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You Must Realize


8 Lead me in the right path, O Lord,    or my enemies will conquer me.Make your way plain for me to follow.9 My enemies cannot speak a truthful word.    Their deepest desire is to destroy others.Their talk is foul, like the stench from an open grave.    Their tongues are filled with flattery.[a]10 O God, declare them guilty.    Let them be caught in their own traps.Drive them away because of their many sins,    for they have rebelled against you.
Pictured here is a trophy. Yes, it’s one of mine. Yes, it’s for a spelling bee. Yes, my mom is very proud. 
Trophies are something we pursue, be they trophies from contests, higher salaries, trophy wives. Our trophies take different forms, but I would suggest we need to watch what it is we pursue.
The idea we often keep in a box is that when the evil ones profit, they have won. But who says money and fame is what we should be pursuing? There is also a temporary pleasures aspect to this. Our vision is often extremely short-sighted. We see bad people get good things (and don't even get me started on how we judge who is good and who is bad.), but we see evil prosper in the short run. We see good people struggle in the short term.
We forget that we serve a God who is not dealing with time like we deal with time.
David points out our need to Realize that evil does not pay - their intrigues do become their downfall (vs10).  
Since evil will be punished, we need to ask God to lead us in righteousness (vs8) I found it interesting  that the word ‘enemies’ is literally 'watchers', thus the need for righteous living.
People are watching us. They see us for who we are. They see what we pursue. Right or wrong, they are judging us based on what we go after. So we too need to pray to God to lead us into righteousness.
As we live, it can be easy to put God back in this box and act as if actions don’t have consequences.
It seems like Jesus said something on this matter when He talked about the things we pursue. Matthew 6:19-34 was pretty clear. I'll summarize Jesus' thoughts on pursuing earthly treasure with one word; Don't.
Realize God is Holy and wants us to be as well.
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