“Staying Strong in the Desert Places of Life”
Psalm 63:1–11 (ESV)
1 O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you;
my soul thirsts for you;
my flesh faints for you,
as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.
2 So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary,
beholding your power and glory.
3 Because your steadfast love is better than life,
my lips will praise you.
4 So I will bless you as long as I live;
in your name I will lift up my hands.
5 My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food,
and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips,
6 when I remember you upon my bed,
and meditate on you in the watches of the night;
7 for you have been my help,
and in the shadow of your wings I will sing for joy.
8 My soul clings to you;
your right hand upholds me.
9 But those who seek to destroy my life
shall go down into the depths of the earth;
10 they shall be given over to the power of the sword;
they shall be a portion for jackals.
11 But the king shall rejoice in God;
all who swear by him shall exult,
for the mouths of liars will be stopped.
The superscription in my Bible says, “A psalm of David while in the wilderness of Judah”
So, I have entitled this message “Staying Strong in the Desert Places of Life”
Because that’s where David is at this moment of his life…in the desert
You will recall that before David became King, that Saul who was King at that time was after David’s life
David was running from Saul in the desert, hiding in caves to escape Saul
Now, here at the end of David’s reign as King, here he is again in the desert
This time his sons had risen up against their father, because in their greed they wanted to take the kingship away from their father David
David’s son Absalom was the chief instigator
In his plot, he stationed himself outside one of the main gates of the city, speaking to the people, discrediting David’s authority and winning the people over to himself
Later Absalom established a headquarters a few miles outside of Jerusalem and spread word throughout the people of Israel that when his trumpets blew they were to rally around him
David’s only hope was to run…again.
Who knew that Absalom’s next move was to have David killed
Money, prestige, power would move Absalom to do heinous things against his own father!
This threat pushed David out into the desert
Ever been in a time of your life when you felt like you were in the desert? Maybe that time is now
This feeling of being in the desert all alone, can come at any stage of life
We would expect it to come in the early years when you’re just getting started
And then raising your kids and getting them through college
And then going through whatever mid-life crisis one might go through
But here’s David, you might say in his “golden years”
Isn’t that when you’re supposed to just kick back and relax?
I spoke with a customer at the Northpark Belk store on Friday. Her and her husband were celebrating their 60th anniversary.
After telling me about this doctor appointment and this issue and that, she said she was still looking for the Golden Years!
Fact of the matter is, feeling deserted and alone can happen at any stage of life
You may have family all around you and people all around you who love you and you still feel deserted
You feel like maybe no one understands and you really can’t get the help you think you need
It’s hard to imagine how David felt as he wrote this Psalm: now removed from the royal palace with its marble and cedar furnishings…now in a dusty tent in the desert
Once a proud father and respected King, he is now a refugee in his own homeland, an enemy of his family and his constituents
It is very plain to see as you read this psalm, that David is hungry for God
Deserted by nearly everyone else, he knows that he has not been deserted by God…but he still feels alone
So, he cries out to God, calling him “my God”
David could call God, “my God” because he knew God…he had a life relationship with God
Those of us who have a relationship with Jesus Christ, have a relationship with God
We can call God, “my God”
Are you like David, hungry for God?
David said, “earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my flesh faints for you”
Soul and body, David’s entire being longed for God as in a dry and weary land where there is no water
David looks around at the desert where there are no wells of water and sees it as a picture of his own life
He thirsts for only what God can give
In Psalm 42:2, David said, “My soul thirsts for God, for the Living God!”
David was going through difficult times
When we go through difficult times, thirst for God should be the natural result
Not only does David’s soul thirst for God, he says that his flesh faints for God
David’s desire is so deep for God that he feels it in every part of his body; soul and flesh…and that pain drives him to long for God
It is amazing that with:
- no real knowledge of eternal life
- no knowledge of a sacrificial Savior
- no knowledge of the resurrection
- all the things that we know well in the NT
- that OT saints like David had such a longing for God
They had a sense of His presence with them that few Christians enjoy in our day
Amazing
David knew that nothing else could fill his life, like God could
Evidently, he had already learned that all the royalty and wealth of kingship could not take the place of God in his life
He had lived long enough to know that none of what the world offers, whether in the desert or the palace, could satisfy the longings of his heart like God could
And I tell you, nothing can fill your life like God can!
Nothing can satisfy the thirst of your soul like God can!
Nothing is more important than a relationship with God through Jesus Christ!
We would do well to imitate David’s hunger and thirst and longing for God!
Why was David able to go through all the deliberating trials that he went through without losing confidence in God?
I believe it was the value that he placed on God’s love for him
David valued God’s steadfast love more than life itself
2 So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary,
beholding your power and glory.
3 Because your steadfast love is better than life,
my lips will praise you.
We are told in Scripture that David was a man after God’s own heart (1 Sam 13:14, Acts 13:22)
And when the pressure of life surrounded him he clung to God with all his strength!
The remaining verses in this psalm gives some very important clues for living in the desert places of life; yet staying in the presence of God
- Praising God
What David did first might not make sense to a lot of people, but the first thing David did in his desert situation was praise God
4 So I will bless you as long as I live;
in your name I will lift up my hands.
V5: David said, “my mouth will praise you with joyful lips”
Yes, it might not make sense to a lot of people to praise the Lord when you are in the middle of a trial…but when your life is hanging by a thread don’t worry about what makes sense!
Focus on what is going to keep you close to God! That’s what you need
There is almost a sense here that David didn’t know how much longer he had to live
But no matter how much longer he had to live, David was going to spend it praising God!
As David praised God, he started remembering in his mind all that God had done for him in the past
And that’s our second clue to staying close to God in difficult times:
- Remembering God
6 when I remember you upon my bed,
and meditate on you in the watches of the night;
7 for you have been my help,
and in the shadow of your wings I will sing for joy.
Many people lose sleep, tossing and turning at night wondering and worrying over their troubles
Not David: whenever he wasn’t sleeping, he simply meditated on the Lord
He pictured in his mind all the many ways that God had been faithful to him in the past
Are you losing sleep over a situation or circumstance in your life?
Are you lying awake at night worrying over a predicament that you’re in?
The key to keeping hope alive is to remember that God has been faithful to you and remember what he has brought you through!
I wonder if one of those times David remembered, was when he stood before a 9-foot-tall giant that all of Israel was scared of, with nothing but a sling shot and a bag of rocks? And how God was faithful
I wonder if David remembered how God kept him alive when then King Saul’s army was after him?
I would guess that David remembered all those times that God was faithful.
And those memories kept David’s hope alive that once again God would be true and faithful
Praise God, Remember God…
- Pray to God
V8, David said, “My soul clings to you”
Does your soul cling to God when you’re in the desert places of life?
Prayer is a way to cling to God
You reach out to him with the words of your heart
You pour out your praise to him and you pour out your requests to him and you keep doing that until deliverance comes and then you praise him again!
That’s what David did and as a result:
- Absalom’s armies were defeated
- Absalom was killed
- David’s kingdom was restored
The next time you find yourself in the desert, do what David did:
Hunger for God and feed your hunger with praises and prayers based on the faithfulness of God in the past
And what a fitting act of worship to God to end our service today with the Lord’s Supper
In this ordinance, we remember that Jesus shed his body and gave his blood so that we could be saved and have a relationship with God that gets us through the desert places in life!
(Deacons prepare to serve)