Oh How Good and Oh How Pleasant...

Last night, I met with a handful of other Believers. As we shared a meal, we began sharing our personal stories as well. We talked about our individual journeys and how we had all ended up at this gathering. The amazing thing that I noted as I was listening was the similarity within all the stories. No doubt, each story was special and individual and had value in its own rite. But the collective impact for me was profound.

I saw among this band of strangers multiple parallels that simply cannot be attributed to coincidence. Each of us expressed the sense of our current ‘church’ situation not feeling as if it ‘fit.’ Each described the experience of “Paradise Lost”- no longer being able to feel or find a true sense of Christian community and soul-friendship. Each of us articulated an indescribable yearning, a home-sickness if you will, for ‘something else’/ “someplace else.” Each one of us told a story that involved sleepless nights yearning for “I’m not sure what”; each of us described tearful nights where we poured out our souls to God- begging…pleading, even…for Him to miraculously bring us to the place of Christian koinonia that was so lacking.

It was so evident that God was at work…my “Spirit-o-meter” was registering off the scale!

Later that evening, I thought about the psalm below, and realized how apropos it is to our collective situations.

Psalm 42 (New International Version)

For the director of music. A maskil of the Sons of Korah. [a]
1 As the deer pants for streams of water,
so my soul pants for you, O God.
2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
When can I go and meet with God?
3 My tears have been my food
day and night,
while men say to me all day long,
"Where is your God?"
4 These things I remember
as I pour out my soul:
how I used to go with the multitude,
leading the procession to the house of God,
with shouts of joy and thanksgiving
among the festive throng.
5 Why are you downcast, O my soul?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him,
my Savior and 6 my God.
My soul is downcast within me;
therefore I will remember you
from the land of the Jordan,
the heights of Hermon—from Mount Mizar.
7 Deep calls to deep
in the roar of your waterfalls;
all your waves and breakers
have swept over me.
8 By day the LORD directs his love,
at night his song is with me—
a prayer to the God of my life.
9 I say to God my Rock,
"Why have you forgotten me?
Why must I go about mourning,
oppressed by the enemy?"
10 My bones suffer mortal agony
as my foes taunt me,
saying to me all day long,
"Where is your God?"
11 Why are you downcast, O my soul?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him,
my Savior and my God.

Especially as I read verses five and eleven, I remembered a song from the Glory Revealed album that came out a few years back. The song and lyrics are in the video below.



I’m excited to see what God is doing and getting ready to do in our lives, both individually and collectively. But more than that, I am overwhelmed, once again, at how God is faithful to fulfill our godly desires for fellowship, discipleship and purposeful service when we relentlessly ask for His guidance, and put our complete hope, faith and trust in Him.

May it be so with you, too. May God give you an unquenchable desire, and then may He fulfill that longing over and above your satisfaction!