How can a young man keep his way pure?

Psalm 119:9-16

“How can a young man keep his way pure?  By guarding it according to your word.  With my whole heart I seek you; let me not wander from your commandments!  I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you.  Blessed are you, O Lord; teach me your statutes!  With my lips I declare all the rules of your mouth.  In the way of your testimonies I delight as much as in all riches.  I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways.  I will delight in your statutes; I will not forget your word.”

How can a young man keep his way pure?  For most young men it’s not a question they give a lot of thought to, at least that was true in my life.  Pure is defined; clean, unpolluted, innocent, moral, wholesome, etc.  If you look at how the word is defined, most young men have “morality,” as not stealing, being truthful, and words like unpolluted are about water and things like that.  Now in my case taking a few peaches from the neighbors was not stealing, telling an untruth to mother about where I was going or where I had been was in my best interest, but it was not lying.  I began life being taught many Bible truths at home and at church but had already learned how to define them to get what I wanted, most of the time.  In truth, I was not pure, not clean, I was a lying little peach stealer.  We never took peaches in the daytime, but in the darkness of the night.  The Bible teaches that men love darkness because their deeds are evil.

If only I had learned to put God’s word in my heart so that I would not willfully break His statues and precepts.  If we look at Proverbs 1:8-19, you will see how easily the young inexperience man can be tempted.  The question in the year of the Lord, 2019, is how to train a young man to guard his heart to seek God’s ways and not the worlds.  Without dads that are training their sons in God’s precepts and instructions and living it out with him, the odds are they will allow the world to mold them.  I have often said my dad is one of my hero’s, in that he lived it out in front of us, but he did not take the time to train his sons in righteous living, he let mother and the church do that.  My brother and I learned how to get our needs met outside of Christ.

I was 27 and married when my barber asked me to go to a Bible Study and lunch at the Holiday Inn and I went only to see why this man who I admired was going.  It began a six-month journey of God sending the hounds of heaven after me.  A great battle was taking place in and around me, I wanted the peace and joy I saw in the men at the Bible study, but I also was fearful of submitting to God’s authority over my life.  One night in Victoria, Texas in a motel room, I opened a hotel Bible to Romans 10:9 and ask God to not just come into my life but be the Lord of my life.

If I were to tell you that from that night on my troubles ended, it would not be true, often I allowed those green highways of a life of getting my needs met outside of Christ to lead me away from His fellowship, but He is my Father and He loves me too much not to discipline me.

For many years my prayer has been as the psalmist; “Blessed are you, O Lord; teach me your statutes!  With my lips I declare all the rules of your mouth.  In the way of your testimonies I delight as much as in all riches.  I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways.  I will delight in your statutes.  I will not forget your word.”

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice