Missing the mark seems to be the human condition, it certainly is for me, and yet despite all my efforts to muck things up, God is still good. He has proved time and again that no amount of failure on my part will prevent Him from being who he is, and consistently He is good.
You are good, and what you do is good; teach me your decrees. Psalm 119:68 (NIV)
Being a lifelong learner is a benefit to every Christian, because while God is always good, and what He does is good, I think, and I speak for myself here, it will take a lifetime to learn His decrees (laws) so that I can fully become who He made me to be.
The thing is, learning, comprehending, and executing a decree are not the same thing. You can understand something but without repeating the action associated with the behaviour it may not lock in. You might repeat the action over and over, but never really comprehend it. And without comprehension we can find ourselves letting the action fall to the wayside, because we don’t see the point of maintaining something pointless. That is why God needs to be the one to teach us.
If we go to God, who is good no matter what, He can show us the what, the why, and the how. I believe ‘going to God’ looks like this. It looks like reading your Bible, it looks like meditating on and digging into His word with research, and in conversation with other God-loving individuals who are also pursuing God’s truth. It looks like prayer and entering into conversation with God, expecting an answer, and keeping your eyes, ears, and mind open to receive His response, then weighing that response against the Bible, ‘cause God’s word will not contradict God’s word.
As far as I can tell, learning God’s decrees and living by them is not easy, but it is guaranteed to be good, because as Psalm 119:68 tells us, what He does is good, and so, I want to learn it, how about you?
Karla