Dear saints of Grace Covenant Church,
I have been meditating upon the reassuring words set forth in the Psalms, words which give such comfort in these troubling times. I want to share some thoughts I’ve written down for your encouragement, beginning with this article and a few more in the coming days. I hope these meditations from God’s Word will bring both instruction and comfort to your souls as they have to mine.
Grieving what’s been lost
In 1970 Joni Mitchell released the song, “Big Yellow Taxi.” In that song she sang a familiar refrain that we can probably all agree with: “Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone?”
As God’s people, we find the current suspension of our church services to be extremely distressing. We’ve lost something, haven’t we? And we at Grace Covenant Church find ourselves in the same painful providence as many other faithful churches across the world. We are all feeling the excruciating thirst that results from the loss of corporate worship.
David suffered this same pain which he recounts in Psalm 42, “As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God?”
To ask, “When shall I come and appear before God?” is to ask, “When will I be able to appear before God in public worship?” David longed to enjoy again the public means of grace, to go up to the house of God once again.
C. H. Spurgeon said that David “probably wrote this psalm when he had been expelled from his country by his ungrateful son, Absalom, but I do not find him expressing a single word of regret as to his absence from his throne.” Instead, as Spurgeon wrote,
“This is what David longed after: neither his throne, nor his house, nor his country, nor even the outward means of grace by themselves, but his God he panted after, and this was his cry, ‘When shall I come and appear before God?’ He longed to appear before his God, that is to say, heartily to unite in the worship of the assembled crowd. He could have worshipped alone, but sympathy has great power over the human mind, and to join with our brethren of one faith is very helpful to our devotion. We may then well sigh for the very walls which enclose the people whom we love.”
David further reflected upon the sweet occasions of joining the multitude of worshipers on their way to the house of God in verse 4: “These things I remember, as I pour out my soul: How I would go with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God with glad shouts and songs of praise, a multitude keeping festival.”
Can we not relate to what David describes here? Remember how our hearts would be warmed as we joined our voices together in songs of praise every Lord’s Day? But now, like David, we too have been kept by providence from going to the courts of the Lord. Like David, we too find our souls thirsting for God with a thirst that can only be quenched in the corporate worship assembly.
To be prevented from going to church on Sunday for worship is not only distressing, but it’s downright depressing. Being far from the house of God made David downcast, as he expressed in verse 5: “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me?”
But notice in the very next breath how David looked to God for encouragement. He exhorted himself saying, “Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.”
Hoping for what’s to come
By faith, David knew that God is the source of his hope; and in faith David believed the future day will come when he will once again join the assembly in praising God. Note his words: “I shall again praise him.” No wonder David could later say in Psalm 122:1, “I was glad when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord!’” We too will certainly rejoice when this invitation soon is shouted forth.
We can rest assured that the present circumstances are temporary. Our God will not permit the corporate assembly of His dearly loved children to remain in this present condition forever.
Consider the wedding feast in Cana of Galilee in John 2. It was a sad moment for the wedding attendees when all the wine suddenly ran out, with no contingency plan in place. But their temporary loss opened the way for Christ’s provision which far surpassed anything they had been drinking before.
I think there are parallels to our current situation as a church. While the wine of public worship has run dry, the way is now open for Christ to once again provide something far better than anything we have ever enjoyed before. Jesus saves the best wine for last.
Right now we are thirsting for God; but soon we will drink again from His bounty and we shall be satisfied. Psalm 126:1–2 says: When the LORD restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream. Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy; then they said among the nations, “The LORD has done great things for them.”
The Lord has always restored His downcast people, and He will restore us too.
Pastor Rob and I are praying for the Lord to open the doors of our church once again so that we may gather together in praise to our great God and Savior Jesus Christ. Until then, we want to know if you have specific prayer needs; so please contact us any time.
With much love in Christ,
Pastor John