There are a multitude of reasons I am thankful we have spent the summer of 2020 in the Psalms as a church. Personally, seeing the range of topics written about, sung about and prayed about has helped me be more ardent in my pursuit of God in all of life’s circumstances. Reading the Psalms—penned by David, Asaph and the sons of Korah as they wrote of thrilling praise, mournful lament, recounting the rule and reign of the living God—was exactly what my soul and our souls needed to be sustained in this season.

David spent portions of his life fighting bears and lions, fighting against Goliath (1 Samuel 17), fleeing for his life as Saul sought to kill him, and escaping for his life again as his own son, Absalom, sought to kill him. He lived a life full of trials.

Reading David’s prayers and songs, I was struck by a resounding reminder from the life, pursuit, passion, and cry of David: A persistent longing to be in the presence of the Lord. There is nowhere in all of life he would have rather been than in worship of him and meditation about Him.

“One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple.” —Psalm 27:4

David’s request, “one thing have I asked of the Lord”, led to David’s pursuit,
“that I will seek after,” namely, “to dwell with the Lord all the days of his life.”

David genuinely believed that there was no better place in all of existence to be than to be in the presence of the Lord. David proclaims in Psalm 84:10: “... day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness.”

In other words, that which consumed David more than anything in life is His ardent pursuit of God. This was the driving force of what he thought about, talked about, wrote about, sang about, prayed about, and lived. David wanted to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord, dwell with him, think upon him, talk with him.

Is this true of my life? Is this true of your life? Is this true of our life together as a church? Let us be changed by the reality that God in his kindness gave us Jesus (Titus 3) that we might be reconciled to him and that we might know him and that we would cry out—even as David does in the Psalms, and as Paul does in Philippians 3 when he says, “that I may to know him, the power of his resurrection and may share his suffering.”

May this be true of us individually and corporately as a body together