Seeking After God
“O God, you are my
God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a
dry and weary land where there is no water.” (Psalm 63:1)
If you had to pick a single word to describe our society
today, possibly the most accurate word would be pressure.
We live in a day marked by pressure in almost every area of life. At five years
old we are thrust into school where there is pressure to compete for grades. We join athletic teams where there is more
pressure to excel. We face the pressure
of getting into college and then to graduate. Following college, there is the pressure of
getting a good job and hopefully do well enough to be promoted.
There are also family pressures. Trying to find the right mate and building a
solid marriage in a culture where divorce is easy and accepted. And then, there are the pressures of raising
godly children in our pagan society. World
problems, economic problems, personal problems, and the problems of friends and
loved ones all press upon us.
In the middle of such pressures, there is one thing that
will determine the course of your life; your priorities.
Everyone has a set of priorities. If your priorities are not clearly defined,
you will be swept downstream in life by various pressures, the seeming victim
of your circumstances.
King David was a man who knew what it meant to live under
pressure. As the king of Israel, he knew
the pressures of leadership. During that
time, his son, Absalom led a rebellion against him. And David spent a short while in the
northeastern portion of the wilderness of Judah before he crossed over the
Jordan River. In that barren land,
fleeing for his life from his own son, feeling disgraced and rejected, with an
uncertain future, David wrote Psalm 63.
It is one of the most loved psalms in the Old Testament.
John Chrysostom (347-407 AD) wrote “that
it was decreed and ordained by the primitive [church] fathers, that no day
should pass without the public singing of this Psalm.”
Psalm 63 shows us the priority of this man of God under
pressure. If you or I were under the
kinds of pressure David faced at this point in his life, I doubt if we would be
writing songs. If we did, the song would
probably contain a lot of urgent requests: “Help, God! Get me out of here!”
But it is interesting that Psalm 63 contains no requests.
Here David expresses only desire for
God’s presence, praise, joy, fellowship with God, and confidence in God’s
salvation. The psalm shows us that
David’s priority was to “seek the Lord.”
Scripture teaches us that no matter what pressures come
into our lives, we will be able to better handle them only if we maintain this
one priority above all else, Earnestly
seek after God!
Look back on your past week or month and ask yourself,
“Did my schedule reflect that seeking God was my number one priority?” You say, “Well, that’s my priority, but I’ve
been under a lot of pressure!” Pressure
is what reveals your true priorities. When
the pressure is on, everything but the essential gets set aside. The Holy Spirit is telling us through David, “Seeking God is essential!”
“Seek the LORD and
His strength; Seek His face continually.” (1 Chronicles 16:11)
Can God change your life?
God has made it possible for you
to know Him, and experience an amazing
change in your own life.
Discover how you can find peace
with God.
