Thursday April 23, 2020
I was reading Psalm 27:4 this morning.
“One thing have I asked of the Lord, that I will seek after:
that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life,
to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple.”
David is asking the Lord for permission to go into his house and to stay there. How long does he want to stay? A few moments? Hours? Days? Years?
How about every single day for the entire rest of his life.
Why?
So he can gaze at the beauty of the Lord and pray. Commune. Fellowship. Ask the Lord for guidance and direction for his life.
How many homes have you lived in? Me…at least 19! It doesn’t matter how many physical places you’ve lived, there’s actually only two kinds of homes that will ever count spiritually!
My house or the Lord’s house.
My house is hard-wired to be in opposition to the Lord’s house because of sin. My house can become a house of anger, house of defeat, house of disappointment, house of criticism, house of pride, house of fear, house of hoarding, house of failure and many more.
By the power of the Holy Spirit I have to bust out of my own house and deliberately step into the house of the Lord. My house is fallible, weak, prone to outbursts of fear and insecurity. The Lord’s house is full of beauty.
And you can’t see beauty when you’re focused on ugly.
David’s question can become ours as well. Lord, I’m tired of being in a house that doesn’t fulfill me. Can I stay with you forever? Can I make my home with you, can I settle in and unpack? Can I just surround myself with your beauty? Can I please sit, transfixed by your glory? My house is so heavy and I can’t bear the weight anymore.
I’m anxiously waiting for my Peonies to emerge from the ground. I love peonies, they are my favorite flowers. They are beautiful and so fragrant, just looking at them lifts my spirits! The sad reality is that they die. They have a growing season and when it passes I have to wait a whole year to see them come back again.
Not so with the Lord. He is always in season. He never fades, his beauty is always brilliant, refreshing and recharging.
David says something interesting; he wants to gaze at the Lord’s beauty and inquire of the Lord. If you could envision yourself sitting in the presence of Jesus, his stunning beauty surrounding and enveloping you, what would you naturally want? His love emanating through your entire being would cause you to want to please him and serve him with your whole heart. All of your questions or inquiries would center around how your life could better reflect him, what he wants for you and how he wants you to live.
Inquire…ask…seek while in his presence. It takes humility to leave your own house and run to the Lord’s but oh how deeply the Lord loves a humble heart!
We might wonder, has David forgotten who he is? Doesn’t he know that he has a ton of very important responsibilities as King? How can he abandon that to sit in the house of the Lord all day? I mean, who’s going to run the country?
Can I challenge you with something? When you decide to dig in with the Lord and your life changes because of it, you may have people asking what’s going on. They may try to derail your new commitment to spending more time in his house than you are in yours, they may feel that you’re trying to be better than them or may accuse you of acting holier-than-thou.
Stand firm.
David never abandoned his post, not to the people as their king and certainly not to the Lord as his servant. The cry of his heart was to know the Lord intimately. He became a better king because he became a better servant in the house of the Lord. Is that my heart? Is it yours?
When you enter the house of the Lord by spending time with him reading his word and listening for his voice you’re adding
+ True fulfillment
+ True beauty
+ True knowledge
+ True delight
Lord, help us to desire your presence more than anything else in life. Help us to slough off the heaviness that our sinful house places on our shoulders and instead run to your house where we’ll find your beauty waiting to restore us. How much you love us! How much you want and need communion with us, how much we need and want it from you. Jesus help us to see your beauty we pray.
reflect…
- What did you see in this verse that was new to you?
- What does inquiring of the Lord look like to you?
- Name all the ways the Lord’s beauty has been revealed to you