Pursuing One Thing
What will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?
One thing have I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to inquire in his temple. Psalm 27:4
Psalm 27:4 is probably the most familiar “one thing” verse in the Bible. Here, David said that his singular passion was to encounter the presence of God in the house of God.
Like many of us, David was a busy person with a complicated family and many people counting on him. He wasn’t a Levite or in full-time ministry. Rather, he was a full-time government official as his day job with a very busy schedule and numerous responsibilities. Even so, with all of those reasons to consider himself too busy for the house of prayer, he made his first priority to be in the tabernacle daily, setting his attention on the Lord.
The Reproach of One Thing
Of course, it was highly impractical for the king of Israel to want to spend time in God’s house every single day, and yet he called it his one desire. Many people in his life didn’t understand his passion, starting with his family. From the earliest days when he was the little brother exiled to the back hills of Bethlehem to watch the sheep, he was an outcast to his family. His obsession with the house of prayer continually got him into trouble. It seemed like a radically unbalanced lifestyle and interfered with others’ expectations.
For it is for your sake that I have borne reproach, that dishonor has covered my face. I have become a stranger to my brothers, an alien to my mother’s sons. For zeal for your house has consumed me, and the reproaches of those who reproach you have fallen on me.
Psalm 69:7-9
Many of us who have chosen to prioritize the presence of God can relate to this. This is especially true of those whose lives revolve around scheduled commitment to modern-day expressions of the house of prayer, such as participating in prayer meetings multiple times a week at a church or prayer ministry. This kind of lifestyle is disruptive! Maybe we have felt misunderstood by family, or faced financial obstacles, or encountered pressure from bosses and coworkers who don’t understand our priorities. In the midst of accusations, David kept his focus on God and settled in his heart that it was God’s approval he was seeking. For this, God called him “a man after My own heart.”
One Thing Have I Asked
David had one all-consuming singular desire, and every other desire paled in comparison to this one. It would have been his prayer request every single day. He could have made many other things his top prayer, such as wisdom to be a good king, and certainly the Psalms show that he prayed for many things, but this was the longing above all others. David saw being in God’s presence daily as the doorway to the fulfillment of every other prayer. This was his source of joy, wisdom, provision, and everything else he could ever need. Rather than using his energy to pursue all of the other things that seemed important, David pursued one thing, and from within that place, he sought and trusted God for the rest.
I have to wonder, if being in God’s house every day was David’s top priority, what other things on his list took a backseat? What suffered because of that strong focus? How many kingly obligations did he have to miss or reschedule so that he could be in the tabernacle? It must have been difficult for his assistants and advisors who were trying to schedule meetings around his prayer room times. Spending time daily gazing on the beauty of an invisible God is not a conventional way to run a government.
Seeking God as our “one thing” may often look like choosing to be less successful at other things, because we quite literally have fewer minutes in the day to pursue them. Our world measures success in certain ways, and unfortunately, a thriving relationship with God isn’t generally at the top of the list. As we make the decisions that shape our lives, we must choose where our priorities lie.
Assessing Our Priorities
When I was in college studying for a career in acting, I knew that in order to be even a moderately successful actor, I would need to throw all my heart and soul into pursuing auditions, agents, and the perfecting of my craft. At the same time, I was spending one or two hours a day on the floor of my campus prayer chapel. I was becoming more and more consumed with pursuing God with as much time and energy as I possibly could. In my senior year, I found myself at a crossroads, and didn’t see how I could wholeheartedly pursue both God and acting at the same time. “No one can serve two masters” felt very real to me.
Of course, many professional actors do deeply love Jesus and pursue careers for His glory, but for myself, I felt like I was being warned that my passion for God would gradually diminish as the constant pursuit of the next acting opportunity became my one thing. I graduated with my theater degree, and even accepted an agent’s business card at my senior showcase, but I never called her. I closed the door on acting professionally and decided to see where this journey of seeking God first would take me.
Jesus said, “What will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?” Francis Chan shared a quote from Tim Kezziar that put it this way: “Our greatest fear as individuals and as a church should not be of failure but of succeeding at things in life that don’t really matter.” If we want to seek God as our one thing, we must be willing to look like a fool in order to seek God first. If we want to succeed at the most important things, we must risk failing, or at least being less successful, at the things the world values.
The good news is that God sees us, and He always provides for our needs as we trust Him. In fact, He often blesses us far past what we could manage in our own strength! Jesus promises, “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”
This article was an excerpt from the book Pursuing One Thing by Caitlyn Peterson.
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