A song in the wildnerness | Psalm 63:1 Series

"O God, You are my God;

Early will I seek you;

My soul thirsts for You;

My flesh longs for You

In a dry and thirsty land

Where there is no water."

Psalm 63:1

When I first gave my life to Jesus, I was a young girl who heard that this man Jesus loved me. He loved me and wanted me, and that's all a young girl really wants (whether she knows where to receive this love or not). So very willingly I prayed that I would be His and that He would come to live in and through me. It was a very wonderful moment because I finally got what I'd always longed for.

But that mountain high feeling didn't last long. It seemed as I started to seek Him that I couldn't feel Him. I had that wonderful moment of salvation where His Spirit was working, and then I couldn't feel Him. I was in, as David would describe, "a dry and thirsty land where there is no water."

As David pens these words, he is in the wilderness of Judah and "...David is using the bareness of the wilderness to speak actually of the bareness of his own soul," (Chuck Smith).

As I grow in the Lord I find that I am very thankful for the moments (or what sometimes feels like centuries) that God brings me into the wilderness, for the fact that it draws me back to Himself. In Ecclesiastes Solomon says that "to everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck what is planted," (Ecc. 3:1-2). I can just imagine myself as this plant that God has tenderly watered and grown, being plucked out of my safe and flourishing environment. At this point I am in desperate need of God.

This is where David is at; he's out of his element, but David remembers the sweetness of his fellowship with God. We've all had moments with the Lord, whether it be the moment we gave our lives to Him or moments of confession and His sweet forgiveness. These are places where we are broken and humble before God. It is so important for us to remember those moments.

Too often I feel like I am in such great shape that I don't need God (so to speak), so it is important for me to remember the moments that I could see Him working in me to keep me humble and seeking. And other times, when I can't tell that He's doing anything in my life and it seems He hasn't worked for the longest time, it is also important to remember those moments where He was working. Because then, like David, I will remember the sweet fellowship with Christ and it causes me to seek Him.

I don't know what season you may be in, maybe you're feeling dry and thirsty, and if that's the case I want to encourage you to remember that "...He Himself has said, 'I will never leave you nor forsake you.'" (Hebrews 13:5).

It is my prayer that even in the wilderness that the Lord may bring us to, we will seek Him all the more, sing to Him all the more, praise Him all the more. I pray that we will find comfort knowing He has not left us, and this very moment is only just a season.

"Therefore, behold, I will allure her,

Will bring her into the wilderness,

And speak comfort to her.

I will give her her vineyards from there,

And the Valley of Achor as a door of hope;

She shall sing there,

As in the days of her youth,

As in the day when she came up from the land

of Egypt."

Hosea 2:14-15