Physically Worship Him - Psalms 63-65

 Psalms 63:3-4 (ESV)

Because your steadfast love is better than life,

my lips will praise you.

So I will bless you as long as I live;

in your name I will lift up my hands.

Psalm 63 has a subtitle added by the writers/composers of the psalms that states this was written during a time of David’s wandering in the wilderness.   We don’t know the specific occasion of the song but it is certainly a plea to God regarding praise and petition for deliverance from someone.   Apparently someone was seeking David’s life (v. 9) and we could make the assumption this is during his time of running from King Saul.   But, in verse 11 we read that the “king shall rejoice in God ...”.   We are left more with wonderings than clarity at the time of this song.  But, one precious truth we can derive from the song is that David has little in this world that compares to the life he has in God.   He, in fact, states that God’s steadfast love for him is better than life itself.    He believes there is nothing on this earth that compares to the love that God has for him and demonstrates to him by caring for him.   David is lost, or weary, or in solitude in the wilderness of life and he stops to reflect on what really matters.   He is no longer sitting around the table of fatness, but is, instead, in the wilderness of want.  Notice how the song starts:

Psalms 63:1-2 (ESV)

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.

So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary,

beholding your power and glory.

He lacks food, water and shelter.    He looks to God in the sanctuary but now is in the desert of life.   And what does he conclude?  That God’s love is better than life itself.   

What does that truth compel from David?   It causes him to bless God (praise Him) with his lips and lift up his hands.   This truth of God’s steadfast love being better than life invokes from David by a heart response (expressed in praise of the lips) and a body response (expressed in the lifting up of his hands).   When God gives us truth in our hearts it is a natural result in our bodies being moved.  We are reminded of this passage in David’s earlier days when he brought the ark back to Jerusalem:

2 Samuel 6:14-15 (ESV)

And David danced before the LORD with all his might. And David was wearing a linen ephod. So David and all the house of Israel brought up the ark of the LORD with shouting and with the sound of the horn.

Having truth in our hearts moves our body to celebrate.  The world has taken the physical part of worship and abused it so that believers in Christ can’t use it as it is intended.   We can never “dance before the LORD” because the world has defamed the aspect of dance.  But, David is so caught up in the fact that his world is crashing he sees that God’s love is so steadfast toward him he throws his hands up in pure worship.    Our bodies are not to be used to flesh ways to please ourselves.  But, a mind and heart struck by the truth of God’s love should move us in ways that our bodies can’t help but life up our hands in pure, unadulterated worship of the LORD.