“My soul is consumed with longing for your rules at all times.” - Psalm 119:20

What are you consumed with? What is so profound and immensely important to you that you are crushed by your longing for it? What does your soul go after, day-by-day, and what causes your heart anguish at the very thought of pursuing it? What makes your stomach sink when you consider its greatness and grandeur? By what are your thoughts taken up all day long, that preoccupies your every moment and mortifies you more and more with each passing minute?

We are accustomed to David’s emotions, and use of language, but here we see something stark. David is experiencing a sort of heartbreak over his longing for God’s word. God has revealed his will to his servant, and the longing in his soul to be conformed to it is so great and impressed upon him, that his desire for it causes his soul to be consumed; it aches over the great yearning to please his Lord, to stand in his courts, to hear his judgments, to know his rules, and to hear his statutes. 

Take note, it is at “all times” that we are to be consumed with the rules of our Lord. When we have desires that are here one day and gone the next, or wishes that we have in our minds for but a moment, and are then gone as we begin thinking of some other trivial thing, these do not consume us. These are inconsequential. Yet, we live as though these thoughts are most crucial: what new thing should I buy? Where should we eat? How do I look? What did they think of me? We spend time manifesting the ideas of nonsense that are born from emotions that will die the moment the heat that created them cools down. 

Christian, fellowship with the Lord who has redeemed you, and let your soul be consumed and crushed with a holy longing to be conformed to his rules all your life.