Guard Your Ways

As believers, we should strive to sin less and less. How can you guard your way so you do not sin?

Psalm 39 is written by David.  He says in verse 1, “I will guard my ways that I may not sin with my tongue“.  His desire is to not sin and guard his way in his faith in God.

I see 4 ways from Psalm 39 that we can guard our way in life and sin less.
1.  Guard your mouth.  (v. 1b)
2.  Honestly consider that your life is fleeting.  (v. 4-6 & 11b)
3.  Only hope in God, not in anything else, like sin.  (v. 7)
4.  Pray to God for help. (v. 12)

1.  Guard your mouth. – The Bible is filled with warnings regarding our speech.  (James 3, Ephesians 5 etc…)  Make every effort to never sin with your mouth.  Your speech cannot speak wrongly of someone and praise God as well.  Your speech cannot be unwholesome.  Killing the sin of sinning in your speech will go a long way to guarding your ways.

2.  Honestly consider that you life is fleeting. – If we were to know the day and time of our actual death, we would live differently.  If you and I knew when we are going to die, we would live less selfishly, enjoy the little things more and definitely not be captivated by the world and the sin it has to offer.  We would live for God whole-heartedly and not choose to sin.  (James 4:14)

3.  Only hope in God, not in anything else, like sin. – Our only hope is faith in Christ.  We forget this so often because we live in a fallen world that does not only hope in God.  They do not see or live for the beauty of Christ.  Therefore, this causes us to live like them (sadly) and hope in false idols like relationships, jobs, money, power, fame, etc…  This is not what Christians should do.  We should only hope in God.  Surely if we did, we would guard ourselves from many sins.

4.  Pray to God for help. – The second half of verse 12 in this Psalm says, “hold not your peace at my tears“.  This is after it says, “Hear my prayer“.  In the end, the way we will sin less is only by the goodness of God.  So, we pray.  We beg Him for mercy on us.  We beg Him to help us persevere in the faith.  We must have Him.  We pray to sin less.  He will give us “peace” that shows us that He is more beautiful, loving, satisfying than anything else.  Our hearts are idol factories (Calvin).  They make idols continually.  As soon as we have identified an idol and have some semblance of control over the idol, our hearts have already created another one that we must identify and kill.  This is why we must pray.  We guard our ways, and sin less by praying.

God desires for us not to have sin in our lives.  These 4 things are not the only things we can do to kill sin, but, according to Psalm 39, these are some things we can do.  May God grant us the grace to do these things and live lives that please Him by sinning less and Guarding Our Ways.