April 30, 2009 The Secret of the Lord Kathleen Maples

Psa 25:1 A Psalm of David. Unto thee, O LORD, do I lift up my soul.

Unto You, oh Lord, do I lift my soul. Who else can I go to? There is no one who can
help me, but You. Oh, God, I trust in You, don't let me be ashamed and don't let my
enemy triumph over me.

Careful consideration of these two verses, in Psalms 25 tells me something. David

is struggling with a heavy sense of shame, guilt or condemnation. Oh, Lord, that is
a heavy load, one I can't carry. I have to lift my soul up to You, I can't save myself.
I can't keep myself. You know the accuser tries to torment my mind, and make me
ashamed of every failure, every mistake, every shortcoming. He does all Your
people the same way. Grant us Lord, that none of us will end up ashamed who wait
in faith on You to perfect us as You said You would. There is opposition from an
enemy that is weighing on him like a heavy burden. He feels isolated, and doesn't
trust people, and looks only to the Lord for his deliverance. Unto YOU do I lift up
my soul. My life. Lord, You are my confidence, You I am sure of. Don't let me be
disappointed, or brought to confusion. Don't let me become dry and discouraged,
and so ashamed of my failures that I can't go on. If there had been victory he
wouldn't be struggling with shame and discouragement.

Psa 25:3 Yea, let none that wait on thee be ashamed: let them be ashamed which transgress
without cause.
Psa 25:4 Shew me thy ways, O LORD; teach me thy paths.

Those who transgress, who cover up their sin, or try to hide it by dealing
deceitfully, unfaithfully, oh Lord, let them be ashamed, but not those who wait on
You in faith. Oh, Father, help me to know and understand Your instruction. Help
me recognize the way I should walk as I travel this course of life, this journey You
have set my feet upon. Train and instruct me oh Lord, how to walk worthy and
teach me how to walk with You. Guide me into all Your truth. Help me to discern
and be aware of which way is Your way for there are many paths to walk in this
life, but only Yours is the right one. Help me understand the way I should go. I
know the natural man can't grasp the spiritual truth of Your life and Your purpose
for my life. Help me please walk in it, live it and be governed by it. Your way is a
narrow road, but it's the only way to Life. Draw me, and let me walk with You,
through your Word as You help me understand what it means to my life. You are
the God who secures my deliverance, my safety, my freedom from the powers of
darkness and this awful nature in me that would resist and war against You. I
will look expectantly to YOU, and wait patiently, tarrying every day in Your
presence, spending time in Your Word which is my strength. Oh, Lord, be mindful
of Your compassions, Your tender love and mercy, Your kindness. Please don't be
mindful of or mention the sins I committed when I was young, nor my
transgressions. (He says this because he's so used to his own conscience with a
little demonic help doing this continually). Help me to forgive myself for my
failures. Oh, Lord, if you marked iniquity, who could stand? Who could make it?
But there is forgiveness with You, Lord, that You may be reverenced, and feared!

Psa 25:5 Lead me in thy truth, and teach me: for thou art the God of my salvation; on thee
do I wait all the day.
Psa 25:6 Remember, O LORD, thy tender mercies and thy loving kindnesses; for they have
been ever of old.

Tread down everything I thought was truth, Lord, and come and show me Your
truth. Your truth is stable, its trustworthy, it's right and it's a sure, solid
foundation for my life. It's the only one there is.

Psa 25:7 Remember not the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions: according to thy
mercy remember thou me for thy goodness' sake, O LORD.
Psa 25:8 Good and upright is the LORD: therefore will he teach sinners in the way.

Is he asking the Lord not to remember his sins and transgressions because he's so
busy beating himself up for them, not having learned to receive forgiveness and be
at peace with himself? Sometimes, in spite of God's willingness to forgive, we find
it hard to forgive ourselves. When we love God and we fail Him so miserably, we
endure the devil's accusations in our misery, in total agreement with our
adversary, feeling a need to punish ourselves-after all, we know truth, we've been
taught by God Himself, through His precious Holy Spirit. How could we fail Him
so? How could we so let Him down? We knew better, but still failed. Oh, the
recriminations are endless. We try to pray, and keep asking for His forgiveness,
when He forgave the first time we asked, because we haven't forgiven ourselves,
we still struggle with guilt and condemnation. God deliver us from such unbelief.
Help us remember Your ways are not our ways nor Your thoughts like ours. So
many times, He expresses in His Word the willingness to forgive and pardon if His
people will just return to Him in repentance-simply because He is good. Oh,
remember me for Your goodness' sake, oh Lord. Precious and righteous is the
Lord. Because He is so good, He will point out the right way and instruct us who
have offended Him with our failures and sins and transgression along this journey
on which He is taking us.

