Psalm 63
March 20, 2022
Oh Father, You are our God. We are here to seek You. We want to behold Your power and glory and to be fully satisfied by Your love. We want, like David, to thirst for You and earnestly seek You like a desert traveler yearns for water, to be fully confident that Your love is better than life, to sing praise and be fully satisfied as with the richest of foods even when our lives are in a desert place.
But we know our own hearts enough to know that we are fickle and easily distracted. Too often we thirst for other things and refuse to be satisfied in You. Too often we lose sight of Your power and glory and forget to think about You through the night or cling to You in life’s challenges. Forgive us, Father. We need Your power to renew our desire for You. We rely on Your love to sustain us because ours is too weak. We rejoice because that’s exactly what You have promised to do.
Father, many of us come today with heavy hearts or feeling like we’re walking in a desert place. Maybe it is the circumstances of our own lives that leave us dry and clinging to You. Or maybe it’s the evil we see in the world around us—in our own nation or as we watch events unfold on the other side of the world, the work of evil dictators and broken systems, of greed and power struggles and injustice. Of a world groaning because it has been subjected to frustration along with our bodies.
Help us, Lord, to see Your power and glory and to trust You with the future of our lives and of our world. We know that You are making everything new. We know that everything sad will one day come untrue, and that in the end we will see You reign upon this earth in perfect love and justice and goodness. While we wait for that, show us how we can be a part of bringing about Your will on this earth just as it is in heaven.
Help us to live, even on desert days, out of the joy and peace You bring, so that the hurting and discouraged around us can see the hope You offer lived out in our lives.
We continue to pray for our pastoral search team. Would you renew their energy and focus as the search grows long? We ask You to bring us a shepherd after Your heart who can lead us well as he follows You closely and who can equip all of us to do Your work and bring others to Yourself. Give them wisdom from Your Spirit as they seek to discern who this person might be.
We ask this in the name of Your son and for Your glory, and all God’s people said, Amen.