What Do We Really Want?
Scripture Reading — Psalm 63
You, God, are my God, earnestly I seek you.
Psalm 63:1
As the kingdom changed and faced the challenges of prosperity, so did David.
The white-hot passion for God that had burned during David’s early years began to cool in the comfort of his newfound prosperity. And, sadly, the less David seemed to need God as his place of safety, the less quickly he sought God to be that refuge. As David’s passion for God cooled, other passions began to take its place.
It turned out that David the king was also David the sinner.
What David didn’t realize is that things went best for him when he earnestly sought to live for the Lord. Even if things seemed to going poorly because life was so hard, David had strength in the Lord because he called on God for help, and God provided for him. In tough times,
David couldn’t even pretend to be self-sufficient. Dealing with hardship reminded him constantly that he needed God.
But David ran into trouble in his prosperity when he overlooked his need for God.
Most of us long for our kingdoms to be established, to sleep in warm castles, with our treasuries full and our borders expanding. But do we really know what we want?
It takes much grace to handle the responsibility of many possessions.
God, we so often bring you a list of our needs without really understanding what we need most. Please give us what we truly need. Amen.
About the author — Ron Vanderwell
Ron Vanderwell recently became the senior pastor of New Life Church in New Lenox, Illinois. He has been a pastor for 22 years, serving as a church planter for the previous 12 years at The Gathering in Sacramento, California, and before that as a pastor in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Ron and his wife, Deb, have three sons: John, Adam, and Jake.
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