Suggested Reading: Psalm 84
When I was young and I first started getting serious about my walk with God, I decided that I needed to engage in a daily scripture reading plan. At first, it was something of a chore. I would pull out my Bible and read some from the Psalms to get my brain flowing and then a passage from both the Old Testament and the New Testament. I’m not sure why, but somewhere along the way I decided that I should read five psalms and then three chapters from my Old and New Testament selections. Often, I would sit down and begin reading and feel very little desire to actually do so. But as I forced myself to read and as I searched for God among with pages of His Word, I discovered that the longer I read and entered his presence, the more I wanted the be there and the harder it was to stop reading.
When I was young and I first started getting serious about my walk with God, I decided that I needed to engage in a daily scripture reading plan. At first, it was something of a chore. I would pull out my Bible and read some from the Psalms to get my brain flowing and then a passage from both the Old Testament and the New Testament. I’m not sure why, but somewhere along the way I decided that I should read five psalms and then three chapters from my Old and New Testament selections. Often, I would sit down and begin reading and feel very little desire to actually do so. But as I forced myself to read and as I searched for God among with pages of His Word, I discovered that the longer I read and entered his presence, the more I wanted the be there and the harder it was to stop reading.
That experience shed an interesting light on this passage
from the Psalms: Better a day in Your courts than a thousand anywhere else. I would
rather be at the door of the house of my God than to live in the tents of
wicked people (Psalm 84:10, HCSB). In my experience, I have rarely emotionally
felt like that verse was true before I
entered God’s presence, but I have rarely felt like it was not true after I entered God’s presence. Eventually I came to understand that
experiencing joy in God’s presence is a choice we have to make.
There is something inside us (I’ll hazard a guess and call
it “sin”) that tries to make us forget what God’s presence is really like, that
tries to convince us that there is nothing really special that happens as we
spend time in His Word and in pouring ourselves out and being filled up by Him
in prayer. There are so many other
things that are more entertaining and more gratifying than spending time with
God but there is nothing more truly fulfilling and satisfying than basking in
God’s presence. God’s presence does not stroke our ego or make us feel all warm
and fuzzy (at least not all the time), but it does stretch us and shape us more
and more into the people we were created to be in the first place.
Sometimes, I think, we want God’s presence to be addicting
like so many of our vices are. Spending time with God would be so much easier
if we were inexplicably drawn like a smoker to a cigarette or like an alcoholic
to a bottle. But addictions put us into bondage. God’s presence sets us free
and every day we are free to choose to enter God’s presence again. Addictions
bring us to the place where we need more and more to get the same fix. Spending
time in God’s presence works in exactly
the opposite fashion, creating a larger and larger cumulative effect the longer
it lasts.
Will you choose to enter God’s presence and find the fulfillment
you’ve been yearning for? Or will you settle for being gratified and
entertained?
