Local Stories: Malcom Johnston – Gaze on God – Devotional

At the end of his podcast episode, Malcolm shared his personal reflections on Psalm 27:4 and it really is worth reading.

One thing I ask from the Lord, this only do I seek:

that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life,

to gaze on the beauty of the Lord,

and to seek him in his temple.

What God called us into and through in some difficult places. It took me a long time. I'm probably like you. I want to change the world where there's brokenness. And Isaiah 61 is the call of God in my life when there's brokenness and lack of hope and opportunity. I want to change the world. 

God brought me through a lot of tough stuff of realizing that, Malcolm, all I'm calling you to do is be faithful to what I called you to. You don't need to have a big success story to shout about. Your success is that you were faithful to what I called you. 

And what God has taught me a lot about in the last while is from Psalm 27 where David who was a go-getter and he was a fighter. He was a king and all that stuff. And he got to the point of saying, in Psalm 27, he said one thing I ask of the Lord this is that I seek and I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days in my life to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in this temple. 

And that was a go-getter who got to that point of saying, this is the one thing I do. And I'm glad to say that God had to break me down from wanting to constantly be getting things done, to be able to say this is the one thing I value above everything else, to learn to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to learn what that means. To actually just gaze on the beauty of the Lord to spend time in His presence in silence, learning to appreciate his beauty, that these nations that I care about, wanting to see them being restored and transformed. 

God says these are my nations. I'm working. Even before you turned up, I'm working because I'm the God of all the earth. You learn to gaze on all my beauty and realize how big a God that I am. And you just be faithful to what I've called you to today. And don't worry, if you don't see it happen in your lifetime, you just be faithful and learn to gaze on all my beauty and enjoy walking with me. 

And so Psalm 27, I would say, is the big thing that has meant so much when seeking to learn to walk faithfully, whether there seem to be results or not.