He Knows All My Ways: Psalm 119:161-176

I missed quite a few days of posting this week.  I added more verses to the "Old Testament Verses" page (New Testament coming soon) on Sunday, but I haven't blogged on Psalm 119 since Saturday.  It's been an insane last few days, and God has blessed me incredibly despite my ignoring him lately.

I did read through today's passage with my fiance yesterday at lunch.  He pointed out how heavily law-oriented this whole Psalm is, which is correct.  It has encouraged me a lot, though, just to learn to seek God's will more and to love his Word and his laws.  Verse 165 is encouraging like that too:
"Great peace have they who love your law, and nothing can make them stumble."
There are a lot of times when I despise God's law, but generally I do love it and I know how good it is.  God promises "great peace" to me, and that NOTHING will make me stumble!  That is great comfort.

The second part of verse 168 is partly encouraging and partly convicting: the psalmist says to God, "All my ways are known to you."  Whoa!  God knows everything about us!  ALL our ways, all our actions, are known to him.  It's great to know that God is always watching over me and taking care of me, and he sees me and comforts me in the bad times, and is also there in the good times.
But what about those times when I sin?  Especially when I do it knowingly????
God sees ALL my ways, even those!  That is a rather uncomfortable thought: He knows when I'm really, really bad.
But you know what?  He loves us anyway!!!  And, even better, he FORGIVES all of our sins!!!
It's like a quote I heard about friends once: "A friend is one who sees you at your best and your worst, and loves you just the same."  God is our very BEST friend, and he will always love us, no matter what.  THIS is what I take the most comfort in: God's never-failing love!!!!


Psalm 119:176 happens to be the very last verse of the longest book in the Bible.  That means I'm done with this Psalm and am going to be moving on to other Psalms!  A friend of mine has decided to take on the challenge of blogging every single day for the next year- whether it be a full-blown post like this or just a quote or a picture.  I'm not going to be so strict about blogging daily, but I do want to continue this process of blogging about Scripture, so hopefully it will be daily or at least very nearly.  I'm doing this mostly for myself, to develop the discipline, and to improve my writing because someday I'd like to be a professional writer.  We'll see how the Lord leads!

Verse 175 says, "Let me live that I may praise you."  Today, I want to live to praise him, knowing that he knows all my ways, and loves me just the same.