As we travel through those dark days in life – it’s easy just to let go and compromise who we are and what we do – we sin to save our skin. But I believe that God wants to challenge us about that very thing today.

Last week and again this week on the program we've been stepping our way through a series that I've called "Dark Night, Bright Light" because we all travel through dark patches in our lives. I certainly have and I know that you have too and maybe you're even in the middle of one right now and so we've been spending some time with King David in Psalm 34 where he shares some of the wisdom that he's discovered in the middle of his many, many dark days.

Yesterday we saw that it really makes a difference what we do in those dark places, it's so easy to give in and just let things slide and use our difficulties as an excuse for letting the darkness smear the way that we think and speak and behave.

Well today I'd just like to stick with that idea for a bit longer because David goes on to talk about that and he throws the gauntlet down to you and me with a challenge. A challenge about how you and I behave, how we live our lives when those storm clouds come rolling in over the horizon and it's a challenge that I'd like to share with you, for you to think about in your life.

Psalm 34, as I've said a few times over these last couple of weeks, is King David writing down the wisdom he learned from God in his dark times and as we've spent this time in that psalm over the last couple of weeks I hope that you've been blessed as I am as we work our way through the wondrous word of God. Imagine, the God who created the whole universe speaking to you and me through His word, through something that was written, well about 3,000 years ago.

We're going to move on with the next few verses of this Psalm today because they contain a specific challenge, a challenge to you and to me. Have a listen, Psalm 34 beginning at verse 11:

Come my children listen to me, I will teach you the fear of the Lord. Whoever of you loves life and desires to see many good days, keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking lies. Turn from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it.

See sometimes we wonder, well how do we live out this fear of the Lord? Do I just kind of sit in the corner and tremble? No, it's not that at all. David, remember this David who is speaking to us from his own difficult dark experience is throwing down a challenge. He's teaching us how to live out the fear of the Lord. Quite simply, if I were to paraphrase what he was saying it’s this. He says, "Do you want to live a good life, I mean do you want to live a great life? Well, here’s how to get it – by living out the fear of the Lord through what you say and what you do."

Whoever of you loves life and desires to see many good days, keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking lies. Turn from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it.

Now you and I are different, we're all different; we're all prone to different forms of the same thing that God calls sin. For some people it’s grumbling, others it’s gambling or lying or stealing or carrying around hatred in our hearts and speaking it out behind peoples backs. Gossiping or sexual sin or, you name it the list goes on. Over eating, getting drunk, closing ourselves off from people that we love, over and over the list goes on and my hunch is that each one of us knows which one or two are our particular sins, the ones that we're prone to and here's the challenge.

If we're in a dark and fearful place, a place where there’s a temptation to stop doing good and to do evil instead, the challenge that David is throwing down here is turn away from that, do good. Turn from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it.

You know that’s what it means in practical terms to fear the Lord, that’s how we live out the fear of our Lord, with our lives by living it out His way. See, we delude ourselves, we somehow imagine that in that dark place God can't see what’s going. Well wake up; listen to what the apostle Paul writes in his letter to the Church, to Galatia in Galatians chapter 6, beginning at verse 7, he says:

Look, don't kid yourselves, God can't be mocked; you're going to reap what you sow. If you reap to please your sinful nature, from that nature you're going to reap destruction but if you reap to please the spirit then from the Holy Spirit you will reap eternal life.

Don't become weary of doing good because just at the right time you're going to reap a harvest if you don't give up. Just so, as you have the opportunity, do good to everyone especially those who belong to Gods family.

Now this was written about 1,000 years after David and he's saying the same thing in a different way, he's saying look, in those dark places it's so easy to grow weary of doing good, it's so easy to deceive ourselves, to think that we can somehow pull one over God. Don't be deceived, God can't be mocked, a man reaps what he sows and if we don't grow tired of doing good; isn't it so easy to grow weary of doing good when life’s tough. You know, when everything’s against you and your emotions are down, when the whole world seems to come after you with a pick axe, you know.

The temptation is to behave badly but Paul’s saying what King David said 1,000 years before; don't grow weary of doing good. Just keep doing good, just keep standing there for God, just keep living your life for Him. Don't use the difficult circumstances and the dark places as an excuse and just at the right time, just in Gods time we will reap a harvest if we don't give up.

You see it's very much in that dark place where the devil wants to tear us apart, that's the place where we need to be vigilant, to bow down our lives, to fear the Lord with our lives and just go on faithfully doing the right thing day after day after day. And His light will shine in that place, it has to, that's who He is.

God honours those who honour Him and in those dark places when we, step by step, just follow after His ways what we discover is His light shines in that place and that is such a precious and awesome and mighty thing, it changes us like nothing else on this earth. That's why David starts his Psalm off with such gusto and praise because he knows this stuff works through his own experience:

I will bless the Lord all the time; His praise will always be on my lips. My soul will boast in the Lord; that all those who are afflicted will hear and rejoice. Glorify the Lord with me; lets exalt His name together. I sought the Lord and He answered me; He delivered me from all my fears. If we look to Him our faces will be radiant; never covered with shame. This poor man called and the Lord heard him; He saved him out of all his troubles. The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear Him and He delivers them.

Come on taste, see that the Lord is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him. Fear the Lord you His holy ones for those who fear Him will have no want. The lions may grow weak and hungry but those who seek the Lord will lack no good thing. Come my children listen to me; let me teach you the fear of the Lord. Whoever of you loves life and desires to see good days, keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking lies. Turn away from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it.