Relationship

This week’s Sunday school lesson is from one of my favorite Psalms, Chapter 84. I remember my grandmother talking to me about this one and others that are similar like David’s Psalm 122: “I was glad when they said unto me, let us go into the house of the Lord.” I can still feel the bite of the counter’s harsh edge as I sat there listening and talking to her while she cooked and did the dishes. I don’t remember the entire context of the conversation as I was very young, but I remember that one verse being the center of it, and now when I read that verse and others like it, I have the added warmth of a good memory there, solidifying the message of the gospel even more. The older I get (in age and in my walk with Christ), the more I realize that most of my lasting relationships are centered in Him.

Another example of this is in my relationship with my husband. It began centered around the Word at a time when I needed much encouragement and spiritual growth. Greg offered that to me over meals snatched here and there when he had more than five minutes to rub together. He offered God’s encouragement, and it was water to my soul, and my soul loved him for it. I was hungry for the Word and (at the time) didn’t even realize that was what my soul was searching for. The relationships built over the foundation of the Word are tenacious, steadfastly holding on to the like-minded hunger for God. It is the cement that binds us together still.

So my question is this: Why in the world do we not have more relationships that are cemented in the bond of the Word, the bond of reaching for Christ together? My heart hungers for like-minded believers who want to dive into the Word more than talk about worldly things and gossip about the latest events—not to say I don’t struggle with the same things. But if I struggle and you struggle and we never get around to the main thing (Christ), we will continue to struggle, and what glory to God comes from that?

Which brings me back to this week’s text, Psalm 84. This psalmist, Korah, longs and yearns for God’s courts, too (v. 2). He “sings for joy to the living God” (v. 2) and recognizes that the ones who DWELL in God’s house are ever praising Him (v. 4).  He also realizes that when he walks through the valley of Baca, God is his strength and strengthens his heart. Matthew Henry, as usual, has some good stuff that relates in his commentary (emphasis mine):

The ordinances of God are the believer's solace in this evil world; in them he enjoys the presence of the living God: this causes him to regret his absence from them. They are to his soul as the nest to the bird. Yet they are only an earnest of the happiness of heaven; but how can men desire to enter that holy habitation, who complain of Divine ordinances as wearisome? Those are truly happy, who go forth, and go on in the exercise of religion, in the strength of the grace of Jesus Christ, from whom all our sufficiency is. The pilgrims to the heavenly city may have to pass through many a valley of weeping, and many a thirsty desert; but wells of salvation shall be opened for them, and consolations sent for their support. Those that press forward in their Christian course shall find God add grace to their graces. And those who grow in grace shall be perfect in glory.

Jesus alone is our sufficiency, and if we never focus our lives on Him, we’re missing out. We say we are believers, but where is the proof? We walk and talk and live without Christ as a reference, and then we want to sit back and be blessed and pampered. Ugh! I am talking about me, too, here. I am as selfish a Christian as has ever walked the face of this earth, yet I don’t want to be. But I need help, too. I need accountability (even when I don’t want it); I need the washing of the Word (even when it’s painful). Lacking the want-to isn’t an excuse that will stand before my Father in heaven—especially when 2 Peter 1:3 tells me “His divine power has granted to us EVERYTHING pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence” (NASB).

            So, there it is. I am feeling frustration at my own lack of understanding in walking all this out while here on this earth. 

            Korah goes on in Psalm 84 and says, “For a day in Thy courts is better than a thousand outside. I would rather stand at the threshold of the house of my God, than dwell in the tents of wickedness” (NASB). Basically, anywhere God is, that is a good place to be. Live in it. Walk in it. Talk in it. Breathe it in; breathe it out. God with us changes EVERYTHING! And an added benefit (from Psalm 84) is that God doesn’t “withhold from those who walk uprightly” (v. 11), and “blessed is the man who trusts in” Him. Food for thought.