when I'm found in the desert place...

A friend asked me a little while ago what psalm 63 meant. I decided to write her an email, going through it bit by bit, and it ended up being a sermon.. I've added more since I sent it to her!

Psalm 63
1 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.
2 So I have looked for You in the sanctuary,
To see Your power and Your glory.

3 Because Your lovingkindness is better than life,
My lips shall praise You.
4 Thus I will bless You while I live;
I will lift up my hands in Your name.
5 My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness,
And my mouth shall praise You with joyful lips.

6 When I remember You on my bed,
I meditate on You in the night watches.
7 Because You have been my help,
Therefore in the shadow of Your wings I will rejoice.
8 My soul follows close behind You;
Your right hand upholds me.

9 But those who seek my life, to destroy it,
Shall go into the lower parts of the earth.
10 They shall fall by the sword;
They shall be a portion for jackals.

11 But the king shall rejoice in God;
Everyone who swears by Him shall glory;
But the mouth of those who speak lies shall be stopped.

OK, so starting at verses one and two..

1 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.
2 So I have looked for You in the sanctuary,
To see Your power and Your glory.

We find ourselves in different situations that seem like a 'desert place'. Everything seems to be going not our way. It's like being thirsty, and needing to be refreshed by something, and God is that refreshment. God can only supply the needs for our deepest longings. Jesus says in John 4:14: but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.

It also says in this verse: 'early I will seek You'. Have you ever looked for an answer for something and it be there right in front of you, but you seem to take ages to find it? It's somewhere I seem to find myself often, searching for something that I have left in the most obvious place, but I search everywhere else until I find the thing I am looking for in the place I should have looked at first.

Early we need to seek God. He has the answers! Why would you look everywhere else when our answer is right there? I am very guilty of something going wrong, and then instantly messaging Steff saying "the sky is falling!". God tells us to seek FIRST the kingdom of God (says it twice in the Old Testament and Once in the New Testament). Seek for a godly response to situations in everything you do. God's power and glory exists in the people who dwell in Him, and seek Him first.

3Because Your lovingkindness is better than life,
My lips shall praise You.
4 Thus I will bless You while I live;
I will lift up my hands in Your name.
5 My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness,
And my mouth shall praise You with joyful lips.

God is ultimately awesome! And he deserves our praise all the time, when we have an abundance of good things and things are going great, and even in the desert place. It's like in the song: Blessed be Your Name.

6 When I remember You on my bed,
I meditate on You in the night watches.
7 Because You have been my help,
Therefore in the shadow of Your wings I will rejoice.
8 My soul follows close behind You;
Your right hand upholds me.

This sounds like me the other night. As a little girl I used to be really frightened of thunder storms. Now I open my bedroom window and watch them from my bed all night! I love storms, it reminds me of God's great power! :)

God protects us. We are so precious in His sight. Cling onto this promises. He is the creator of the universe, he is MASSIVE! And he knows you by name. He cares about you so much and would not let anything bad happen to you.

Jeremiah 29:11 says For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the LORD, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope... This verse is often quoted to give inspiration, and I agree whole-heartedly, but I think an important part of this is in the next few verses.. When you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart. I will be found by you, says the LORD.

So many people throw this verse around here and there, sometimes just as a general band-aid fix, but forget that end bit. When we pray, GOD WILL LISTEN. When we seek earnestly with all we have for God, WE WILL FIND HIM. It sometimes just takes perseverance. The enemy often fills our heads with doubt that we will never get anywhere, that this is useless.. It just takes a lot of perseverance through everything.

Rely on God through the storms in your life! It's through these we can grow stronger with God (when we let Him) and He teaches us important life lessons. I find that most of the hard things I go through, down the road I will stumble along someone who is in the same situation, and I can help them because I have been in the same thing. Evidence of this can be found in 2 Corinthians 1:3-7: Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, 4who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows. If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer. And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort. (oops I have totally tangented here.. moving on...)

9 But those who seek my life, to destroy it,
Shall go into the lower parts of the earth.
10 They shall fall by the sword;
They shall be a portion for jackals.

God has absolute favour on His children. You ARE God's child. Jesus never promised it would be easy, and there sure can be persecution from all directions sometimes. People can try all sorts of things to manipulate us, to make us feel low, but we are God's, and the people who do wicked things against his genuine children will pay in the long run. What makes me so sad is when God's children do things against their fellow brothers and sisters in Christ! But God is a just God. He knows what is right and wrong, it just takes discernment (which can be gained simply by knowing what is right and wrong according to His Word, and also that 'spiritual' discernment) on our part. Sometimes it's obvious and people don't want to admit it.

God's word is like a double edged sword. It is the TRUTH. And I wholeheartedly believe that what is in there is how God wants us to live. If something someone is doing doesn't have the same values as the bible, I am always wary of if it is really Godly.

11 But the king shall rejoice in God;
Everyone who swears by Him shall glory;
But the mouth of those who speak lies shall be stopped.

OK, we are not kings, that was probably relating to David, the author of the psalm, who was a king. But God has called us to be His children, and because of this, we are children of the king (God being the king!), and when you're that, it means we are princes and princesses!

Whoever says that they are His, and works with what he asks, are seen as so precious in His sight. But those who want to go against the children of God, the ones that speak lies against us, will be stopped. It's a promise. Don't see it happening? Pray. Claim it as a promise, because God's word is full of them!

[ Kudos to Spatch for sending this verse in a sms to me :) ]