I Will Ever Praise You

"O God, you are my God,
earnestly I seek you;
my soul thirsts for you,
my body longs for you,
in a dry and weary land
where there is no water.

2 I have seen you in the sanctuary
and beheld your power and your glory.

3 Because your love is better than life,
my lips will glorify you.

4 I will praise you as long as I live,
and in your name I will lift up my hands.

5 My soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods;
with singing lips my mouth will praise you." Psalm 63:15

I love this Psalm. Of course, I love most Psalms, but this one this morning is just so true to me. I heard someone say last night how they used to think that people who really got close and worshipped God were crazy. And now that's he's one of them, he thinks that the other people who don't get close and worship God are crazy. :-) It was cute, and totally spot on.

See, I'd kind of forgotten. When I was a teenager I would get the opportunity to really experience God twice a year. Once in the summer when I would go to camp, and then once in the fall when we would go to a Youth Convention, where we would worship and experience God for 3 days. I always came away from both experiences energized and ready to live for God. Of course, it wouldn't last very long. Not that I was a bad teenager, but the actual getting close and letting God in was not a daily thing, and the more days you go without, the easier it is to forget and set it aside. It's very much like exercising. When you first start doing it you're all pumped up and ready to go and you're excited about it. Then you miss a day, and the next day it becomes easier and then easier, and before you know it it's been an entire month since you exercised.

But now...well, it's totally different than those teenage years, it really is. Back then I was ready to storm my high school and try to save all my friends and classmates. Now, I feel like I'm getting ready for the world. I don't know, I just am at a point where I love my time with God so much, and every day I crave it, and I don't understand those who don't want it, and especially those who try to contradict it and pick it apart. Really and truly, if God spoke to Andy and me and told us to pack our belongings and move to Uganda tomorrow we'd be there by the end of the week. We're just so in love and so enamored with God that we want to do everything He wants us to do.

Last week I had a day where I was ready to give up. I blogged about the enemy attacking, and yes, I realized it, but still. Did I really want to have to keep putting up with these attacks? And what for? I just felt a moment of despair where all my zealousness and energy I have right now for sharing the Glory of God seemed pointless. But then, I was cleaning at church. I decided I needed to dust the woodwork today, which means I need to walk the entire church- the entire first floor gets dusted in the corners-top and bottom, and all along the walls. What a better time to pray for the church as a whole than when I'm circling it in it's entirety. So as I dusted I prayed in the spirit for courage and guidance and assurance, and then I swear I heard a voice say to me "Stay On Target" which made me smile completely because it's a line from one of my favorite movies- Star Wars.

And in that moment I felt the despair lift and I felt newly energized and ready to go. Then a few moments later as I was kind of questioning God and wondering how things were going to continue and how they were going to unfold, I heard another voice, this time from a different favorite movie of mine. This time that voice said "A penitent man will pass", which is from an Indiana Jones movie. That one still has me thinking because penitent means humble, and I already think that I need to be careful and make sure that the things I say and do are things that God wants me to say and do, and not just things that I think would be good to say or do.

So I say this morning as David did "I will praise you as long as I live" because life truly isn't worth living if that praise isn't coming. God is My God and I will follow Him and all of His ways.