Psalm 81 reads as follows from the NIV version of the Bible:

1 Sing for joy to God our strength;
shout aloud to the God of Jacob!

2 Begin the music, strike the tambourine,
play the melodious harp and lyre.

3 Sound the ram's horn at the New Moon,
and when the moon is full, on the day of our Feast;

4 this is a decree for Israel,
an ordinance of the God of Jacob.

5 He established it as a statute for Joseph
when he went out against Egypt,
where we heard a language we did not understand. [b]

6 He says, "I removed the burden from their shoulders;
their hands were set free from the basket.

7 In your distress you called and I rescued you,
I answered you out of a thundercloud;
I tested you at the waters of Meribah.
Selah

8 "Hear, O my people, and I will warn you—
if you would but listen to me, O Israel!

9 You shall have no foreign god among you;
you shall not bow down to an alien god.

10 I am the LORD your God,
who brought you up out of Egypt.
Open wide your mouth and I will fill it.

11 "But my people would not listen to me;
Israel would not submit to me.

12 So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts
to follow their own devices.

13 "If my people would but listen to me,
if Israel would follow my ways,

14 how quickly would I subdue their enemies
and turn my hand against their foes!

15 Those who hate the LORD would cringe before him,
and their punishment would last forever.

16 But you would be fed with the finest of wheat;
with honey from the rock I would satisfy you."
The wide road back and psalm 81

The emphasis of this psalm is being attentive to the Lord and his ways by careful listening.

The contrast of not doing this is highlighted in verse 11 and 12 which says,

Verses 8, 11, and 13 in this psalm  mention the key word listen which is the key word of this psalm.

The word listen denotes that this is a personal walk, as someone else doesn't do the listening for you. It can involve listening to the ways of the Lord through his servant but with whatever means are available the process of listening must be continually be engaged and this includes listening in personal prayer mentioned all through the Bible.

What this means is that the Lord will not stop communicating, and will be in constant communication, the turn will be towards listening to this communication.

A major theme that runs through this psalm is that the turn to the Lord is a wide turn back.

The impression might be that your counsel and ideas will get you to those places and situations of abundance and going to the ways of the Lord will involve sacrificing personal hopes and visions. The idea of the ways of the Lord is more so the narrow path that must be found and followed and this becomes the mindset that if I am diligent about this idea or theory,

This becomes the mindset that if I am diligent about this set of ideas or theory, I will get myself a nice piece of pie.

This psalm indicates that the Lord's counsel will be available and will be communicated.

This psalm gives the opposite vision of this idea and clearly shows that by not heeding the voice of the Lord and following his ways, they will be missing out on what could have been.

In the final verses the Lord is saying he has the finest wheat and will give it and this is symbolic of the finest anything.

There will be no blocks or obstacles to this, and it is part of his creative presence as it says he will give honey from a rock.

This is something that cannot happen through natural means, and is symbolic of the supernatural presence of the Lord and his great gifts. Honey is also symbolic of pleasantness.

That it is coming from a rock is highlighting that the Lord is the source and supply, as there is no other actual supply from a rock along the lines of honey.

Joseph of Genesis is mentioned in this psalm, and we know from his story that the Lord took him from the depths of the well and the jail to the glories position of second in command to Pharaoh and the overseer of all the known food supply for the entire world in the great famine.

The turn that Joseph took was certainly wide and into preeminence while following the voice of the Lord.

There might be the well intentioned but erroneous idea that this involves sacrifice to turn to the Lord.

Even the idea of giving up things or sacrificing might be following your own counsel unless it goes into the idea of listening and paying attention.

The relationship isn't sacrificial, it involves listening and attentiveness.

The turn will involve removing or taking away burdens, obstacles and lost freedoms as it says in verse 6.

Joseph was involved in great troubles from which the Lord gave him relief and freedom as he made the wide turn into the amazing graces and gifts of the Lord for him that became almost like an unending open expanse of blessing upon blessing.

Even while the food supply of the earth was drying up and becoming like a giant desert, for Joseph, it was a giant oasis of blessings that surpassed every horizon of difficulty that was otherwise out there.

Symbolically the blessings of the Lord were still available through the oversight of Joseph and for Egypt and the outer world within the vast famine he was representative of the wide turn back to the Lord even while his own personal way was a wide turn into the presence of the Lord.

There is the idea of relief here from burden and someone can think about how they might be less burdened to start with and what that might vision might contain.

The turn is not only to vastness but an unburned view of this vastness and the vastness is the vastness of the relationship with the Lord which also manifests in vastness in all realms including spiritual and the material world.

The Lord will unburden as he brings into the vastness of this relationship and all it contains.

Verse 10 specifically uses talks of the wide or great expanse of how the Lord can fill the soul.

This verse is symbolic of how much the soul and spirit of a person can receive from the goodness of the Lord, he has given us the capacity to receive great and wondrous blessings.

When it is saying "open your mouth wide" it is talking about the great expanse of the soul and spirit that a person has.

It is a mistake to see yourself as small in this turnaround, in that the Lord has imbued you with a width or wideness of the soul that can receive great blessings and go in person to the secret place of thunder mentioned in verse 8 which is the secret personal relationship with the Lord, and a New Testament reference to this is when it talks about praying in secret in the gospels.

These gifts are contingent, as the word if is used in the pivotal verse 8, where the Lord is admonishing his people or correcting them and if they heed his voice, he will bring them into these wonders.

It is hard to say what the points are of missing out and not missing out on these great blessings but it is clear that the right road and the correct path will always involve active and ongoing listening and hearing what the Lord has to communicate.

What might be considered following your own counsel needs to be discerned and worked on but anything that involves overdoing it and drifting away from the Lord could involve this idea of following your own counsel.

There can be a maintenance towards being open to the hearing of the communications from the Lord and changing any prior established direction if the Lord so advises.

With prayer, the fog of your own confusion and uncertainty is brought into this, but the Lord will get past that thicket and see what you are really communicating as even language is sometimes limiting.

This is an additional why greater emphasis on listening and hearing in prayer is important, because what the Lord is hearing might be different that what you are actually saying in prayer, because of the limitations of language and the ways that the Lord will get back to you will be cutting through the fog and reading you in ways that you are not reading yourself because of limitations. So the prayer watch in terms of hearing and listening should be more expansive in that the personal approach in prayer is by nature limited while the answers are unlimited come from a deeper and clearer reading of your requests and what they really are.

Verse 7 clearly speaks of the answer from the secret place of thunder, so the answers are coming from a great and wonderful place that is secretive therefore the watch for these answers should be not like looking at the next person on the sand at the beach but more so like looking over the great expanse of the giant and wondrous ocean.

The Lord however will unburden and part of the being unburdened will be giving an answer that is easy to find and follow but there needs to be an understanding that it will often be different and greater that what is along the lines of your request or what you are thinking.

This psalm shows that the road of your own counsel and devices will tend to narrow and become burdened while the wide turn back to the Lord will be a light and easy road to an ever widening expanse of previously unfathomable blessings.

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