One of my favorite pastimes is reminiscing of days gone by. I will catch myself in a haze of past nostalgia, longing for another time, another place.
Sometimes oddly enough, it is a kind of longing or aching to go back, homesick for a time in my past or even as illogical as it may seem, a time that I never even lived in.
Similarly, King David felt the same way. He too had his feelings and longings of earlier times as he wrote about them in Psalm 84.
David longed and ached in his heart to return to the place where he used to meet with God.
But through other verses throughout the Psalms, he understood that to do so, would be a pilgrimage or journey that would have obstacles and difficulties along the way. Choices that he would have to make and be willing to do in order to get there.
As hard as it was, David was willing to do whatever it took to get him back to the place, his heart longed to be.
Like David, when we desire to return to the place where we once were, in our walk or relationship with God, it is our faith and obedience that will lead us and allow us to overcome those obstacles until we arrive back to that place and into His arms!
You see, it was not the place, the situation or the location where God was real to us that is significant, for they were only a place and situation. What made it significant, was because God was there.
For Abraham, it was Bethel, for Moses, it was Mt. Sinai, for Zaccahaeus, it was the tree, for Mary it was the ground where she lay with her face down in the dirt ashamed, broken and needing God’s help. For Jesus it was the Garden of Gethsemane, for Peter, it was when he heard the rooster crow, for Paul, it was the road to Damascus.
For King David, it was the Temple. For in the Psalms he writes about where he use to meet with God. For whatever reason it was that he had been away from the Lord, he was now expressing his feelings in the language of a poem, longing to return.
In David’s day, God’s dwelling place was a place, location, a building, a physical temple. Today, according to Romans 8:9-17, He dwells in the heart of every person that has received Him in their hearts, as Lord and Savior.
In the Old Testament, God had a temple for His people.
In the New Testament, He has a people for His temple.
Longing for God reflects an integrity of our intention, when we cry out for the living God to return to him and be restored.
You see David was not really crying out for the house of God but the living God that dwelt in the house or temple. Ps. 84:2 and Ps. 42:1 express David’s heartfelt desire to go wherever God was and be with the true “Living God”.
When a person goes to a courthouse they are not seeking a courthouse but the justice that they are hoping to find there. Same thing with a hospital, it is not the building that you want when you go there, but the healing that you believe you will get once you get there.
Longing for God reveals a desire for intimacy with Him. David’s level of desire for God is reflected in Psalm 84 as he says that his soul yearns and even faints for the courts of the Lord; his heart and flesh cried out, that even the sparrow and swallow had found a place of refuge near God’s altar.
Oh how he envied those birds, that they were where he had onece been, close to the lover of his soul.
Do you long to come back to the Lord? Is that longing the most intense in your life? It should be, and it can be!
James 4:8 promises that, if we will come near to God, He will come near to us!
James 4:7-10 tells us how to come to God. By submitting ourselves to Him, resisting or turning away from the wrong things that want to draw us away from Him, and humble ourselves to God, change our attitude into brokenness over our sin and situation, seeing it as God sees it and be willing to do those things, whatever they may be in order for God to restore us, and as we do, God Himself will lift us up and give us His power to accomplish whatever it is we may need to do, to get to Him
Praying for you today, as you find your way back to God and go home, where you belong!
Hold Fast,
-Bren
Brenda Parsons is a longtime contributor to your Tate Record Church Page.
