DECIDE:

DECIDE:

A popular question after some major event:  

Where were you when . . . ?
Some events change our lives forever.  Asaph records in a beautiful Psalm the perilous condition into which he had descended, and where he was when he found peace.  

". . . my feet came close to stumbling,   

My steps had almost slipped."  (Psalm 73:2)  

He was tempted to envy, struggling with what appeared to be the logical conclusion--a life of following the Lord makes no sense.  "I'd be better off to live like others around me who have no interest in serving the Lord."  He was just about to make a life-changing decision, a step I've seen others take.  He was ready to take down his "As for me and my house we will serve the Lord." plaque and put it in the Goodwill pile.

Did he actually take a trip to Jerusalem, or was his entrance into the sanctuary of God a journey that took place in his own heart?  Either way he came out of the "Sanctuary of God" a different man than the one who went in.  He said that he "perceived" something that he hadn't grasped before.  It was a mental shift so profound that when he looked back on the way he had been he described himself as "senseless, and ignorant . . . like a beast."

It is a paradigm shift that each of us needs to make and remake.  Read the Psalm and you'll see that Asaph's focus shifted from the temporal to the eternal, and from the trivial to the ultimate.  He had seen God as wrongly tolerant, now he recognizes in his Lord mercy, side-by-side with an absolute commitment to absolute justice.  He began to look at life through the lens of God's truth.

It is a decision.   Asaph decided that he would believe God's word, trust God's character, and depend on the Lord for his own well-being.  It is a decision that Solomon recommended (Proverbs 3:5-6), and in which Isaiah saw great benefit (Isaiah 40:31).  It is a large part of what makes life makes sense to me.

It's STTA. 

Read about a struggle I had following a near fatal accident here. 

You'll find some resources that explains the true hope here.