Psalms 119:20

Life is desirable in order to serve God; that we may do so aright, we should seek to have our eyes opened to behold His truth, and earnestly desire fully to understand it.

"My soul breaketh for the longing that it hath unto thy judgments at all times." True godliness lies very much in desires. As we are not what we shall be, so also we are not what we would be. The desires of gracious men after holiness are intense,—they cause a wear of heart, a straining of the mind, till it feels ready to snap with the heavenly pull.

"My soul breaketh for the longing that it hath unto thy judgments at all times." True godliness lies very much in desires. As we are not what we shall be, so also we are not what we would be. The desires of gracious men after holiness are intense,—they cause a wear of heart, a straining of the mind, till it feels ready to snap with the heavenly pull. A high value of the Lord's commandment leads to a pressing desire to know and to do it, and this so weighs upon the soul that it is ready to break in pieces under the crush of its own longings. What a blessing it is when all our desires are after the things of God. We may well long for such longings. God's judgments are his decisions upon points which else had been in dispute. Every precept is a judgment of the highest court upon a point of action, an infallible and immutable decision upon a moral or spiritual question. The word of God is a code of justice from which there is no appeal. David had such reverence for the word, and such a desire to know it, and to be conformed to it, that his longings caused him a sort of heart break, which he here pleads before God. Longing is the soul of praying, and when the soul longs till it breaks, it cannot be long before the blessing will be granted. The most intimate communion between the soul and its God is carried on by the process described in the text. God reveals his will, and our heart longs to be conformed thereto. God judges, and our heart rejoices in the verdict. This is fellowship of heart most real and thorough. Note well that our desire after the mind of God should be constant; we should feel holy longings "at all times."

ONE of the best tests of a man's character will be found in his deepest and heartiest longings. You cannot always judge a man by what he is doing at any one time, for he may be under constraints which compel him to act contrary to his true self, or he may be under an impulse from which he will soon be free. He may, for a while, back off from that which is evil and yet he may be radically bad. Or he may be constrained by force of temptation to that which is wrong, yet his real self may rejoice in righteousness. A man may not be pronounced to be good because, for the moment, what he is doing may be condemned as evil because, under certain constraints, he may be committing sin. A man's longings are more inward and more near to his real self than his outward acts—they are more natural, in that they are entirely free and beyond compulsion or restraint. As a man longs in his heart, so is he. I mean not every idle wish, as I now speak, but strong desires of the heart— these are the true life of a man's nature. You shall know whether you, yourself, are evil by answering this question. To which have you the greatest desire? Do you continually long after selfish pleasures? Then you are evil beyond all question! Do you sigh to be and feel and do that which is good? Is this the great aim of your life? Then in the core of your being there is some good thing towards the Lord God of Israel. So then, dear Hearers, your heart-longings may furnish you with helps for self-examination and I beg you to apply them, as things of the heart touch the root of the matter. Unbelievers are "a people that do err in their heart" and men truly find the Lord when they "seek Him with their whole heart"—so that the heart is all-important and its longings are among the surest marks of its condition. Moreover, heart-longings are prophecies of what a man will be.

My soul breaketh - We have a similar expression: It broke my heart, That is heart-breaking, She died of a broken heart. It expresses excessive longing, grievous disappointment, hopeless love, accumulated sorrow. By this we may see the hungering and thirsting which the psalmist had after righteousness, often mingled with much despondency.

My soul breaketh - This word means to break; to crush; to break in pieces by scraping, rubbing, or grating. The idea would seem to be, not that he was crushed as by a single blow, but that his soul - his strength - was worn away by little and little. The desire to know more of the commands of God acted continually on him, exhausting his strength, and overcoming him. He so longed for God that, in our language, “it wore upon him” - as any ungratified desire does. It was not the possession of the knowledge of God that exhausted him; it was the intenseness of his desire that he might know more of God. For the longing - For the earnest desire. That it hath unto thy judgments at all times - Thy law; thy commands. This was a constant feeling. It was not fitful or spasmodic. It was the steady, habitual state of the soul on the subject. He had never seen enough of the beauty and glory of the law of God to feel that all the needs of his nature were satisfied, or that he could see and know no more; he had seen and felt enough to excite in him an ardent desire to be made fully acquainted with all that there is in the law of God. Compare the notes at Psa 17:15.