Better Than Life: Learning to Desire God Above All
- Samuel Jon
- Aug 24
- 4 min read
Psalm 63:3 says, “Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you.”
We sing words like this in modern worship with boldness. “Draw me close and teach me to abide.” “Be my strength, my song in the night.” The lyrics sound confident, but have we paused to wrestle with what it really means to say that God’s love is better than life itself?
The Context of the Psalm
David is not sitting in Jerusalem on his throne when he writes this. He is in the wilderness of Judah, hungry, pursued, and cut off from comfort. His life is fragile. Yet in that moment of weakness, he says God’s covenant love is more valuable than survival.
The Hebrew word for “steadfast love” is hesed, God’s covenant loyalty. It is not mood or sentiment. It is God’s unchanging commitment to His people, rooted in His own character. David declares that this love outranks breath itself. In verse 1 he describes his thirst: “My soul thirsts for you, my flesh faints for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water.” In verse 3 he declares that God’s hesed satisfies more than life itself.
A Love That Reorders Everything
Picture a parent sitting in a dim hospital room. The steady beep of monitors fills the silence. Their child lies motionless in the bed, every breath a fragile mercy. Hours blur into one another. Meals, rest, work, and responsibilities fade away. Nothing matters but the love they have for their child.
If that parent could trade their heartbeat for the child’s, they would do it without hesitation. Love has reordered everything.
That is the kind of valuation David makes. He is not saying life is worthless. He is saying that compared to God’s steadfast love, even life cannot compete. And here is the deeper truth. The love of a desperate parent willing to trade places is only an echo of God’s covenant love. God did not simply wish He could take our place. In Christ, He actually did.
From Abiding to Desire
In John 15, Jesus commands His disciples to remain in Him. Then He ties abiding to joy: “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love… I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.” Abiding is not only connection. It is satisfaction.
Psalm 63 and John 15 belong together. Abiding is the practice. Desire is the fruit. The declaration “your love is better than life” is the voice of one who has remained and discovered that nothing else satisfies. Paul echoes the same truth in Philippians 3:8 when he counts everything as loss compared to the surpassing worth of knowing Christ.
Living as if His Love is Better Than Life
This is not lived out in theory but in daily rhythms that train desire.
Reorder your desires. Begin each day by asking, “What am I counting on for joy today?” If the answer is not God Himself, confess and return to Him.
Praise in the wilderness. David praised before deliverance. Practice thanking God when answers have not yet come. Praise before the breakthrough trains the heart to treasure Him above outcomes.
Seek Him relationally, not transactionally. Begin prayer with adoration, not requests. Praise Him for who He is before asking Him to change what you face.
Embed worship in ordinary life. Sing, pray, or recite Psalm 63 while commuting, at the desk, or awake in the night. When the song says, “Be my strength, my song in the night,” pray it exactly when the night feels longest.
These rhythms are not boxes to check. They are ways to train your heart to desire Him until His love becomes your deepest satisfaction.
The Consequences of Not Living This Way
If His love is not better than life, then something else will be. We will cling to coLearmfort, success, approval, or survival as if they are ultimate. We will measure joy by circumstances instead of presence. We will abide in outcomes rather than Christ. And when outcomes fail, so will our joy.
The Comfort and the Challenge
Here is the comfort. Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Not trouble, not famine, not persecution, not even death. His love is covenantal and eternal.
Here is the challenge. To live as if His love is better than life requires values to be reordered in ways that will not come naturally. It comes through abiding. It comes through wilderness praise. It comes through dependence that moves words off a lyric sheet and into lived reality.
Bottom line: Forgiveness shows us the justice of God. Abiding shows us the lifeline of God. Psalm 63 shows us the satisfaction of God. His steadfast love is better than life. When you believe that, praise rises in wilderness, joy is present in sorrow, and obedience is driven not by cost but by love.