"O God...I'm lovesick for you..." Psalm 63:1

Have you had times in your life when it feels like you are in a “weary wilderness”?  Times when you desired to hear a word from the Lord that would encourage you and brighten your spirit?  

David knew these times all too well when being pursued by King Saul, David knew that he had been anointed to become the future King of Israel, but King Saul became a test for David’s soul. 

God wasn’t proving David’s heart so that He could demonstrate what kind of man David would become, God knew what David would become, but David didn’t know.  

David’s heart needed to be revealed, God was after a softness, a tenderness within David that could only be exposed when he was being pursued by King Saul. 

King Saul was the first anointed King of Israel, young Saul was chosen by God to rule over God’s inheritance which is His people.  The prophet Samuel was given words of knowledge to give Saul when Saul was searching for his family’s lost donkeys in 1 Samuel 9.  God changed the heart of young Saul to hear God’s word which when he became king led to many victorious battles against the Philistines and other enemies who set themselves against Israel.  

However, as King, Saul had a flaw that was revealed which was a selfish and prideful heart.  As God tried Saul’s heart to see if Saul would fully obey, Saul would compromise and look for ways to personally benefit himself from God’s victories in his life, and the end result is he was rejected by God as being King of Israel. 

David was raised up in the shadow of King Saul, he was a young shepherd boy who was anointed by Samuel to be the next King.  God took a different approach with David, God didn’t choose the tallest and most handsome to be the next king, God chose the smallest (the runt) from his family of origin, and instead of being a fighter (the most skillful in battle) God chose a boy with a heart filled with music, songs, and praise for the God of Israel.  God was raising up a new type of King who had a heart of love for the Lord.  God was after David’s heart and his affections rather than just skill and stature.

The passage above says that David was “lovesick” for the “God of my life”, even as Saul’s soldiers were camped against David to capture him and bring him to Saul for incarceration because of Saul’s jealousy of David, David took solace in his desire for God’s presence.

David declares “I thirst with the deepest longings to love you more”, he wasn’t satisfied with just knowing about God, he wanted a deep interpersonal relationship with the Lord which was more about what God wanted with David.  David was connecting with the heart of God for himself, he recognized that this desire for God was not created by his effort alone, this was something that God had put into David’s heart from God Himself, for God was revealing Himself to David.

David continues: “…with cravings in my heart that can’t be described.” This was obviously something that was beyond David’s experience, God was placing desires and cravings in his heart to know Him and love Him in ways that even David could not adequately describe or comprehend.  

This is the beauty of pursuing the Lord’s presence, as we ask Him to put His heart within us, there is the desire that God places within us to pursue Him with cravings which can’t be described, it is His love that woos us and draws us closer to Him because the Lord is love and He cannot be fully described in words or descriptions.

“Such yearning grips my soul for you, my God!” David had a way with words that went beyond description right to the very actions of the heart.  He pursued God like a lover who had been captured by the affections of one who is the object of his desires. 

God still pursues us today with that same affection which goes beyond our natural experience into an awareness which is just as real, just as passionate, and just as powerful as a natural love.  This is called the love of God. 

There is a Greek word which describes this most fully, it is the “agapē" love of God.

“Within Christianity, agapē is considered to be the love originating from God or Christ for humankind.  In the New Testament, it refers to the covenant love of God for humans, as well as the human reciprocal love for God; the term necessarily extends to the love of one's fellow man.”  Wikipedia

This agapē love is deeply benevolent and caring, it reaches beyond natural boundaries and can even be said to be spiritual in is depth and scope.  In describing love in 1 Corinthians 13, Paul describes agapē love that is beyond human expression and only comes from the abiding presence of God residing within a person that God has encountered.

What is God revealing about your heart so that He can become closer to you?  We all have “King Sauls’” in our lives which pursue us and seek our demise, these things can be anything that causes us to compromise the command of the Lord in our lives in ways that seem right at the time, but are contrary to what the Lord has already spoken to us. 

You can rationalize it all you want

and justify the path of error you have chosen,

but you’ll find out in the end that you took the road to destruction. Proverbs 14:12 (TPT)

God is after a heart that is dedicated to obeying the word of the Lord in spite of our own wants or desires.  God wants a heart that can receive His love and reflect it back to Him in ways that change us into becoming God lovers and desiring nothing else but more of Him in our lives.

That is the fringe benefit of truly pursuing God, we become insatiable for more of Him and desire Him more than any other thing, nothing compares to the love of God.

Be Blessed;

Stephen Barnett