Rabbi Schneider - Entirely Dependent on God
Baruch Hashem. Beloved, we're going to Psalm number 18, verse 32 today. It's the psalm of David. Listen what David said here. "The God who girds me with strength and makes my way blameless." So this is an incredible encouragement to me because as you read through the Psalms, for example, if you read through Psalm 119, what you find is David taking responsibility to live righteously before the Lord and even declaring that he is living righteously before the Lord. Yet in the same Psalm, David is asking the Lord to make Him righteous. He's asking the Lord to cause him to walk in His ways. He's asking the Lord to give Him understanding that He might keep His ways. He's asking the Lord to revive him.
And David is, in the same psalm that David is declaring before the Lord that I've kept Your ways, in the same Psalm, David is asking God to forgive Him for not keeping His ways. And I love it because it so much reflects the truth, I think, of what is needed. On the one hand, we need to recognize that we have a responsibility to live righteously before the Lord and to strive to walk in His ways. And on the other hand, we recognize that we can't do it without His creative spirit working in our lives, empowering us and giving us the ability to do that.
And in the Psalm that I just read, notice what David said, Psalm 18 verse 32 again, he says he praises God for the One that gives him the strength and makes his way blameless. So David is recognizing that God is the one that's giving him strength, that God is empowering Him, and that God is going before him to make his way blameless. I think, beloved, you and I need to become entirely, entirely dependent on God and His grace for our salvation. If we think we can do it in the flesh, if we think we can do it by human willpower, if we think we can create sanctification by our own good works, we are going to fall on our face. We need to recognize that without the grace of God, without depending on the grace of God, we will not be able to accomplish anything.
David understood that. And in this Psalm he said, I thank You, Father, for being the One that girds me with strength. That's what creates breakthrough. And for making my way blameless. To God be the glory because He alone is the author and the finisher of your faith and my faith. Let's cast ourselves before Him to complete the work of salvation that He began in us, realizing that He is the Alpha and the Omega of our faith.