Hope In The Wilderness: Turning Suffering Into Seeking - Psalm 63 Series

Psalm 63:0,1 A Psalm of David. When he was in the Desert of Judah. 1 O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water

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Introduction: Emotion and Temptation

The most important thing in life is to love God. The emotional component of love for God – that part of love that you feel, is at the core of love. Without it there is no love. And where it is weak, there will be more failure than victory over sin.

If we come to the conclusion that it is OK not to feel anything for God or love Him with our emotions as long as we love Him with our volition, will and commitment; we will mostly fail, because most of our sins we commit out of an emotional impulse. We usually do not decide to sin as a result of some rational process or well-reasoned argument. Most of the time we sin because of a powerful impulse that activates our emotions, not our intellect. So if God has our mind and resolve, but not our emotions, what is there to protect us against temptations that hit we at the level of our feelings? We will not have success resisting emotional temptations until we love God with our emotions.

Review

We are studying 7 ways to intensify our love for God from Ps.63. The first is resolve. Resolve is that part of you over which you have immediate, direct control. Step one in loving God more is resolving to prefer Him over the world. The key word is “prefer.” The point is not just to resolve to give up sin, but resolve to prefer God over sin and the world.

In the last lesson we studied a second step - hungering and thirsting for God. Love for God is the Sun that holds the solar system of your life in order, and desire (or thirst) for God is the fuel that powers that love. It is the engine that powers sanctification.

You can not progress any further in your walk with the Lord from where you are right now unless you find a way to increase your desire (thirst) for Him beyond where it is now.

Definition of thirst for God: 1)A desire to be satisfied 2) by a mystical fellowship with God 3) through direct, personal experience of His attributes.

There are three parts to that definition:

1. It must refer to a desire for satisfaction, because it is called “thirst”

2. It must be mystical (that is, it has to be a direct experience with God, not just an indirect one) because God Himself is the object of the thirst, and because God describes it with the most direct, experiential terms there are (eating, drinking, seeing, walking with, being in the presence of, eating a meal with, etc.)

3. It must be an experience of God’s attributes, because our only way of knowing God is through His attributes – nothing else can be known about God. You can not progress any further than you are now in your walk with God unless you find a way to increase your desire to be satisfied by a mystical fellowship with God through direct, personal experiences of His attributes.

The NT describes that exact same thing with the term “fellowship.” They are the same thing, but the imagery of eating and drinking is especially helpful because it reminds us that it will never happen unless you get hungry and thirsty enough. Until your desire for God reaches a high enough level of intensity, you will not have enough motivation and drive to do what it takes to find intimate fellowship with Him.

So how is appetite increased? Verse 1 teaches us one important way: use the thirst-intensifying effect of suffering to increase thirst for God, which is done by faith (believing that God is the only water, and that just as water immediately satisfies your thirst the instant it comes in contact with your mouth, so it is with the presence of God – it immediately satisfies the instant it comes in contact with Your soul).

Waiting on the Lord

When we learn not to waste our suffering, but to use its thirst-intensifying effect to increase our thirst for God, suffering will actually become precious to us. In the first lesson the question came up about the harmony between the reality and the massive promise of joy. Jesus experienced grief and sorrow, yet He talked about His continual joy. How do those fit together? One answer is found in the doctrine of waiting on the Lord.

“Waiting” is a term that means almost the same thing as “thirsting.” But the concept of waiting on the Lord provides additional insight. The doctrine of waiting on God is crucial for understanding where joy fits in the picture during those times when you are in the desert. The joy comes from the hope.