Psalm 34 God's Good Thing

During this Covid-Pandemic my desire was to deal with the reality of all we faced, yet be an example of hope in The Only Living God. How to live with a difference, was what I sought the Lord for. He put Psalm 34 on my heart. I memorized this passage years ago. Much of it was back somewhere in my mind. There were verses that stuck with me over the years. The part I remembered the most was how optimistic this passage was. It faced reality without making life appear as if there would never be problems.

This beautiful Psalm is filled with hope and promises. The promises are a tension of life with all its complications lived with a God who delivers and saves. These tensions are facing afflictions and not knowing if God will deliver from or through; yet he delivers from them all. The tension of knowing these things are promised and understanding how to live in victory of all that life offers. No! It ain't all good.

Psalm 34 outlines the map to victory. Here are some of the concepts voiced, "seeking, crying out to him. tasting and seeing, trusting, fearing, keeping our tongues from, and lips from, departing from evil, seeking peace, living righteous." These are terms used in this Psalm and each come with a reciprocal action from God. Remember this passage is David looking back at difficulties he had just been delivered from. Some of these were his personal testimony of God's deliverance. He was not delivered from, but through his circumstances. He had to face them.

The promise that imprinted on my heart is from verse 10, "The young lion lack and suffer hunger; But those who seek the LORD shall not lack any good thing." This verse helps me exegete a verse in a different Psalm that many people quote, but Psalm 34:10 offers the explanation. Psalm 37: 3 "Delight yourself in the LORD; and He shall give you the desires of your heart." Both verses tell us something about how our lives must be surendered to God's conditions to experience his true good for our lives. Psalm 34 sets up conditionality by which God responds with His good for us. "Those who seek the LORD..." Psalm 37: "Delight yourself in the LORD..." The desire we have to be rescued, to have our prayers answered, to be delivered from our fears, troubles, and afflictions are resounding. Whereas, our choice to delight, or seek Him, needs help. Again, that tension. The Psalmist tells his reader to "taste and see that the LORD is good..."

As I mediated on these truths I began to see a picture of what delighting, tasting and seeking God should look. I love a beautifully manicured yard. I love healthy flowers, and a garden that is replete in its production. I can say I delight in these things but that delight is only established by seeking how to make these realities happen. I delight in my yard by keeping my grass, flowers and garden watered, fertilized, mowed, weeded. I study what keeps the grass green in the area I live. I study types of flowers, when and how to start my garden in the zone I live. My delight is seen in my seeking the best relationship with that which I love. Others see how much I love it when they see the result. Nothing in my yard is by accident, neither is the strength of my relationship with the LORD.

As I delight in Him I surrender to what is His will. That produces a satisfaction and surrender to what his desire is for me. I begin to offer myself to him, completely. That is called delighting. That which he sees is good, becomes what I am satisfied with. Not just satisfied but truly content. I begin to see things I want are answered by how he sees them as good for me or not. It is like my garden, I delight in it so much, but what is good for me is not good for the garden. Because I delight in my garden I've learned to surrender to the good it offers, not the good I want. My desire morphs to what is good for me, via my garden. My gardening zone in WA State allowed for other types of veggies, that I cannot grow here in Texas. Some veggies I must plant at a different time, and may need to be started differently. Surrendering myself to what is the garden's good has become my delight. The same is true and even bigger with God. As I study God through His Word and delight in Him I begin to learn how he prioritizes my fleshly longings from that which is better for my soul. He created me and knows my make up, so he knows the best and good he has for me. Those things may be different than my anticipations. My fleshly longings, or my "reasonable" good desires are surrendered to the Lord I've tasted and seen, and trust is good. That is the good I learn to long for. Those become my desires.

It is commonplace that what God puts on our hearts for others is usually a bigger lesson for ourselves. I learned so much from Psalm 34. I invited many folks on this journey. I am not sure how many took the ride or are still choosing to memorizing these uplifting verses. What we must recognize are the promises in this passage are not without condition. The Psalmist knew that God delivered those who fear him, trust him, cry out to him, seek him, so he, the Psalmist, surrendered to that knowledge. He knew a God who did deliver deserved to be blessed at all times; and praised continually. A synonym for that would be delighting in Him. Delighting becomes easier as we taste and see He is good. Tasting is experiential. We go through things and see God's deliverance. We read his word to know rightly about what God teaches us about himself and us. We see how he brings us through. We experience his mercy everyday, through our sin and shortfalls. This is circuitous; tasting circles around to delighting which circles around to tasting again. Life repeats itself, but how we choose to handle it is up to us. How we respond to God's rescue reveals how well we have tasted and delighted in God.

God wants to bless us. He wants to provide, so we lack no good thing. He wants to give us the desire of our hearts. We only begin to understand God's true deliverance from all our troubles as we seek him, or delight in Him. This is how we experience His good through our fears. Separating the good that we think we want which brings temporary satisfaction in the moment but may bring disillusionment; from God's good which brings true and deep satisfaction which refines is essential. That comes from the God worthy of being magnified. We only understand that if we are truly delighting in Him and are tasting and seeing that He is good.