Psalm 84:1-2
“How lovely is Your tabernacle, O LORD of hosts! My soul longs, yes, even faints for the courts of the LORD; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God.” The Jewish temple was striking, but it was yet to come, and the outside coverings of the tabernacle could hardly be called lovely. What enflamed the psalmist’s heart was found within its confines—the place where man and God could meet.
The soul’s hunger for the Lord cannot be satisfied by anything less than His presence. The Hebrew word translated “faint” means to be consumed with longing; a longing so intense that a person becomes pale in color. So deep, so passionate was David’s yearning that he would have readily become a courtier if it allowed him to be in the courts of Jehovah.
David said his flesh cried out for the living God, yet not flesh as the apostle Paul used the term. For in that flesh, our skin, no good thing dwells. What the “sweet psalmist of Israel” expressed concerned the whole of his nature, “My soul, my heart, and my flesh.” The combination of his entire manhood—body, soul, and spirit—was moved to such a degree that a cry emanating from the depths of his being could be its only expression.
There are those who are prodded or coerced to enter a church’s sanctuary doors, only to go through the motions of religion. Unlike David, God is not the object of their desire or worship. “My heart and flesh cry out for the living God.”That is worship. That is the privilege of every real child of God.
Awaiting His Return,
– Pastor Jack
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