Teach me your way, O Lord,

that I may walk in your truth;

unite my heart to fear your name. (Psalm 86:11 ESV)

Life is typically a rather tedious journey down a path, one foot in front of the other. Step after step after step. As we travel along we live for a reason and we make sense of the world through an internal grid of one sort or another. We are never just standing still spiritually or morally or intellectually. Remember the prophet Jonah? The proverbs in the Scripture key on these themes. They also find their way into the psalms.

These parallel petitions above are embedded in the middle of a psalm filled with the interplay of adoration, thanksgiving, supplications and a touch of confession. It is a psalm one can easily make his or her own. I sense an earnestness and a focus in the request. It displays both the horizontal and the vertical dimensions of the life of faith. How am I living and acting? How am I thinking toward and perceiving of God?

Two other translations bring out where these seemingly simple petitions are taking us. The CSB: Teach me your way, Lord, and I will live by your truth. Give me an undivided mind to fear your name. And the NLT: Teach me your ways, O Lord, that I may live according to your truth! Grant me purity of heart, so that I may honor you.

PRAYER: As I read your word and hear it read, taught, and preached, Lord, teach me what you want me to know. I want to live for you. I want to conduct myself as is appropriate for a believer in you. I want to live and act with character, conviction, and integrity. I want my feet to walk paths of righteousness for your name’s sake. Further, Lord, from the very internal control center of my being I want to have a razor-sharp focus on you. I do not want to be like those at the Yahweh-Baal showdown conducted by Elijah—divided in their allegiance. I want to know beyond the shadow of a doubt that I am yours and serve only you. Please cleanse my heart of all unrighteousness, crassness, dirty jokes, filth, sin and shame. Give me a deep and abiding reverence for you and your name, which I carry as your baptized child. May the glory of your name be what directs me out of bed each morning and may a conscience clean and meditating on your honor place my head back on the pillow in the evening. To God be the glory, through the name of Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit, Amen.