Better Than Life

Transcript

Hello, my friend… so glad you're with me today. This is By God's Call — day 253, Better Than Life.

"Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you." Psalm 63:3.

Let that settle for just a moment. Better than life.

David wrote this in the wilderness. Not on a quiet morning with everything in its place. He was hiding — there was real danger around him, real scarcity beneath him, and uncertainty in every direction. The wilderness here is not a metaphor. It is dust and hunger and fear. And it was exactly there — in that place of lack — that David opened his mouth and said one of the most audacious things any human being has ever said to God.

Your love is better than life.

Think about what that means. For a Hebrew, "life" was not an abstraction. Life was health. Safety. Abundance, family, a future worth having. It was the supreme good — everything a person could want. And David, standing in the middle of the desert, looks at all of it and says: your steadfast love is worth more than all of that combined.

This is not pretty poetry for a wall print. This is a conviction born in scarcity.

And the word underneath it all — hesed, in Hebrew — carries a weight our language can barely hold. Hesed is the love that does not break when you fail. The love that does not grow weary when you go quiet. The love that does not depend on your performance, your consistency, your strength. It is the love God revealed fully and completely in Jesus Christ — who came into the wilderness of this world, stayed, and did not leave.

That is the love David says is better than life itself.

Now notice what David does with that conviction. He does not say, "once I leave the wilderness, once things turn around, once I have enough reasons — then I will praise." No. He praises now. Before the exit. Before the answer arrives. My lips will praise you — present tense, immediate, right here. Praise does not wait for circumstances to improve. Praise is the act of faith that declares God is already enough, even when nothing around you confirms it yet.

And something needs to be said about the lips. It is not an accident that David names the mouth. There is something that happens when you voice praise out loud — when your lips speak what your heart is still trying to believe. Faith takes shape when you speak it. Praise spoken aloud transforms the one who speaks it. That is not a technique. That is the way God made us — people who need to proclaim what they trust in order to trust it more deeply still.

So today — before breakfast, before you open your phone, before you step into the rhythm of the day — stop. Open your mouth. Say out loud, just one sentence: why God's love is worth more than the thing you are waiting for today. It can be simple. It can be short. But let it leave your lips. Let your mouth lead your heart this morning.

You do not have to leave the wilderness first. You can praise him now.

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