Psalm 63
Worship
As David continues to run and hide from King Saul, he becomes isolated and finds himself trying to survive in the wilderness. Isolation erodes hope and when that happens the problems grow bigger, the wilderness seems endless, time slows to a crawl, and even if people are around there is nothing they can do to help change how one is feeling. Oftentimes they will make things worse.
David starts this Psalm with praise and worship. This is powerful. I believe one of the benefits of worship is that it sets us apart from what is going on in our lives and focuses us on God. That is why we start our Sunday Service with worship. When we come through the door at church we are coming in from the world. Oftentimes we bring the world and all of its problems with us. It is easy to tell if someone has had a difficult week because that will be what they are talking about before church starts. If we are not careful we will dump our problems on others and soon we are focused on the wilderness we have had to live in this past week. But then the worship starts and if we will lift our hearts to God and focus on Him, He will set us apart from the wilderness and draw us to Him and everything changes.
What is our part in this? We need to let go of the things we came in with and take hold of the Lord and see His goodness. When we do this God can change our fears to faith, our doubts to hope, and our worldly wilderness perspective to a heavenly one where we are glorifying God rather than glorifying the wilderness. If we truly let go of the world and worship God He will set our heart to rest, fill us with peace, and we will find strength to deal with the wilderness when we go back out the door. The beauty about worship is that we can find ways to do it anytime even if all we can do is sing a worship song in our heart. God will be faithful to set us apart if we will truly worship Him.
Magnify God not the wilderness.
Pastor Dave