Psalm 42

In this chapter, David sums up the longing of the human spirit for an encounter with the living God: “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?” (vs 1-2)

There are two kinds of starvation—the kind you see on infomercials about children in Africa who haven’t had a meal in weeks and the kind inflicted on Jewish people in WWII concentration camps, who were given just enough daily food to take the edge off the hunger pangs.

I’m not sure which is more insidious.

At least, in the first scenario, the starving person knows he’s starving. In the second, there is some diabolical hope of survival, even though the body is not getting nearly enough to live on. There is a quasi-feeling of sustenance, even though there is no substantial nutrition.

As food is to our physical body, God is to our spiritual body. Our hearts cry out for the opportunity to worship Him, and the more I work in worship-related areas, the more I am convinced: Worship is not something we choose to do; it is a natural by-product of encountering God. It’s what happens when we see God uplifted.

Photo © Unsplash/Willian Justen de Vasconcellos

And, as David said, When can I go and meet with God? Perhaps, in our day and age, the more pertinent question is, Where can I go and meet with God? For most churches do not actually uplift God (who He is and what He’s like) as the main subject of its service with any regularity.***

Oh, sure. We get tidbits. We get morsels and crumbs, like those poor people starving in the concentration camps. But it’s never enough to satisfy. It’s never enough to satiate. It’s just enough (sometimes) to keep our ravenous spiritual hunger at bay.

Satan is a genius. He has so skewed what happens in our churches that we don’t even behold God when we go to church and we don’t even know it. In fact, we think we are beholding God when we are not! Yes, God is mentioned. He may make a backseat appearance. He may even put in an Oscar-winning performance as Best Supporting Actor. But we all know the real reason we go to church—to hear about us. What we’re doing right and, more importantly, what we’re doing wrong.

God is an oasis, and there are masses of spiritually starving people in this world, many of them sitting in a church pew every week. Somehow, Satan has gotten us to the place where we think we’re talking about God when we’re not. That is certainly no accident. He has stealthily removed God from our worship. He has removed the food from our spiritual table.

We’re starving and we don’t even know it.

I mean, we know something is wrong. We sense that something is missing, that church or worship could be more fulfilling, but we just don’t know why. We might think the music needs to be more contemporary or the pastor needs to be a more dynamic speaker. We might think we need more creative elements, such as drama or liturgical dance. We might even think we are the problem—that our hearts are somehow cold, dead, and unconverted.

But that’s not it at all. It’s that God is an oasis that we haven’t visited in a long time (at least in our churches). Thus, we are left—as David was in the wilderness—crying, “My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?”

If you feel like you haven’t been to the oasis in a while, I challenge you to think more about this subject. The next time you’re in church, listen carefully to everything that is said and done—the prayers, the sermon, the words to the songs. How much of it is about God? How often does a sentence begin with “God is…” or “Jesus, You are…”? How much of it describes His character? How much of it is about who He is and what He does? How often is He really the subject of the conversation?

God is an oasis, and if we’re not visiting Him regularly in this desert of a life, it’s no wonder we’re starving.

***However, if you live anywhere near Battle Creek, Mich., I do invite you to check out a service at Westlake Presbyterian Church. Every time we meet for church, it’s an oasis!