By: Isaac Crockett
Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. I have sworn an oath and confirmed it, to keep your righteous rules. I am severely afflicted; give me life, O LORD, according to your word! Accept my freewill offerings of praise, O LORD, and teach me your rules. I hold my life in my hand continually, but I do not forget your law. The wicked have laid a snare for me, but I do not stray from your precepts. Your testimonies are my heritage forever, for they are the joy of my heart. I incline my heart to perform your statutes forever, to the end.
Psalm 119:105-112 (ESV)[1]
What would you do if you found yourself trapped 107 floors above the ground in darkness, with smoke filling the building and no idea which way led to safety?
On February 26, 1993, that question became terrifyingly real for thousands of people inside New York’s World Trade Center. A bomb exploded beneath the complex, killing six people, knocking out power, and filling parts of the towers with smoke.[2] On the 107th floor of Tower One was an investment analyst named Curt Blik. Blik happened to be wearing a Timex watch equipped with the company’s relatively new Indiglo technology.[3] In normal circumstances, the faint glow from a wristwatch would hardly seem significant. But these were not normal circumstances.
Blik pressed the button on his watch, and in the darkness that little watch face began to glow. He held it where he could see his way forward and started down the stairs. Other people saw the light and gathered around him. Blik had not arrived at work that morning planning to lead an evacuation, but suddenly people were following him. Together they descended through dark and smoky stairwells one tedious step at a time until they reached rescuers and safety.
I love that picture because it reminds me of Psalm 119:105:
“Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.”
I have spent much of my adult life in positions where people look to me for some kind of direction. I run a business. I pastor a church. I work in radio and television. Before that, I taught in public school, and now my wife and I are involved in educating our children at home. Those are very different settings, but they have something in common: sooner or later someone looks at you and expects you to know what to do next. Sometimes you do. Sometimes you don’t.
Psalm 119 doesn’t promise that God’s people will always be able to see everything ahead. It promises something better. God gives us His Word. And when we keep God’s Word, it keeps us and shows us how to live.
In these eight verses, I see three ways God’s Word does that. It directs our path as our GUIDE. It defends our steps as our GUARD. And it delights our heart as our GLADNESS.
1. God’s Word Directs Our Path: It Is Our GUIDE
The psalmist begins, “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path” (v. 105).
The lamps people carried in the biblical world were nothing like the powerful flashlights we carry today. Archaeologists have uncovered small ceramic oil lamps from ancient Israel that held oil and a wick. The picture is beautifully appropriate. God’s Word gives us the light we need to walk.
Sometimes that means God gives us just enough light for the next step. That can be difficult for leaders. We like to know what’s coming. But God doesn’t give me that kind of knowledge. He hasn’t asked me to be omniscient. He has asked me to obediently trust Him.
Yet the verse also says His Word is “a light to my path.” Scripture gives us something broader than guidance for individual decisions. It gives us an entirely different way of seeing life. God’s Word tells us who God is, who we are, what God loves, what He hates, what sin is, what righteousness is, and where history is going. It gives us what we might call a biblical worldview.
That matters enormously for leadership. The Bible won’t tell me the name of the person I should hire. It won’t give me next year’s business forecast. It doesn’t tell me exactly how to structure tomorrow’s radio interview or solve every problem that arises in our church or homeschool. It shapes the man making those decisions.
“I have sworn an oath and confirmed it, to keep your righteous rules.” (Psalm 119:106)
2. God’s Word Defends Our Steps: It Is Our GUARD
Beginning in verse 107, the tone changes dramatically: “I am severely afflicted; give me life, O LORD, according to your word!” Then in verse 109 he says, “I hold my life in my hand continually,” and in verse 110, “The wicked have laid a snare for me.”
Following God’s light has not led the psalmist onto an easy road. Sometimes we unconsciously assume that if we’re following God faithfully, circumstances should work out favorably. Make the biblical decision and the business should prosper. Lead the family correctly and every child should respond exactly as we hoped. Preach the truth and everyone should appreciate it. Stand for what is right and reasonable people will recognize that we’re right.
Anyone who has led very long knows better. Sometimes obedience is costly.
The psalmist says, “I hold my life in my hand continually.” He is living with real danger. Yet the next words are crucial: “but I do not forget your law.” Then he says that although the wicked have laid a snare for him, “I do not stray from your precepts.”
The danger changes. God’s Word doesn’t.
There are times when biblical leadership requires courage because doing what is right puts something at risk. When light shows up in darkness, it can become a target. That doesn’t mean we seek conflict or mistake stubbornness for courage. It means there are moments when faithfulness to Christ costs us something. That’s why leaders cannot afford a casual relationship with Scripture. God’s Word remains true.
3. God’s Word Delights Our Heart: It Is Our GLADNESS
“Your testimonies are my heritage forever, for they are the joy of my heart.” (Psalm 119:111)
God’s Word isn’t merely the psalmist’s emergency equipment. It’s his treasure.
He calls God’s testimonies his “heritage.” That word should get the attention of anyone who leads because leaders tend to think about legacy. What are we building? What will remain when we’re gone? What will we leave our children? What will happen to the business? What will people remember about the ministry?
As a father, that question becomes especially personal. What greater heritage could I leave than children who have seen that God’s Word really is the joy of their father’s heart?
