Better Than Life

Transcript

Hello, my friend… so glad you're with me today. This is By God's Call — day 275, Better Than Life.

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

Let that land for a moment. Better than life.

David did not write this from a comfortable place. He was in the wilderness of Judah — genuinely thirsty, genuinely hunted, fleeing for his life, cut off from the sanctuary he loved. And in the middle of all of that, the first thing out of his mouth was not a complaint. It was a confession of love. That stops me. Because it's easy to praise when everything is going well. But praise that is born in scarcity, in the wilderness, in the waiting — that is the most genuine praise of all.

And what he declares here is extraordinary. He reaches for a word that in Hebrew is *hesed* — and that word carries a weight our language can barely hold. It's not simply mercy. It's not simply kindness. It is loyal love, committed faithfulness, a mercy that will not give up on you. It is the faithfulness of God that does not depend on your circumstances, that does not shift with your performance, that does not disappear when you are at your worst. That is *hesed* — and that is the love that finds you in the wilderness.

And David says that love is better than life. Think about what that means. Life is the greatest possession a human being has. It is the condition of everything else. And David places God's love above even that. For him, losing his life would be less tragic than losing the presence of God. That is not poetic exaggeration. That is the foundation of a truly free life — a life that is not held hostage by loss, because what is most precious cannot be taken away.

And here is the beauty of it: that *hesed* did not stay on the page of a psalm. It found its fullest expression on a cross. Jesus gave His life precisely because the Father's love is greater than life itself. When you read Psalm 63 with eyes open to the Gospel, you realize that David was singing about something he could not yet see in full — and that Christ came and proved it once and for all. That love that is better than life, we have seen it in flesh and blood.

So when David says "my lips will praise you" — he is not waiting for circumstances to improve. He is responding to who God is. Praising before you see the answer is not pretending everything is fine. It is a faith-act that says: I know who You are, and that is enough. And that act — that single act of choosing to praise in the hard place — transforms the heart from the inside out.

My friend, where is your wilderness today? It might be uncertainty, it might be exhaustion, it might be a pain that hasn't lifted yet. And it is exactly there that this psalm meets you.

So here is what I want you to do today — and I mean really do it, don't just hear it. Before breakfast, open to Psalm 63:3. Read it out loud. Place one hand over your heart. And talk to God — in your own words, not fancy ones — tell Him why His love is better than anything you could lose today. It doesn't have to be beautiful. It just has to be honest.

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