A Look at Psalm 119:12
Teach me Your decrees...
Psalm 119:12 “Praise be to You, O Lord; teach me Your decrees.”
“Decrees” are decisions. In this case, they are the decisions God has made. In
Psalm 63:4
we read,
“I will praise You as long as I live, and in Your Name I will lift up my hands.” The lifted has is a sign of surrender or submission. With lifted hands we worship and praise of God. In essence the Psalmist is saying,
“Through praise I learn Your decrees (decisions) because I am bringing myself under You.” Bringing ourself “under” is what submission means. It means we are giving our will to God. We can now pray with Jesus, “Not my will but Thine.”
Through submission, we gain a teachable spirit. Praise makes us teachable because of the submissive spirit we must be in in order to worship God. The true worshipers not only worship in spirit but also in truth. We come into truth through being teachable. God does not force feed us. He waits for our spirit to open to Him so that He can gently teach us of Himself. Matthew 15:8-9
says,
“These people honor (worship) Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship Me in vain.” They worshiped God, but it was futile because their hearts were not pliable.
“The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him” Psalm 25:14 KJV. The secret of the Lord Himself cannot be learned through study, but through submission. There is no way our limited minds can understand the Lord. A person’s spirit must commune with His Spirit. This is done through true worship of God. As we worship Him and lay our lives in His hands, we begin to understand things (decrees) about God that cannot be understood any other way.
We learn more about God through submission than we do through self-exaltation. Pride is a lifting up of ourselves. Submission is a lifting up of God. When we bring ourselves down and worship from a position of lowliness He is exalted.
Let me encourage you to take some time to meditate on this verse, making David’s words your own, “Father, I submit to You. Bring me down, so You can be exalted.”
