How Is God Like Food? - Psalm 63 Pt.5 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: Order by Gravitation

John Piper began his message in the 2004 Desiring God Conference with an illustration about the solar system. It is an illustration that gets right to the heart of this psalm. In our solar system the massive sun stands at the center and holds all the planets in their proper courses. Even Pluto, 3.6 billion miles away, is held in orbit by the powerful gravitational pull of the sun.

So it is with the supremacy of Christ in your life. All the planets of your life—your sexuality and desires, your commitments and beliefs, your aspirations and dreams, your attitudes and convictions, your habits and disciplines, your solitude and relationships, your labor and leisure, your thinking and feeling—all the planets of your life are held in orbit by the greatness and gravity and blazing brightness of the supremacy of Jesus Christ at the center of your life. And if he ceases to be the bright, blazing, satisfying beauty at the center of your life, the planets will fly into confusion, and a hundred things will be out of control, and sooner or later they will crash into destruction.

In the Christian’s struggle against sin, love for God must be at the center. If love is for God is lacking, the sun is effectively removed from the solar system and all the countless strategies, tips and tricks for resisting temptation are like so many rockets, trying to nudge Jupiter back into orbit. It will never work. But if one loves God as she should, that will provide the power needed for everything else.

I have spent the last year and a half of my life studying about how to develop a love for the Lord that is a massive enough sun and central enough in the solar system of my life to hold everything else in place. And most of what I learned this year and a half is summarized in Psalm 63. If we switch from Piper’s illustration to David’s, when you love God properly the result will be the full satisfaction of the soul described in v.5. And David shows us 7 ways to achieve that.

Review

Last week we looked at the first – Resolve. The first step in finding full satisfaction in God is resolve – not resolve to merely give up sin, but resolve to prefer God over sin and the world. The process can not even begin unless you turn the key to the ignition by coming to the point of being willing to prefer God in a specific area of sin in your life. And that requires careful thought about exactly what that will cost you.

Today we look at another step. This one we find in v.1.

Diagnostic Question: How’s Your Appetite for God?

If you want to assess the health of your spiritual life, this is one of the most important questions you can ask – even more important than questions like: “How much time are you spending in the Word and in prayer?” “How involved are you in church?” “How often do you share your faith?” or “Are you having victory over temptation?”

The question: How’s your appetite for God?

Everyone has a voracious appetite, but most people have an appetite for this world. The question that will reveal more to you about your spiritual health than any other question I know is, “How’s your appetite for God?”

A Psalm of David. When he was in the Desert of Judah. 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.

David was extremely thirsty for God. But what does that mean? To understand the meaning of thirst for God it is necessary to discover the meaning of “thirst” and the meaning of “God.”

“Thirst” means craving for water.

The word “thirst” describes a condition of having an extremely unpleasant sensation of dryness in the mouth that makes you crave relief. Consulting a medical dictionary (or simply giving it careful thought) reveals that thirst is the craving for relief; not the sensation of dryness in itself.

Thirst is an odd kind of discomfort. I defined it as an unpleasant sensation, but it is an unpleasantness that only really bothers us when there is no drink available. When you are very thirsty, and there is nothing to drink, and you know there will be nothing to drink for a long time – that is miserable. But when you do have a good drink available, not only is the sensation not miserable – in a way, you actually like it because the thirstier you are, the more you will enjoy drinking. It is the same way with hunger. Hunger is miserable when there is no food. But when we are going to a special meal with wonderful food, we will go out of our way to make sure we are hungry when we arrive. And if you arrive at the meal and you are not hungry at all, you are actually disappointed. The hunger is not just an unpleasant pain in your stomach. Thirst is not just a dryness of mouth. Hunger is a desire for food. And thirst is a desire for drink. When there is no food or water around we regard those sensations as misery. But when there is good food and drink available, we like those sensations and prefer to have them than to not have them, because they are the means to greater enjoyment and satisfaction.