Better Than Life

Transcript

Hello, my friend… so glad you're with me today. This is By God's Call — day 317, Better Than Life.

I want you to hear this slowly. Let it land before you move on.

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

Think about who wrote this. David. Not from a throne, not from a moment of victory. He was fleeing through the wilderness of Judah — no palace, no army, no certainty about what came next. Sun beating down, enemies behind him, dry ground beneath his feet. And it was right there — in the most barren place he had ever known — that he opened his mouth and praised. Not after things got better. Right there. In the wilderness. That alone tells us something true about what praise actually is.

But before we get to the praise, stay with the declaration for a moment. David doesn't say God's love is good. He doesn't say it's helpful, or comforting, or useful. He says it is better than life. Life — the most precious thing you have, the thing you protect above everything else — and he says God's love surpasses it. That is an extraordinary claim. And it is not poetic exaggeration. It is theology lived out in a desert.

The Hebrew word behind that phrase — that "steadfast love" — is hesed. And hesed is not a passing feeling. It is not love that comes and goes depending on how well you're doing. Hesed is faithful, covenant love — the love that says "I am not leaving" even when you feel you've given it every reason to. When everything else around you shakes and shifts, this love holds. Not because you earned it — but because it is the eternal character of God, and it is working for you.

And this love didn't stay in poetry. It was proven. At the cross, Jesus gave His own life, because God's love for you is greater than any cost. If you have ever doubted it — does God truly see me, does He truly care — the cross is the final answer. No doubt can stand in the face of that.

So David says: my lips will praise you. Not when I get out of the wilderness. Not when circumstances improve. Now. Here. In this. Praise does not deny the pain — it doesn't pretend the desert isn't real. But it reorients the heart. It turns your face toward the One who is greater than any circumstance you are carrying. And before praise is an act of feeling, it is an act of trust. You choose to declare who God is before you feel everything that means. And in that act, the soul begins to find its footing again.

So today, before breakfast — before you check your phone, before the news, before the day rushes in with everything it's carrying — stop. Say out loud, just one simple sentence: "Lord, your love is better than anything this day can give or take from me." Say it with your mouth. Then sit quietly for one minute. Just one minute. Let that truth settle deep before the noise of the world arrives.

That is the act. Small on the outside. Profound on the inside.

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