I WANNA GO BACK TO CHURCH
by thebaileydrink
Ps.42:1,2 – I long to drink of you, O God, drinking deeply from the streams of pleasure flowing from your presence. My longings overwhelm me for more of you! My soul thirsts, pants, and longs for the living God. I want to come and see the face of God.
I guess the old saying is true, “absence makes the heart grow fonder”. I want to go back to church. I love to see the smiling faces and the shouts of joy. I long for those songs of joy and extended times praying in the Spirit. I miss that incredible corporate anointing that unmistakeable fills the sanctuary every time we gather. The online services have been good but they can never replace the heavenly atmosphere of the congregation pressing into God together. David knew the feeling that we are feeling right now. David was exiled by the rebellion of his son Absalom. He was on the run for months (possibly two years) while his son took the throne. David is thought to have written this Psalm at this time. David longed to be back in the house of God. He longed for the presence that he found in worshipping in front of the ark. Nothing can replace the life we find in His presence. Here is how Spurgeon describes this passage.
“Debarred from public worship, David was heartsick. Ease he did not seek, honor he did not covet, but the enjoyment of communion with God was an urgent need of his soul; he viewed it not merely as the sweetest of all luxuries, but as an absolute necessity, like water to a stag. Like the parched traveller in the wilderness, whose skin bottle is empty, and who finds the wells dry, he must drink or die—he must have his God or faint. His soul, his very self, his deepest life, was insatiable for a sense of the divine presence. As the hart brays so his soul prays. Give him his God and he is as content as the poor deer which at length slakes its thirst and is perfectly happy; but deny him his Lord, and his heart heaves, his bosom palpitates, his whole frame is convulsed, like one who gasps for breath, or pants with long running.”
I don’t know about you but I wanna go back to church. Corona or not, I long for His presence only found with the believers in His house.