2024 - Psalm 63
For 2024, our passage of the year is Psalm 63. There are a few reasons this passage was chosen for this year:
Right now, the most common challenge we see people wrestling with is embracing a consistent personal interaction with God that is getting deeper the longer you walk with Him. There are people in our church family at all stages of this. No matter where we are at, we can grow in hungering and thirsting for God - and treasuring His love more than we treasure life.
The second reason this was appropriate is that it is a Psalm of David, and we are preaching through the book of 2 Samuel during the first part of this year. We expect that as we study the life of David, it will add to the depth of how we appreciate this psalm. Over time we will see David as a much more relatable figure. He makes mistakes like us. Yet he still has this depth of connection to God. So can we.
Thirdly, our mission statement is sharing the beauty of Christ with a broken world. We need to first have a grasp on beauty of Christ ourselves in order to share it. This Psalm models treasuring God and seeing him as our most beautiful thing.
A Hunger for God
Our companion book for this passage is A Hunger for God by John Piper. As we read Psalm 63 it prompts us to think about what it means to thirst for God, and what it means that “My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food, and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips.” We believe this is drawing an analogy to how God can satisfy the deepest parts of our heart the way that great food can satisfy our body. The passage prompts us to compare those two kinds of satisfaction and question whether our greatest satisfaction is coming from God or some other thing in life.
So it seemed appropriate that we would select a book which helps us think through the right approach to fasting. Piper writes, “…That kind of intensification of prayer is what fasting is. It’s a physical exclamation point at the end of the sentence, “We hunger for you, O God, to come in power!” It’s a cry with our body, not just our soul: “I really mean it, Lord! This much, I hunger for you. I want the manifestation of you yourself more than I want food.”
Considering this together naturally led us to consider how we can embrace the practice of fasting together in as a church family. So we decided to set aside a week in the fall of 2024 as a time for prayer and fasting.
Better than Life
The song we selected to connect with Psalm 63 is “Better than Life” by Shane & Shane, which was written based on Psalm 63. Because the song is so heavily formed by the words of Psalm 63 it was a natural choice. The lyrics do a good job emphasizing a key idea from the passage: that God’s steadfast love is better than life. Singing that as we meditate on the passage helps prompt us to regularly ask ourselves if we are truly treating God’s love as if it is better than life.
Psalm 63
63 O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you;
my soul thirsts for you;
my flesh faints for you,
as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.
2 So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary,
beholding your power and glory.
3 Because your steadfast love is better than life,
my lips will praise you.
4 So I will bless you as long as I live;
in your name I will lift up my hands.
5 My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food,
and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips,
6 when I remember you upon my bed,
and meditate on you in the watches of the night;
7 for you have been my help,
and in the shadow of your wings I will sing for joy.
8 My soul clings to you;
your right hand upholds me.
9 But those who seek to destroy my life
shall go down into the depths of the earth;
10 they shall be given over to the power of the sword;
they shall be a portion for jackals.
11 But the king shall rejoice in God;
all who swear by him shall exult,
for the mouths of liars will be stopped.