One Day With God

Transcript

Hello, my friend… so glad you're with me today. This is By God's Call — day 186, One Day With God.

"For a day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness." Psalm 84:10.

This is math that doesn't add up by the world's standards. One day is worth more than a thousand. Sit with that for a second. This isn't an even comparison — it's one day against a thousand, and the one wins outright. That challenges every instinct of accumulation we carry inside us: that more is always better, that more time equals more value. The psalmist is saying something radical: in God's presence, the quality of a single moment outweighs the quantity of a thousand days lived apart from Him.

And look at the position he chooses: doorkeeper. Not priest, not leader, not someone prominent. Doorkeeper was the humblest job in the temple — the person stationed at the entrance, tending the door, often never even entering the most sacred space. And still, the psalmist says: I would rather have this. I would rather have the lowest place near God than any position of comfort far from Him. This is not resignation — it's a very clear calculation of what actually matters.

If you look back a little earlier in the psalm, you'll see where this conviction comes from. A few verses before, the writer describes his own soul fainting with longing for the courts of the LORD. This isn't a calm, coolly-reasoned preference. It's a physical, deep, almost aching longing. He misses nearness to God the way you miss water when you're truly thirsty.

And then comes the contrast that closes out the verse: the tents of wickedness. There is no neutral middle ground here. Either you are walking toward God's courts, or you are settling into the tents of something else — success, approval, comfort, distraction, whatever it might be. Every life moves toward one of these two places, even when we don't notice the movement.

And why is this choice worth so much? A few verses later, the psalm answers: because the LORD God is a sun and shield. Warmth and protection. It is exactly that sun that warms and that shield that protects which makes a single day in God's presence worth more than a thousand anywhere else, no matter how comfortable that elsewhere may look.

So today, my friend, I want to offer you something simple. Set aside ten minutes — just ten — not to ask for anything, not to run through a prayer list, just to be present. Simply be in God's presence. And in those ten minutes, tell Him, in your own words: I would rather have this than anything else in my day today.

Stay close to God. Pray — then act. I'll see you tomorrow, my friend.