"Make me to go in the path of your commandments; for therein do I delight." (Psalm 119:35)
Even though we have learned the law of God well enough to love it and to delight in it, we may still not be able to do it. The Apostle Paul thus describes his experience before he knew Christ: "To will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good, I find not. For the good that I would I do not; but the evil which I would not, that I do. Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwells in me. I find than a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me. For I delight in the law of God after the inward man; but I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members." (Romans 7:18-23)
This is the condition of everybody who is awakened to conviction of sin, but who has not yet learned to yield to the Spirit. "For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary the one to the other, so that you cannot do the things that you would." (Galatians 5:17)
This is the case of the "double-minded man," who is "unstable in all his ways." James 1:8. He cannot go straight.
In such case we have only to pray the prayer quoted at the beginning. God is anxious to guide us, if we are willing to let Him. We are His kingdom, but His place has been usurped by: "[The evil] spirit that now works in the children of disobedience." (Ephesians 2:2)
When we say to Him, "Yours is the kingdom, and the power," (Matthew 6:13) we are actually saying: "You have the right to do as You will with your own; I give You full liberty to rule in me, and exercise your power in me."
He will make us go in the path of His commandments. (Psalm 119:35) He is able to put us in the right way, and to keep us from stumbling in it. He works in us "both to will and to do of His good pleasure." (Philippians 2:13)
The deliverance of Israel from Egypt is proof of His power to do this. When they "wandered in the wilderness in a solitary way," (Psalm 107:4) and in their trouble cried unto the Lord, "He led them forth by the right way." (Psalm 107:7)
He says, "When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt. ... I taught Ephraim also to go, taking them by the arms." (Hosea 11:1,3)
What a sweet picture of God acting as a nurse to His ignorant, helpless children.--Present Truth, December 6, 1900--Psalm 119:35.