PSALM 73:23-26 – Nevertheless, I am continually with you; you hold my right hand. You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”
THEME OF THE DAY: WHERE GOD WANTS US. The human author of today’s Psalm is the godly man Asaph. Let me encourage us to read the entire Psalm. He experiences a wide range of emotions, and some not good. He doesn’t just show up in today’s encouraging place. In the first fifteen verses, this godly man fights envy, a heart that whispers, “What good has it been for me to live godly?” and is convinced good things seem to always happen to wicked people. But then comes verse sixteen and a recalibration of his heart and mind. And it all begins with his focus on the place God meets with His people – But when I thought how to understand this, it seemed to me a wearisome task, until I went into the sanctuary of God; then I discerned their end (Psalm 73:16-17). And what did Asaph learn in the sanctuary and where was the spiritual place he arrived? That is in today’s scripture.
Asaph got to the point God will take every child of His – to Himself, not just a relationship with Himself, but a life that revolves around that relationship. It took difficult struggles in the heart for the Psalmist to get there, and it will with us as well. To get to where life is all about the Lord, the painful work of purging selfishness and worldliness must occur. Something else must be done in our hearts as well; the stark awareness and reality of attempting to find contentment and satisfaction in the world, or worse, attempting to find it in the Lord AND the world. The latter is a trail of futility. God will not share the throne room of the human heart with anyone or anything. He will either be Lord of all in our lives or not Lord at all in our lives. There is no attachment to the world and Christ. The Christian is either or. We cannot have this world and the next.
The application from Asaph? Here it is . . . Every intense trial and difficult circumstance in our lives is designed to accomplish one thing – create within us an all-consuming passion for the Lord. In trials, God weans us completely from the world; its pleasures, comforts, attractions, achievements, and allurements. He is taking us to the place where we may boldly, humbly, and sincerely cry out like Asaph, the Psalmist, “Whom have I in heaven but You? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides You (Psalm 73:25). May we willingly submit to His purging to get to that most wonderful place of complete satisfaction and contentment in the Lord alone!
PRAYER: “Father, may I see Your holy beauty with such clarity it weans me from all attachments of this world.”
QUOTE: “The goal in the Christian life is for our affection for Christ be so strong it lessens our affection for this world.”
In the affection of Christ Jesus,
Pastor Jim