Psa 25:9 The meek will he guide in judgment: and the meek will he teach his way.

The meek-this word means depressed, in mind or circumstance. Those who are
needy, humble, poor. The meek He will lead in judgment. What does that mean? In
the Hebrew, the word is Mishpat (H4941). God has a courtroom. His throne is
where people and their cases appear. He has a divine law, He had it written for our
good, so we can know Him, and His Truth. He has a manner of life He declares His
children should live and walk in. There are laws and there are commandments.
When we violate one, oh, praise God we have an advocate-or intercessor, who
mediates this case that has to be brought before the Lord. The Son of God speaks
on our behalf, having already borne the punishment for our sin. We ask for His
forgiveness, the blood is applied to our sins, and they are cleansed. We need to
understand this for when we do, we cannot take sin and disobedience lightly. He is
a holy God and will not change or amend His law like man does. It is forever
settled in heaven, and cannot be changed. Consider the drastic action He had to
take in order to restore hope and the opportunity to fellowship with Him to us. He
had to come into this dark, desperate world, wrap His Word in the womb of a
virgin, and be born, and live a sinless life, and be rejected, and slaughtered.
Consider the brutality of His death on the cross and you see a glimpse of the hatred
of God for sin. Lord, grant us Your holy fear, for it is by the fear of the Lord men
depart from evil.

Remember He has the power and the right to cast us all into an eternal hell where
the suffering never ends, where there is no light or love. It's His mercy and grace
and His willingness to forgive our offenses, our sins, because of His SON. It is not
because of anything good in us-there is nothing good in us but HIM. It's all
because of HIS goodness, HIS SON, that we have hope. See how understanding the
truth can make you feel so small, and insignificant, so unworthy? Yet we stand on
the fact He made us accepted in His Beloved Son. He granted us an entrance-He did
it because He loves us and wants to have a personal relationship with us. He wants
to make us HIS, to share His wonders with us, His heart, His life. Oh, how blessed
we are when we begin by the Holy Ghost to see such marvelous truth.

It's the meek, those who are poor and needy, depressed in their minds, in their
situations, and are humble not arrogant, these are folks that are teachable. He will
instruct expertly these people. He will show them the road they must travel. He
will walk this road with them-they will never be alone for He is everywhere, and
He knows all things. He never leaves His children alone for the enemy would
destroy us without His divine protection. All the ways of the Lord are mercy,
kindness, trustworthy. He's made promises, and His testimony or witness to us is
His Word, and His Spirit to help us understand His Word and make it real to our
heart and life. Oh, Lord, on account of Your Holy Name, Your great NAME,
forgive, put away my iniquity. It is so great-everything in me wants to rebel
against Your truth, and Your righteousness. That in me wants its own way and
You have shown me that will lead to death. To walk after the desires and wishes of
myself will lead nowhere but to hell.

Psa 25:12 What man is he that feareth the LORD? him shall he teach in the way that he shall
choose.
Psa 25:13 His soul shall dwell at ease; and his seed shall inherit the earth.
Psa 25:14 The secret of the LORD is with them that fear him; and he will shew them his
covenant.
Psa 25:15 Mine eyes are ever toward the LORD; for he shall pluck my feet out of the net.

Those who have a reverence for the Lord, who fear to break His commands, who
walk lightly and humbly before Him, those He will teach however He sees fit. He is
the Teacher, we, the students. We know nor can have nothing except we receive it
from above. We can rest in His promises, hold to them, for ourselves and our
children.

I want to deal a moment here on this secret of the Lord mentioned in verse 14. I
have so much to learn, but I saw something in this Scripture that thrilled my heart.
That word 'secret' (H5475) means intimacy, and inward secret counsel the Lord
gives His own. It's an intimate friendship, Those who fear Him will not take
lightly His Word. They might struggle and make mistakes, but they are broken
when He convicts them, they sorrow over their failures and seek to HIM and HIS
strength to live this life He requires-it's HIS life. We can't fake it. We can't even
accurately imitate it. We must yield to it and allow HIS life to flow through us, to
be lived in us by His Spirit. Amen? When it is HIM, it is genuine.

