One Thing...and Nothing Else
One Thing and Nothing Else
“One thing I ask from the Lord, this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple.” ~ Psalm 27:4 (NIV)
I’ve been thinking about these words a lot lately and wondering, “Do these words reflect my desire? Is God really my ‘one thing’?” Take a minute and reflect on the exclusivity of these words.
One thing I ask – there’s no list of priorities in which God is one of many.
One thing I seek – there’s no rival or alternative desire mentioned.
The Psalmist doesn’t simply present God as his biggest, deepest, strongest desire, but as his only desire; as his one thing and nothing else. It makes me wonder: Has God become one of many desires, or is He - as the Psalmist invites us to see Him – our one thing?
Later in the Psalms, we read a similar train of thought inviting us to, “Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.” Psalm 37:4 (ESV)
I’ve been thinking about these words as well, and realizing that if I’m honest, while I do believe I desire the things of God – justice, mercy, love, forgiveness, compassion, truth etc. – I’m beginning to wonder if I’ve exchanged delighting in the things of God rather than God alone.
What happens to a person whose desire and delight for God quietly takes a backseat to the things of God, but disconnected from God?
In my experience, when the good things of God are unintentionally elevated above desiring God Himself, when what we do for God as His servants is elevated above being with God as His children...it’s only a matter of time before those good, well-intentioned desires become corrupted and distorted leading us to become corrupted and distorted.
After all, wasn’t the promise of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that it would make us like God – knowing good and evil? Herein lies the problem of desiring the things of God apart from God:
Anything that promises to make us like God, without God, is not of God.
Anything that promises to make us like God, without God, is not from God.
Anything that promises to make us like God, without God, is bound to cause us to become something less than God intends for us.
When we desire the things of God apart from God, as good as they may be, disconnected from God they become gods unto themselves, corrupting and distorting God’s image-bearing creatures.
How do we prevent this fragmentation from occurring in our life? How do we move from delighting in the things of the Lord to delighting in God himself?
We would do well to heed the words of the Psalmist: “One thing I ask from the Lord, this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple.”
OK, but how do we do that? A practice I’m employing personally these days is when I read the Bible, to focus more of my energy on understanding the verbs in the text. Try that with me here. Let’s look at the verbs in Psalm 27:4 (I’ve provided a range of meaning and nuance for each word from the Hebrew)
· Ask (desire, demand)
· Seek (search out, touch/feel)
· Dwell (sit down, abide)
· Gaze (to see, behold)
· Seek (literally to plough)
When the Psalmist describes his single-minded desire for God, these are the words, the actions he employs to communicate this desire: ask, seek, dwell, gaze, seek. When it comes to your desire for God, do these words reflect your pursuit of Him?
Is God who you are asking for? Do you sense a humble, incessant demand for His presence and power? Is the Lord who you are searching out, trying to touch and feel in your life? Are you someone who longs to dwell in God’s presence? Do you want to behold God’s beauty – to gaze upon Him in wonder? Are you willing to seek Him, to dig up and unearth everything else in your life if that’s what it takes to experience Him? These are the images, the actions that the Psalmist uses to describe a single-minded desire of God.
May we learn to do likewise.
So may we delight ourselves in God and God alone, may we not confuse the things of God, as good as they may be, for God himself, and as we delight ourselves in Him, might He give us the desires of our hearts.
As a way of stirring up this renewed desire for God as our one thing, I've included a couple songs and scriptures here for further reflection
SONGS
"Everything and Nothing Less" - Chris McClarney
"One Thing" - Housefires
"When you Walk into the Room" - Bryan and Katie Torwalt
SCRIPTURES
