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
One Thing, Not Forty
Psalm 27 is a song of David, and he wrote it from a hard place. The lines around this verse are full of enemies, armies, and war. "Though an army besiege me, my heart will not fear." This is a man with real threats at his door. So you'd expect the one thing he asks God for to be safety, or victory, or for the enemies to just go away.
But that's not what he asks. "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." Out of everything a hunted king could want, out of every good and urgent request he could bring, David narrows it down to one thing. Not God's help. God himself. To dwell with him, to gaze at him, to be where he is.
Notice the words he uses. Dwell. Gaze. Seek. These aren't the words of someone who wants a quick answer to prayer so he can get on with his day. They're the words of someone who wants to be with a person. In the Vineyard we say the experience of God's presence is the center of everything, and this verse is why. David has learned that the presence of God isn't one item on the list. It's the thing the whole list was pointing at. He'll find everything else he needs, including help with those enemies, in the same place. With God.
Gaze, Don't Just Glance
Here's the problem. Most of us don't seek one thing; we seek about forty. Our prayers, when we get to them, tend to be a list of requests we fire off on the way out the door. And God is glad to hear those requests. But David is after something more than answers. He wants to gaze, and gazing takes time. You can glance at God in thirty seconds. You can't gaze at him that way.
The good news is that this isn't reserved for spiritual professionals or people with hours to spare. God is not hiding, and he's not reluctant. He eagerly wants you to experience his presence. The invitation to dwell and gaze is open to you today, in your kitchen, in your car, in the ordinary middle of your week.
This looks like giving God unhurried time and not immediately filling it with requests. It looks like sitting with a single verse or a single line of a worship song until it becomes a way of actually noticing him, not just thinking about him. It looks like asking, before you ask for anything else, "God, would you let me sense that you're here?" and then waiting long enough to gaze instead of glance. Make his presence the one thing, and watch how it reorders the other thirty-nine.
My encouragement to you today is to seek the one thing. Not just God's hand, but God's face. He isn't far, and he isn't reluctant. He's the one thing worth building your whole life around.
Prayer
Father, thank you that you don't just answer us, you welcome us. Thank you that we can dwell with you and gaze at your beauty, even in the hard and hunted seasons. Forgive us for treating your presence as one item on a long list. Teach us to seek the one thing, to want you more than we want your help. Would you let us sense that you're near today, and reorder everything else around that. We pray all this in Jesus' name. Amen.