BETTER THAN LIFE

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.

I have seen you in the sanctuary

and beheld your power and your glory.

Because your love is better than life,

my lips will glorify you.

I will praise you as long as I live,

and in your name I will lift up my hands.

My soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods;

with singing lips my mouth will praise you.

On my bed I remember you;

I think of you through the watches of the night.

Because you are my help,

I sing in the shadow of your wings.

My soul clings to you;

your right hand upholds me.

They who seek my life will be destroyed;

they will go down to the depths of the earth.

They will be given over to the sword

and become food for jackals.

But the king will rejoice in God;

all who swear by God’s name will praise him,

while the mouths of liars will be silenced.

Psalm 63

Only one week into school and I can already feel myself running dry, thirsting for SOMETHING MORE. After an entire year of trying to satisfy myself with the things I thought could fill me up once again, I felt God calling me this past summer to deal with my sins and, as one of my unnie’s would put it, “put some things of my old self to death for good.” And it was there I realized how sinful and weak I truly am. How easily distracted I am, so easily led astray by the things I think I want or think I need…

I don’t think I ever heard God’s voice so clearly in a room full of people ’til this past service. Abe Cho was speaking about the Life of King David, and my heart started racing with anxiety. He was talking about David’s search for God, his satisfying vision of God, and the solution amidst suffering… He was talking about this insatiable longing called ‘thirst’ that would have the whole man succumb to its power. The same thirst that was driving David his entire life as a kid, as a king, as an adulterer, and as one finally seeking after God’s own heart in that cave as he was hiding from his son Absalom who wanted to kill him… The source of all the undercurrent desires of our hearts as our ultimate search for God. He talked about how David as a king had it all, and it was then that he was most dissatisfied. And now having lost everything, he found himself most satisfied, ‘as with the richest of foods’. David endured because he could see God’s glory and beauty. And the power of beauty is that it exists not just to adorn life, but to continue through it. David could taste this beauty so well that he, in the midst of battle, could say, “Your love is better than life.“ Most people will search all their lives for the kind of love that will make their lives better, more satisfying… David found a love that was better than life itself. And through this realization, his life was changed. His life changed not despite his suffering, but because of it.

In the end, David mourned ’cause God promised to bring justice and destroy his enemies, his wrongdoer, which was his own son Absalom. Abe was explaining that as a people all complicit in humanity’s sin, in order for God to destroy our enemies, he’d have to destroy a part of ourselves. But by grace, and grace alone, God brings his own son Jesus Christ to reveal the fullness of his power at the cross, whispering to me in that service that THIS LOVE was better than HIS OWN LIFE… and by believing in that truth, my soul would be quenched, and so deeply satisfied, that even after having lost everything, or even the smallest part of me, or even after realizing how broken and sinful I really am, and even when at this moment the end of the road seems so unclear to me still, I can s i n g . . .

“He who has a why to live can endure any how.”

HER PRAYER

I was looking through my past journals and a note fell out onto my lap. She’s someone really close to me back at home in philly, someone who’s seen me through a lot of my immature spiritual battles growing up throughout middle school, high school, and college still. It’s dated May 28, 2008 and it’s in the form of a prayer:

Dear Lord, 

I pray for my sister Christina. Lord, I praise and thank you for bringing her [here] and for blessing my life with her presence. I pray that as she is in a transition period, and as she often feels that she is in a transition period, that you would be her stable foundation and Rock. The one thing that always stays the same. I pray that you will be her satisfaction and that you would sustain her. I pray that she will grow in knowledge and relationship with you and your Son and that she will in turn grow as the woman you made her to be. May she find herself, her identity, worth, her all in You. Provide her with a community of believers and a Church where she can be used by you and also be edified and sanctified. Reveal your love to her and heal her from her past. We praise you for your faithfulness. 

In Your Son’s name, Amen.

It made me realize how blessed I am to have people in my life praying for me. There’s people living in this world who’s never been covered by someone else’s prayer, let alone experience the power of prayer personally in their lives. I encourage you to just take a minute out of your busy, busy day and pray for your loved ones, your parents, people you see everyday… shoot, pray for people you hate. That you’ll change to love/forgive them as you’ve been forgiven ten folds over. Because no matter how long (or immediate) it takes, one day I'll look back on her prayer and know that God Answers.

“Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus."

— 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

STAFF 2009

I’m giving you my heart,

and all that is within.

I’m laying it all down,

for the sake of you my king.

I’m giving you my dreams,

I’m laying down my rights.

I’m giving up my pride

for the promise of new life.

I’m singing you this song,

I’m waiting at the cross.

And all the world holds dear,

I count it all as loss.

For the sake of knowing you,

the glory of your name.

To know the lasting joy,

even sharing in your pain.

And I surrender… all to you, all to you.

DEAD & ALIVE

“As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

— Ephesians 2:1-10