Getting close to God: it is — and it isn’t — so hard to do
“I know the LORD is always with me. I will not be shaken, for he is right beside me.”
—Psalm 16:8
The woman I am going to call Edina found scripture challenging. Some verses were direct for her, but like many of us on the journey to discovering God, she often found the Bible confusing. She longed for what David, the author of this psalm, had which is an unwavering proximity to God.
“How do you get that?” she’d ask me in my early years of ministry. “How do you get to the place in your life when, like David, you say, ‘The LORD is always with me. Nothing really rattles me.’”
When we look at this entire psalm (which is a quick eleven verses), we see David helps us out.
- First, David comes to God for refuge (verse 1). David can’t be safe anywhere else but with God.
- Second, says that the LORD is his Master (verse 2). To me, this sounds like a decree. David is the one who announces this, not God. That’s a pretty bold thing to say, let alone do. But it can be done.
- Third, godly people are David’s heroes (verse 3). He hangs with—and looks up to—the right crowd. [Note: Godly people aren’t perfect people. They need God because of their flaws and faults.]
- Fourth, David chooses not to get caught in the messes of the world. If you know David’s life, you know he is not perfect, but does know the path he should be on (verse 4).
- Fifth, David knows where the good things come from (verse 5).
- Sixth, he gives thanks for what he does have (verse 6); he does not lament for what he doesn’t.
- Seventh, even at night (and I take the darkness metaphorically here), David knows which way he should go. He is guided in the right direction, even if he can’t see—or want to see—where he is going in the moment.
Notice in these seven verses that David is the subject, the actor or the action. David is reaching to God. David is seeking God. David is taking the authorship of his story and handing it over to God. The question we really have is not “Do we want God?” as much as it is “How much do we want God?”
We can bail, feel bored, or, in experiencing broken lives, just stop, chill, and stay put on the path. When we are really honest with ourselves, we know we have had points and places in our lives when we didn’t really want God as God; we wanted God as someone we could control.
Edina teaches us an interesting duality: it is not easy to be in the company of God; then again, it is. I mentioned the path a moment ago. It is both easy and challenging to know that we just need to keep moving forward. Sometimes the way is easy. Sometimes the way is incredibly difficult. But with those godly heroes we choose to be around us, we, like David and Edina, keep going not because we have to, but because we can.
PRAYER: Help me think of godly heroes in my life today, oh LORD. Help me do more than spend time with them; encourage me gently to be like them today—and tomorrow. In Your Holy Name I pray. Amen.
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