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| The Unsatisfied Worshipper |
Date Posted:
12/23/2002
Author:
Matt Redman
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Heaven’s perfect melody,
The Creator’s symphony,
You are singing over me
The Father’s song.
Heaven’s perfect mystery –
The King of Love has sent for me,
And now You’re singing over me
The Father’s song.
That verse in Zephaniah has always intrigued me. It’s an amazing thought – that God Almighty could be rejoicing over me with singing. Yet one evening, sitting there with my guitar, it struck me more than ever before. So much of my life involves music, but that night I realised the most meaningful song I’ll ever come across will be the one my heavenly Father sings over me.
Soon after writing the song, I found a poem I’d written at the age of 15. It had a pretty different tone:
Due to certain circumstances
and conditions of my heart
I’ve been starved of the love
of a Father in the past,
And it doesn’t seem to matter,
but inside there’s still a thirst
That says ‘I want my Daddy’,
like a hurting five-year-old.
Due to matters arising
and control of situations
I have run from the love
of a Father in the past.
And to me it’s not so pure,
and I find that I’m not sure
If I want that love to seek me
and to reach me anyway.
And it doesn’t seem to matter,
but inside there’s still a thirst
That says ‘I want my Daddy’,
like a hurting five-year-old.
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Lord, since the day I saw You first,
My soul was satisfied;
And yet, because I see in part,
I’m searching, more to find.(1)
As worshippers of Jesus Christ, we live in the tension of the ‘now’ and the ‘not yet’. From the day we received Him, our souls found their destiny and reason. The reality of His love and presence invaded our hearts, and we found fulfilment. The Bible reveals a God who ‘satisfies [our] desires with good things’ (Psalm 103:5).
But that’s not the whole picture. We’re also unsatisfied worshippers – a people who see only in part. This side of heaven we’ll always be carrying in our hearts a holy frustration: the inward groan of believers waiting eagerly for ‘our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies’ (Romans 8:23).
Eugene Peterson wrote: ‘Worship does not satisfy our hunger for God – it whets our appetite.’(2) The more we see of Jesus, the more we know there’s still so much to be seen. The more He touches our lives, the more we realise our desperate need for Him to consume every part of us. Worship often creates just as many questions as answers. Every glimpse of Jesus, wonderful as it is, is just a drop in the ocean. And the more glimpses we have, the more we begin to realise just how vast that ocean is. We are a people ever searching, ‘more of Him to find’; adoring hearts on a tough but rewarding journey. One day we’ll reach our final destination, but for now every step on our walk with God is just a tiny foretaste of the glorious inheritance that lies ahead.
Sometimes it’s encouraging to realise how far we’ve already come on our journey. At a quayside people will draw watermarks – reminders of the levels the tides have reached in that place. In the same way, it’s so good to reflect on the peaks and troughs in our own journey. When I look back, I begin to see the marks of God’s grace all over my life. The further back I look, the more I realise just how much He’s been shaping and healing my heart.
I’ve always found writing lyrics a great way of documenting my walk with God. Reflecting on different songs or poems can really help me retrace my relationship with Him. Recently I wrote a song called ‘The Father’s Song’(3). Based on Zephaniah 3:17, it talks of the powerful, life-changing song God sings over His people:
I have heard so many songs,
Listened to a thousand tongues,
But there is one that sounds above them all;
The Father’s song, the Father’s love –
You sung it over me, and for eternity
It’s written on my heart.
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