The Amplified Bible puts it this way:

Psa 25:14 The secret [of the sweet, satisfying companionship] of the Lord have they who
fear (revere and worship) Him, and He will show them His covenant and reveal to them its
[deep, inner] meaning. [John 7:17; 15:15.]

Hallelujah!

Another translation, the Concordant Literal Version, very close to the original
Hebrew puts it this way:

Psa 25:14 The intimacy of Yahweh is for those fearing Him, And His covenant, to give them
knowledge.

Think about what this is saying very carefully. Turn it over in your mind. Those who
reverence the Lord, He will commune or talk with on a personal, inward level. It's
secret communication between God and man or woman. I have experienced this and
there is nothing like it on earth. There is no voice like His. You could be having the
worst day ever and one word from Him can melt the hurt, or the anger and renew
hope and strength. His Word creates life, it creates understanding, and peace, and
courage to continue. It's not our strength and merit we stand in, it's HIS. Those who
fear Him, He will commune with, and He will make them to understand and know the
reality of His covenant. What is a covenant? It's an agreement between two people.
God is so much superior to us, and He has made promises to us. He has granted us
certain privileges and promises. These are contingent, or dependent, on our trusting
and obeying Him. He will help those who fear Him to understand these deep truths.
We can't know them any other way, except He make it known to us.

Because of this promise, this secret, personal relationship we can have with God, our
focus, our eyes must be always toward HIM and away from self. To look at self is to
despair and feel sick because we are so far beneath what He is. He is perfectly lovely,
perfectly Holy, perfectly righteous, and we are not. Yet, in His gracious, loving
compassion, those who repent, He imputes, or grants His righteousness to their
account. Then they stand on His finished work at Calvary, not their own efforts to be
right. Praise the Lord! What a glorious truth! Oh, yes, look away from yourself and
your failures, and look to HIM. Look to His perfection! Look to His promises that
cannot fail! Look away from yourself for that is all you can do is fail! Oh, He will bring
me out of the trap of the enemy. That net that he spreads to snare God's children, the
net of being caught up in our own selves, only He can bring us out!

Oh, He says in this Scripture, Turn to me, and have mercy on me, for I am desolate and
afflicted. I am lonely, I'm in a very lonely, hard place. I'm needy, I'm nothing, I'm
under such pressure from mental battles, from physical or financial, or spiritual
circumstances. My heart is full of anguish, there is so much distress and tribulation in
my mind, and it keeps growing. Bring me out of this distress and trouble oh, Lord!
Psa 25:18 Look upon mine affliction and my pain; and forgive all my sins.
Psa 25:19 Consider mine enemies; for they are many; and they hate me with cruel hatred.
Psa 25:20 O keep my soul, and deliver me: let me not be ashamed; for I put my trust in
thee.
Psa 25:21 Let integrity and uprightness preserve me; for I wait on thee.

Look and see Lord, what I'm going through, and the sorrow and misery that grieves
my heart. I hurt, Lord. I see my sin, I see the results of my sin, and it grieves me. I
made so many mistakes and I don't know how to fix them, Father. I want to live for
You, and You know that I've been fighting not only myself but the enemy of my soul
and he's smarter than me, Lord but not You. I fell into his net. Only You can get me out
and I'm looking to You to bring me out of here-I can get out no other way. I trust in
You and Your promises Lord that You'd never leave me or forsake me. Rescue me, and
let me no longer be ashamed over these failures and mistakes and sins, Lord. My trust
is in you, I can't trust anyone or anything else, especially myself. I trust Your complete
righteousness to keep me, Lord. I expect and wait for Your promised deliverance. You
said many are the afflictions of the righteous, but You, Oh, Lord, rescue us out of them
all. You didn't say the afflictions were all caused by the enemy. Our self life is one of
our worst enemies and that is so personal, but You are God and You never lose. You
can't be defeated and You are able to subdue our iniquities, and make us what You
wish us to be! Glory to Your Holy Name, my Precious Savior, Lord of Glory!
Hallelujah!