What Do You Desire Most?

Let me start with a question for you to reflect on:

What do you desire most right now?

Maybe you’re practicing social distancing as single person and you’re desire is just to be with people. Maybe you find yourself, like our family, forced into homeschooling, and you just desire your kids to be able to go back to school. Maybe you desire to go out in public without fear of catching, or spreading a world-wide virus. Maybe you desire the worry and anxiety that’s been triggered by all this to lift. I know I desire there to be flower in the grocery stores again, so our family we can get back to weekly pizza night. 

Examine your own inner life. What do you desire most right now?

Let’s bring that question to Psalm 63. If you look in your Bible, the heading to Psalm 63 tells us that David wrote this Psalm while in the Judean wilderness. He was either being chased by Saul, or later his own son, Absolom. He’s isolated, on the run, and had to have been pretty scared. Even in all this, I want you to notice that his deepest desire doesn’t appear to be the comfort of a palace, security of the city, or even the changing of his awful conditions. Listen to his deepest desire in verses 3-5:

“My lips will glorify you because your faithful love is better than life. So I will bless you as long as I live; at your name, I will lift my hands. You satisfy me as with rich food; my mouth will praise you with joyful lips.”  

Knowing the context, I find this a bit baffling, to be honest. David doesn’t seem to be chiefly concerned with not being killed in this season of his life, though there’s no way he was wishing for it. He didn’t seem primarily preoccupied with peace in this important relationship, though he must have wanted it. His prayer isn’t about getting out of the wilderness, but I doubt he was pumped about where he was.  

But notice that even above all that, David is consumed with worship because he had experienced the love of God in a way that proved better than life itself. He experienced intimacy with God in a manner that even in the worst of conditions he was satisfied. 

So what if our deepest desire was not to get out of our present conditions and were instead to experience God right in the midst of them?

What if that is exactly what God’s trying to do in us? What if God has allowed what may feel like a wilderness season to many of us, in order to help us taste and see just how satisfying He truly is? 

I admit, it’s easier to say than it is to believe right now. So don’t feel shame if this isn’t where you’re currently at. Instead, let’s take time to pray David’s words aspiration-ally, in hopes that God would make them true for us. Can we do that? 

Let’s pray…

Father, we want to experience your love in a way that proves it’s better than life. We want to be fully satisfied in you. We may not be there right now, but we want you to show yourself satisfying especially now. Would you do that in us? In Jesus name, Amen.