"I hate and abhor falsehood, but I love your law."

Today's reading was Psalm 119...all of it.  It's been something that I've been trying to read all day, but it's so long that I hadn't quite had time.  I finally just read it and it was definitely worth it.

Now, many people may say that Psalm 119 is quite redundant.  There are so many repeated phrases, concepts, and words, but in my opinion this repetition is necessary.  It took those 50 million repeated things to get the concept of what God was saying and that wasn't even the first time I have ever read it!

One verse that stuck out to me was, "I hate and abhor falsehood, but I love your law" (Psalm 119:163).  Of course, we would all say that that is true.  I mean we hate murder right?  We hate when people lie to us?  That's falsehood right?  We love God's word?  We love the encouraging verses?  But is that what this verse is referring to?  Hating when people wrong us and loving encouraging verses?  I think it's more than that.

We, as God's people, are supposed to abhor falsehood, hate evil, be disgusted with sin, whatever you want to call it.  Sin is against God, and we are supposed to hate it.  That means we are supposed to hate sinning, hate when others sin, and hate anything that has to do with sin (this doesn't mean hate people that sin, God loves us sinners and we are called to love each other).  If we hate sin, than why would we choose to do it?  We like to lie; it gets us out of things we don't want to be involved in.  We like to steal; we get things without paying for them.  We like to make fun of others; it makes us feel better about ourselves.  We like to commit adultery; it makes us feel good.  We like these falsehoods, these sins, this evil.

And what about the law?  Do we honestly love the law?  I mean I can flat out say to you right now that the main reason that I have ever tried to follow the God's law is because if I don't I'll get in trouble, because I know that is what I am "supposed" to do, or because people will look down on me if I don't.  Certainly I have not been following God's law because I delight in it.  Certainly I do not give my whole heart to following God's law.  Instead I have found God's law to be boring, restricting, and often times annoying.

Wow.  Now the verse seems to appear a bit different, huh?  Following what Psalm 119 is much more difficult than we thought.  If we loved God's law and abhorred falsehood, it would be so much easier to say no in those tempting situations.  Yes, we would still be tempted, but there would be a strong longing to do what's right, not just choosing to follow a rule that we grudgingly follow.

So how do we go about following this verse?  Even just reading Psalm 119 helps to show you how awesome God's word is.  It's not just the commands that God calls us to because He loves us, but it's also    encouragement, testimonies, and wisdom.  It's God's communication with us.  We should treasure it.  As for learning to abhor evil, we just have to get to know God better and better.  If we're besties with Jesus, we don't want to disappoint him or hurt him.  This takes time, but keeping these things in mind can help us to seek God out even more.

Ah, I love him.  Shout out to Jesus!