GOD IS MY ONLY HOPE
Psalm 63:1-4
1 O God,
you are my God; earnestly I seek you;
my
soul thirsts for you;
my flesh faints
for you,
as
in a dry and weary land where there is no water.
2 So I
have looked upon you in the sanctuary,
beholding
your power and glory.
3 Because
your steadfast love is better than life,
my
lips will praise you.
4 So I
will bless you as long as I live;
in
your name I will lift up my hands.
We know that when David wrote this psalm, he was in the
wilderness. It could have been when he was fleeing from Saul or when he was
fleeing from his son, Absalom. In both cases, he was in danger for his life and
weighed down by sorrow that those he had once been close to now desired to do
him harm.
Yet David’s love and dependence on God jumps out vividly, as we
read these words. His physical life is in jeopardy, but his spiritual life is
very much alive and in fellowship with his God.
As I read these verses, I ask myself what keeps me from having
the same thirst for God and the same utter dependence. The answers can be many,
but at the core, I believe is that fact that I am distracted by my belief that
I can do things on my own.
David is in a difficult situation, but he is not desperate. He
knows where to look for his help and he knows that he can count on God’s unfading,
faithful love.
The wilderness is certainly a place where we would not prefer to
be, but it is very conducive to our dependence on God. There are no
distractions and there are no human solutions for us, apart from God’s
intervention.
I am convinced that I need the wilderness. I need trials to keep
me close to God. I should not look at them as a curse, but as a blessing. I
need to be stripped of my self-sufficiency, of all the distractions of the
world.
When the distractions are out of the way, then God’s power and
glory become more visible, and certainly more necessary. We have the privilege
of a relationship with our glorious God. His power is complete and without
equal. We are truly blessed.
The wilderness is God’s loving work of creating in us a thirst
for Him, above all else. God’s care and love for us is truly better than life.
Our fears should dissolve in the light of His glory and love.
Maybe it’s time to examine ourselves. Is our life characterized
by this kind of longing and desire for God? Are we distracted by the cares of
the world? Are we attracted by the “water” of this world? Are our eyes
constantly fixed on God? Is it God’s power that we depend upon? Are we
enthralled by His perfect love?
Our dependence on God can be measured by the amount of praise
for Him that rolls off our lips, and how much our life is driven to worship
Him.
The more I become aware of my desperate need and of God’s
immense love for me, the more truly these verses will resonate in my life.
We live in the wilderness, but at times we are fooled by mirages
that the world offers. May our difficulties and trials produce a thirst for God
and, as a consequence, produce the dependence, praise, and worship that David
modeled for us in this psalm.
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