July 20

Deal bountifully with Your servant, that I may live and keep Your word. — Ps 119:17 BSB

Can the Lord deal with his servants in any way but bountifully? Why has he made you his servants? Why did he break the chains of your former bondage? Why did he deliver you from the service of sin, the world, Satan, and self? Why did he make himself so precious to your heart, win your affections, and enable you to give yourself entirely to him? Was it to cast you away? To mock your misery? To trample you into hell one day? To leave you to yourself, allow Satan to conquer you, or let your lusts destroy you? Would he tie your sins around your neck like a millstone to drag you down into hell?

Can our hearts truly entertain such thoughts that so degrade the sovereignty of grace? It was because of the Lord’s bounty that he first turned your heart toward himself. It was because he had purposes of love toward you that he first led your feet into his paths. It was because he loved you first that he gave his Son to die for you.

Now, if he has taught you, led you, upheld you, and kept you all this time, is it to abandon you now? To let you fall at last? He cannot and will not do that. Those he loves, he loves to the end. The good work he began in you, he will complete and bring to perfection. Therefore, every action of the Lord toward you is an act of bounty.