God Uses the Wildernesses of Life

"O God, Thou art my God; I shall seek Thee earnestly;
My soul thirsts for Thee, my flesh yearns for Thee,
In a dry and weary land where there is no water."
~ Psalm 63:1-2

David the king penned these words after nearly forty years on the throne in Israel. But he didn't write this from the comfort of his palace overlooking Jerusalem. He wrote these words sitting on a rock in the midst of the wilderness of Judah. When he wrote this Psalm he was a man on the run; a man forced to flee from the palace that was rightly his to hide in the wilderness.
It seems the wilderness re-ignited David's passion for the Lord.

I'm not sure of his spiritual condition before he was forced to flee for his life. But I have an idea. I'm thinking that, after forty years of living a king's life and enjoying all the king's finery, maybe David's tears were a bit dry and his heart was a bit cold. Maybe his passion was somewhat diminished. Living large will do that.

It took the wilderness to stoke his passion once again. It took a desperate situation to make him desperate for the Lord again.

I don't think it was any accident that David was forced to flee. It didn't take God by surprise. It looks to me like it was God's doing. Sometimes we all need to be driven to the wilderness. We need something to shake us up; a problem or a situation to renew our sense of desperation. Sometimes it takes a crisis to re-ignite our passion, and to make us say, "O God, Thou art my God; I shall seek Thee earnestly ..."