As I Thessalonians 5:22 says, “Abstain from all appearance of evil.” We are instructed in Proverbs 4:15, “Avoid it, pass not by it, turn from it, and pass away.”

Be Willing to Receive Correction

Verse 5: “Let the righteous smite me; it shall be a kindness: and let him reprove me; it shall be an excellent oil, which shall not break my head: for yet my prayer also shall be in their calamities.”

What does this mean? He wanted the Lord to correct him whenever it was needed and through whomever He wanted to use to do so. God answered that prayer in David’s life through Nathan, as we all know so well.

You can tell a lot about a person by how he or she responds to reproof or correction. We all feel good when people tell us good things. David suggested that the greatest kindness could be someone telling him about his sin. It was not what he wanted to hear but what he needed to hear.

Let me encourage you to surround yourself with those kinds of people. Don’t get mad when a preacher happens to preach about your sin or when a friend calls you out on something that needs to be corrected.

Continue to Exercise Faith in God

Verses 6-8: “When their judges are overthrown in stony places, they shall hear my words; for they are sweet. Our bones are scattered at the grave's mouth, as when one cutteth and cleaveth wood upon the earth. But mine eyes are unto thee, O God the Lord: in thee is my trust; leave not my soul destitute.”

The Psalmist was trusting that God would give victory in the end. Battles were raging at the time, but he knew God would take care of all of it. We have to keep trusting and depending on Him.

Verses 9-10: “Keep me from the snares which they have laid for me, and the gins of the workers of iniquity. Let the wicked fall into their own nets, whilst that I withal escape.” The life of victory has always been and will always be the life of faith.

Psalm 141 is such a practical passage. Meditate on it today, and may the Lord help us all to stay right with Him in a world gone wrong.