Psalm 63: Satisfied

Psalm 63 is a beautiful song that David is singing to God while talking to himself. The heading tells us that David wrote this “while he was in the wilderness of Judah”. This means that while it is considered a “royal psalm”, it was actually a psalm of hiding and of exile, a psalm of a fugitive, of a man with an unsure present trying to keep confidence for his future. Isn’t that often what faith looks like? Hebrews 11:1 tells us, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” That means that faith is what holds us when we don’t seem to have anything to hold onto. David was either in the wilderness of Judah hiding from King Saul or from his son Absalom. He was either far from the promise he was waiting for or had been removed from the reality he had been living in. In either case, David was not where he wanted to be, not where he believed he belonged or deserved to be, but rather than sing of what felt unfair, he sang in faith to the One who stayed close to him no matter how far away David was from everything else.

David paints a vivid picture. “My soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.” There is longing in his words and there is lack in his circumstance, but above all, there is confidence in God’s character. We often come to places where we feel like something needs to change. We need a break or for something to go our way. Often, we can even identify the obstacle, that if removed, would give way to everything that we’ve been waiting and hoping for. But David doesn’t do that in this psalm. He doesn’t say that he thirsts for Saul to be removed so he could finally sit on the throne he had been anointed for. He doesn’t sing that if Absalom would just repent their relationship could be restored and David could go back to ruling over Israel. He sings that his soul, the depths of his being, the place where his hunger dwelled and where his longing panged, was pointed in the direction of God. “My soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you”. In other words, at some point David had stopped singing songs that would get God to do what he thought was right, fair or good and he just started singing for God. He was no longer trying to move God’s heart on his behalf, he was trying to move his heart into a desire for God’s presence.

Jesus promised, “I am with you always, to the end of the age.” We believe in God’s presence. Not only is He omnipresent, always everywhere, He is with us. We know this and yet, we struggle to believe it because there are many times when God’s presence doesn’t feel like we expected it to. We ask questions of ourselves and each other such as: “If God is present why do I feel alone?” “If God is just why is my life so unfair?” “If God is working why is nothing changing?” We want His promise to match our expectation, we want His will to fit into our dream, we want His blessing on our lives much more than we want to put our lives into His hands. What David was singing to himself and what his song is supposed to teach us, is that we often hunger and thirst for things that leave us hungry and thirsty. We often want God to do things that can’t satisfy us, we want band aids for things that require surgery, we want a bowl of soup when He’s offering a birth-right, we just want a child when God has promised and is working to provide the child of the promise.

David came to this realization, “My soul will be satisfied . . . when I remember you . . .” The word “satisfied” speaks to having enough, being full, having plenty. We tend to use the word “satisfied” as if the minimum has been done. Satisfactory is not a glowing statement for us, we want excellence, over and above. But in the Hebrew, the word speaks to being satiated, having needs met, needing no more. David turned from his situation, from his disappointment, from his waiting, from his lack of being able to see how God was going to work things out to remembering God’s character. I realize that I’m taking some liberty here, but I think David laid down at night, and when his mind started to go to places of fear, doubt, worry and anxiety, he made a conscious decision, he made himself remember killing a lion and a bear that attacked his father’s sheep. He recalled the day that Samuel came to his father’s house and poured anointing oil on his head and proclaimed him God’s choice to be king. I believe he closed his eyes and saw Goliath fall and the Philistines flee. He satisfied himself with the character of the One who had always been with him.

If I may, what do you set your mind on when things are less than you hoped or different than you expected? When you lay down at night and your mind starts to turn, do you entertain the questions of well-meaning but unknowing friends? Do you replay the missteps of your past? Do you calculate the impossibility of your situation? Or do you remember the goodness of God? I’m not talking about counting your blessings, but satisfying your soul. Do you revisit the places where God has met you? Do you recall the places where He did the impossible for you? Do you calculate how your life already overflows with His mercy and how He has already fulfilled promises that you could have never accomplished yourself? David said that his soul would be satisfied when he remembered. There is an action that has to take place, there is a transition that we must make, from being people who need God to satisfy us to people who satisfy ourselves in God. Are we those who need God to do something to put us at ease or are we those who remember the ease that God has already given us?

In John 6, after the feeding of the 5,000, many of those people followed Jesus to the other side of the Sea to see what He would do next. In a long discussion Jesus told them that the only work that God required was that they “believe in him whom he has sent.” They responded, “Then what sign do you do, that we may see and believe you?” In other words, Jesus told them that all the Father wants is for them to believe in His Son and they then asked Jesus, knowing He was the Son, what He would do to make them believe, to prove Himself to them. While we shake our heads at them, thinking they had just eaten from the miraculous meal what more did He need to do, couldn’t we ask ourselves the same question? What more does He need to do for us to believe in Him, to satisfy our souls in Him rather than waiting for Him to do something that would finally satisfy us?

The issue is not how dire our circumstance, how long our delay or how dry our land, it’s how willing we are to do the work of satisfying our souls. Are we willing to remember God’s goodness when we feel far from His promise? Are we willing to sing songs of His character when we are feeling the sting of our circumstance? Are we willing to fill our minds (meditate) with who He is when we can’t figure out what He’s doing? Jesus taught that believing is work, so is satisfaction, it’s not something God does for us it’s something we fill ourselves with. He’s been and always will be good, are we willing to be satisfied with His goodness?