Only Him

"Because thou hast been my help, therefore in the shadow of thy wings will I rejoice. My soul followeth hard after thee: thy right hand upholdeth me." (Psalm 63:7-8)

It is part of my belief that God wants to get us to a place where we would still be happy if we had only Him! We don't need God and something else. God does give us Himself and lets us have other things, too, but there is that inner loneliness until we reach the place where it is only God that we desire.

Most of us are too social to be lonely. When we feel lonely, we rush to the telephone and call Mrs. Yakkety. So we use up thirty minutes, and the bread is burned in the oven. With many, it is talk, talk, talk, and we rush about looking for social fellowship because we cannot stand being alone.

If you will follow on to know the Lord, there comes a place in your Christian life when Mrs. Yakkety will be a pest instead of being a consolation. She won't be able to help you at all. There will not be a thing that she can do for you. It is loneliness for God - you will want God so badly you will be miserable. This means you are getting close, friend. You are near the kingdom, and if you will only keep on, you will meet God. God will take you in and fill you, and He will do it in His own blessed and wonderful way.

Lord, bring me to that place of inner loneliness that David knew, so that when all else is stripped away, I might find satisfaction in You - only You. Amen.

________________________________________

A Mighty Man Was David

"My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the Lord: my heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God." (Psalm 84:2)

Perhaps David's greatness and his significance for mankind lies in his complete preoccupation with God. He was a Jew, steeped in the Levitical tradition, but he never got lost in the forms of religion. "I have set the Lord always before me" (Psalm 16:8), he said once and again he said, or rather cried, for his words rise from within like a cry, "My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?" (42:2).

David was acutely God-conscious. To him God was the one Being worth knowing. Where others saw nature he saw God. He was a nature poet indeed, but he saw God first and loved nature for God's sake. Wordsworth reversed the order and, while he is great, he is not worthy to untie the shoelaces of the man David.

David was also a God-possessed man. He He threw himself at the feet of God and demanded to be conquered and Jehovah responded by taking over his being and shaping it as a potter shapes the clay.

Because he was God-possessed he could be God-taught.

He sent his heart to school to the Most High God, and soon h knew Him with an immediacy of knowing more wonderful than is dreamed of in our philosophies.

Lord, may I be as God-possessed as David. Give me a heart that cries out to You; then teach me and enable me to know You with immediacy and intimacy. Amen

~A. W. Tozer~