These are beautiful words. David is saying there is harmony between the believer's present and future. Trace the lines in this text with me. Goodness (Thy Spirit is good), must lead to the land of goodness (uprightness). But we will notice it is a leading before a possessing. The believing heart is conscious of great longings—yearnings that this world cannot supply. He feels his heart aspiring to things his earthly hand cannot reach, the earthly life cannot realize, and earthly resolve cannot accomplish. And is this not the Spirit Himself at work, creating that longing? Yet how little of this uprightness have we achieved? How little have we reached those blessed ideals?
You see, there is a law in our members warring against the law of the mind, so the weakness of our flesh refuses to endorse the will of our hearts. You say, "Is the voice I hear delusion after all?" No, dear one, it is a prophecy. You must understand that the desire for goodness outruns the believer's capacity to find it, yet is the earnest that a greater day will come.
Here on earth, the believer is in the suburbs of heaven, the outskirts of glory. They can see heaven's lights, hear heaven's sounds, and smell heaven's fragrance, but only from afar. So the Good Spirit in our text takes the soul by the hand and leads, a step at a time, from within. As the Puritan Drelincourt says, "The sea enters the river before the river enters the sea. In like manner, God comes to us before we go to Him; and heaven enters into our souls before we can enter into heaven."
May the Good Spirit so lead us all.