Today’s devotional reading comes from Psalm 119:144:

“The righteousness of thy testimonies is everlasting: give me understanding, and I shall live.”

Righteousness is defined as “justice.”  God’s testimonies then, can be said to be just. Webster’s, gives the archaic definition of just as “faithful to an original.”  A car, like the Volkswagen Beetle, for instance, which for a great many years, has remained essentially unchanged, is said to be “true to the original design.”  In that God’s testimony has never changed, it can also be said to be true.  

A testimony is a witness.  When a person wants to certify that his testimony is true, he normally says, “I give you my word.”  God’s Testimony is also His Word.  So then, God’s Word is True.  Everlasting is defined as “time out of mind”; that is, eternity.  God’s Word then, is True for all eternity.  Understanding in this context means “to differentiate or discern.”  The psalmist then, seeks discernment, and since he seeks it from God’s Word, then he seeks the ability to discern truth.  With this discernment, he says, he will live. One of the meanings of the word live is “to be whole.”  To be whole is to be complete, and to be complete is to lack nothing.  The psalmist writes, therefore, that God’s Word is true forever, and with it one will have discernment, and with discernment, he will lack nothing.  This is a great truth.

In these Last Days, discernment is vitally important.  Yet, few of us have it, because we are not in the Word of God as we should be.  If we want discernment, if we want the Truth, then like David, we must seek it in the eternal Word of God.  And with it, we shall live!

Copyright © 2011 Anthony Keeton, The Still Man ®.  All rights reserved.