The same is true everywhere we lead. People learn something about what matters by watching what delights us. We naturally talk about the things we enjoy. Find a great restaurant and we tell someone about it. Find something that works wonderfully and we recommend it. Delight has a way of becoming visible. So does our delight in God.
“I incline my heart to perform your statutes forever, to the end.” (Psalm 119:112)
The psalmist joins two things we sometimes separate: joy and obedience. My obedience to God shouldn’t merely grow out of duty. The more I know Him, the more I should delight in Him, and the more I delight in Him, the more I should want to walk according to His Word.
And ultimately, that brings us to Jesus Christ. The Bible’s great theme of light doesn’t begin or end with Psalm 119. God spoke light into darkness at creation.[4] John opens his Gospel by telling us that in Christ was life, “and the life was the light of men.”[5] Jesus Himself declared, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”[6]
Jesus is also the only One who perfectly did what the psalmist desired to do in verse 112. He perfectly obeyed the Father to the end. Then the sinless Son of God went to the cross for people like us who have wandered into darkness. He died and rose again so that those who trust Him can be forgiven, transformed, and brought out of darkness into His marvelous light.[7]
That means the ultimate hope of a Christian leader isn’t that we will always make the perfect decision. Our hope is Christ.
When Curt Blik was on the 107th floor of the World Trade Center he wasn’t planning to become a leader that day. He couldn’t see everything that lay ahead of him. He couldn’t illuminate the entire staircase. He simply possessed a light in the darkness, and he began walking by it. Then other people followed.
That is a picture I want to remember in every place God has called me to lead. I don’t need to convince my family, my church, my coworkers, or anyone else that I can see everything ahead. I can’t. But I know the One who can.
So I want to stay close to His Word. I want to let it direct my path as my Guide, defend my steps as my Guard, and delight my heart as my Gladness.
Stay on Mission.
REFLECTION QUESTIONS
1. Where has God already given you enough light in His Word to take the next faithful step, even though you cannot see the entire path ahead?
2. What do the people you lead see in you: someone who merely uses God’s Word for direction, or someone who is genuinely guided, guarded, and gladdened by it?
Byline and bio
Isaac Crockett | Pastor, East Lawrence Baptist Church | Co-host, Stand In the Gap Media | StandIntheGapMedia.org
[1]Scripture quotations are from the ESV Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version), copyright 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Stay on Mission devotionals use the ESV unless otherwise noted.
[2]Federal Bureau of Investigation, “World Trade Center Bombing 1993,” FBI History: Famous Cases and Criminals, https://www.fbi.gov/history/cases-and-criminals/world-trade-center-bombing-1993, accessed September 24, 2026.
[3]Timex Corporation, print advertisement (Fallon, Minneapolis, 1994), Lürzer’s Archive 2.94.003, https://www.luerzersarchive.com/work/timex-3/, accessed September 25, 2026; Dennis Lythgoe and Richard Christenson, “Timex Watches Produce Gleam That Endures,” Deseret News, February 13, 1994, https://www.deseret.com/1994/2/13/19092118/timex-watches-produce-gleam-that-endures/, accessed September 25, 2026.
[4]Genesis 1:3 (ESV): “And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.”
[5]John 1:4 (ESV).
[6]John 8:12 (ESV).
[7]1 Peter 2:9 (ESV): “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”
Isaac Crockett
Isaac Crockett is the pastor of East Lawrence Baptist Church and a television and radio co-host for Stand in the Gap Media.
FAQs
The psalmist is describing two kinds of light. A lamp at the feet shows the next step, and a light on the path shows the direction the road runs. God’s Word does both, guiding the decision in front of you and shaping the whole way you see your life, even when it does not show you everything ahead.
In verse 111 the Hebrew is the verb nachal, to receive something as an inheritance, the same language Israel used for receiving the land. The psalmist is saying God’s Word is the possession he was given and intends to keep and pass on. That is why he calls it the joy of his heart rather than a set of rules he tolerates.
Psalm 119 is an acrostic of twenty two stanzas, one for each letter of the Hebrew alphabet, with eight verses in every stanza. Verses 105 through 112 form the fourteenth stanza, and every verse in it begins with the letter nun. The stanza opens with ner, the Hebrew word for lamp.
No, and this stanza says so plainly. The same man who calls the Word a lamp says in verse 107 that he is severely afflicted and in verse 110 that the wicked have laid a snare for him. Obedience does not remove the danger. It keeps him from straying while the danger is still there.
You take the next step the Word makes clear and trust God with the steps you cannot see yet. God has not asked you to know the future. He has asked you to walk by the light He has given, and the people behind you will follow a man who does that long before they follow a man who pretends to see the bottom of the stairs.
John opens his Gospel by saying that in Christ was life, and the life was the light of men (John 1:4). Jesus called Himself the light of the world and promised that His followers would not walk in darkness (John 8:12). Peter writes that God has called His people out of darkness into His marvelous light (1 Peter 2:9). The lamp of Psalm 119 points forward to the Light Himself.
Scripture does not tell you whom to hire or what next year will bring, and it never claimed to. It tells you who God is, who you are, and what He loves and hates, and that shapes the man making every one of those decisions. A leader formed by the Word carries its light into rooms it never names.
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