One thing I ask of the LORD, this is what I seek:

Psalm 27:4
4 One thing I ask of the LORD, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple.

I woke up yesterday morning and lifted my head up in expectation of the Lord pouring His oil of gladness over my head and face. Of course I am speaking figuratively but listen I am desperate...I mean desperate without Him. I basked in psalm 139 and in all of its familiarity I prayed that I would get a fresh word. You and I are fearfully and wonderfully made. He is not surprised by one event that happens in our life, every day was written in His book before one of them came to pass. That is such a comfort and such a picture of His sovereignty. Do you ever just get so stinking sick of the mundane and staleness of life and just throw up your hands and say, "God, I don't care what it takes...I am miserable here without Your presence. I need You more than anything. I want You more than anything. I AM SORRY for exchanging Your glory for lesser things. I want You LORD. YOU LORD!"
God has given me psalm 27 so many times this week along with psalm 73. First, I was reading these:
Jeremiah 2:11 (New International Version)
11 Has a nation ever changed its gods? (Yet they are not gods at all.) But my people have exchanged their Glory for worthless idols.

Psalm 106:20 They exchanged their Glory for an image of a bull, which eats grass.

Have you ever been given a gift and taken it back to the store to exchange for something else and maybe you just exchanged it for some junk? That is so what we do when we forfeit our worship of the LORD and bow to lesser things. We will spend ourselves on worthless idols, things that can profit us nothing, if we are not intentional about our worship of God. Let me tell you I went this morning and broke out my prayer journal and just went to town praying as I wrote. I am sure the people across from me were wondering what in the world I was doing. I was pouring out my heart to God. Instead of ignoring some things that were really bothering me, stuffing them down, and pretending like they didn't matter I was spilling them out to the God who sees me. Giving Him my hurts, my failures, and some trials that I am going through I told Him that I wouldn't trade any of it because those are the very things that were bringing me into relationship with Him even this day. I felt such a weight lifted by spilling the beans to Him regardless if anything changed or not. I was just telling Him how sick I am of me. Sometimes our biggest problem is us. We just can't seem to get past ourselves. I love though that God will not allow us to be filled with joy when we are exchanging truth for a lie, His glory for worthless idols. We are forfeiting the divine presence of God when we go after our idols in search of some temporary fix.
I love the word integrity in the Greek because it signifies wholeness. A person that is wholly filled and not a person of duplicity. When we are wholly filled by the Spirit of God and we are walking with Him we will indeed live a life of integrity, not perfection but integrity. The word consecrated or holy to the Lord means set apart. That we have set apart our life to God for His use. A holy vessel to the Lord. Isn't it possible though that you can get so entrenched in the things of this world that even if you have known what it is like to taste and see that the Lord is good, that you can forget and exchange the beauty of relationship for a lie that can not sustain the deepest longings of your soul? I don't know where you are at with that but I can tell you that I have been there and there are none like Him. Nothing that we so desperately cling to can satisfy the thirst of our soul except for Him. So I love psalm 27 and pray that this would be our heart that the ONE thing we would ask of the LORD, the thing we would seek most is to dwell in His house all the days of our lives, to gaze upon the sheer beauty of the LORD, and seek Him in His temple.
Let us resolve not to defile ourselves with the temporal things of this world system. The things that will one day be shaken and burned. The things that won't last. Let us resolve to seek His face. That He would be what we prize the most, what we long to gaze upon. There are way to many things fighting for our attention and when we aren't seeking His face, we will become like the people in the days of Moses who got tired of waiting for Him to come down the mountain and they melted down all of their plunder and out came a worthless calf that could profit them nothing. God longs to speak to us and breathe life into us which is something that nothing in this world has to offer (I am speaking of the carnal appetite of this world system...of course I am not saying it is wrong to have things but it is all about where our treasure is).

Listen, I was telling the Lord this morning that I can't do this life without Him going with me. I don't want to live apart from His presence. I can't make it without His touch. I would rather die than not hear from Him. And I am serious. His love is better than life and when you have tasted of that nothing else can top that. Nothing will do. No person will do. I love my man. I love my child but nothing and no one comes close to how I need God. How my soul needs Him, yearns for Him, longs for Him. No one loves me like He does and there is no other love that I know to be true like His. I love Him so. I will never understand why He has not forsaken me. The word means literally to drop or abandon. Why He contends with me I will never know but I praise Him for it.

He is the only one that never gets tired of you and me. Yet so often we wear everyone else out, instead of going to the one who has a bountiful supply, in our vain effort to feel significant or of worth. God is taken by you. He has engraved you on the palm of His hand. I have to know that when I feel rejected and low.
I had someone tell me yesterday that I must have lost my passion since I was not going to be able to teach Sunday school this weekend due to plans I have had for over a year. Are you kidding me! He is the only thing that has remained constant in all of my life. There is no other Rock, not one that I know. I couldn't believe that this person said that. I wanted to be like listen if you only knew. If you only knew what He means to me. No one has loved me like Him. No one has forgiven me like Him. No one has been there for me like Him. No one.

Oh that we would press on to know Him, to seek His face. The worse thing ever would be that He would hide His face from us and praise God that He is so merciful and so willing to reveal Himself to those whose hearts are fully committed to Him. He will never leave you or forsake you. Don't seek another. There are none worthy. None worthy but Him. Seek Him. Seek His face. Seek His presence. May we desire Him above all others.

Psalm 27:8-10
8 My heart says of you, "Seek his face!" Your face, LORD, I will seek.
9 Do not hide your face from me, do not turn your servant away in anger; you have been my helper. Do not reject me or forsake me, O God my Savior.
10 Though my father and mother forsake me, the LORD will receive me.


Keep walking by faith until your faith becomes sight. May there be none that we desire besides Him and Lord make us miserable when we settle for lesser things.

Psalm 73:23026
23 Yet I am always with you; you hold me by my right hand.
24 You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will take me into glory.
25 Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you.
26 My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.