Confirm Your Promise - Psalm 119:38
Psalm 119:38 Confirm to your servant your promise, that you may be feared.
Hear what it is the Psalmist is requesting, “Establish your promise O God. Confirm for me what you have promised me in your word, and nothing else. For, I am to be content with nothing from this world, except that which you have sworn to grant.” And this is the rightful end to all prayer - that we would receive what it is the Lord has promised to give us, that God’s promises would bear much fruit and that we would be the glad reapers of it!
But notice, the psalmist recognizes his station. He is God’s servant, his slave, subjected to the Lord and attending to the Lord’s will, rather than to his own. For, here we learn that many would wish to make the Lord their subject and require him to grant all that they have promised themselves in arrogant thoughtlessness. They believe that they deserve God to attend to them, rather than the other way around. But God is no gene, or henchman being made the attendant of our will. God is the custodian only of the one who desires the holy purpose and promises of God himself, and delights to die to himself for the sake of Christ.
And it is here that we must resolve to understand what the Psalmist is saying. He is the Lord’s slave. And, therefore the Lord owes nothing to this slave of his. And so what the Psalmist asks for seems rather counterintuitive. “I want to fear you, so give me what you’ve promised!” But it only seems counterintuitive because our ears are tuned to the frequency of the world, rather than the reverberation of faith. When the Lord gives what he has promised, and we truly recognize him as the King he is and simultaneously we see ourselves as the worms that we are when compared to him. We see then how his love produces fear in us. So we bow low and become as children who love their father and respect him and his great might over us, unwilling to ask for more than is promised, but not so embarrassed to ask for any less than he has sworn.
So, child of God, pray and ask for all that is in accord with the will of God, and do not hold back and do not be afraid to approach him (Hebrews 4:16). But do not approach with a gaudy heart, or a senseless mouth, or lacking faith. For “this is the confidence which we have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us” (1 John 5:14 LSB)
