How's Your Spiritual Health?
Sermon One: Do You Thirst For God?
Sermon series based on the book by Donald Whitney: Ten Questions to Diagnose Your Spiritual Health
Also referenced in this sermon is chapter two of Thirsting After God by Keith Price
Prepared by Thomas A. Gaskill for Sunday May 22, 2011
Introduction:
Just the other day I went to see my medical doctor that my physical health could be examined. They checked my temperature, blood pressure, red and white blood cell count, sugar level, cholesterol, uric acid, etc.... After receiving my test results the doctor wrote out a couple of prescriptions to help facilitate good health and also told me to eat right, exercise regularly, get plenty of rest, (and play golf). He told me to breathe deep for a minute six times throughout the course of the day. He told me to take a good multivitamin and drink plenty of water. Probably many, if not all, of you here today can relate with my experience. It is good and necessary to take care of our bodies if we desire to live a long and productive life.
Here's my question for you: “How's your spiritual health?” Have you had a spiritual checkup lately? What would the doctor find if he or she were to examine your soul? Listen to these diagnostic questions for our spiritual health presented to us by a doctor of ministry Donald Whitney in his book entitled Ten Questions to Diagnose Your Spiritual Health:
1.Do you thirst for God?
2.Are you governed increasingly by God's word?
3.Are you more loving?
4.Are you more sensitive to God's presence?
5.Do you have a growing concern for the spiritual and temporal needs of others?
6.Do you delight in the Bride of Christ?
7.Are the spiritual disciplines increasingly important to you?
8.Do you still grieve over sin?
9.Are you a quicker forgiver?
10.Do you yearn for heaven and to be with Jesus?
These are well put diagnostic questions for our spiritual health. Today, I will be focusing on the first of the ten questions: “Do you thirst for God?” Do you desire Him, yearn for Him, want Him? Do you seek Him?
Read Psalm 42:1-2 (Amplified Version)
Everyone is wired to thirst for more. But not everyone's thirst is healthy. Dr. Whitney says there are three kinds of thirst:
Thirst of the empty soul
Thirst of the dry soul
Thirst of the satisfied soul
1.Thirst of the empty soul
a)unconverted natural person without the Holy Spirit who thirsts after:
money, sex, power, houses, lands, sports, hobbies, entertainment, transcendence, significance, education
Always searching and never resting. Turning from one pursuit to another
b)Keith Price in his book Thirsting After God calls them mirages:
The mirage of pleasure:
entertainment, fun, drugs, alcohol
The mirage of power
always want to climb higher up the corporate ladder. Fail to recognize that true power is found in submission to Christ.
The mirage of possessions
“The more we have, the more we want! And the more we get, the more we leave behind. Neither getting nor leaving can bring joy.”
The mirage of knowledge
Being a know-it-all just alienates friends.
The mirage of change
Change jobs, houses, hobbies, spouses thinking the fault lies outside self
The mirage of pursuing my inner self
Being self-centered never results in lasting happiness; it just puts makeup on the wound to make it appear better than it is.
Keith Price asks a couple of penetrating questions which has been slightly reworded to fit this sermon:
Has the mirage been chased truly thinking it would bring fulfillment? Or could it be a deliberate effort to avoid facing God?
2.Thirst of the dry soul
a)The converted born again believer who has tasted that the Lord is good and knows what he or she is missing
b)Dr. Whitney lists three ways a Christians soul becomes arid:
“The most common is by drinking too much from the desiccating (dehydrating) fountains of the world and too little from 'the river of God'”.
In other words, the soul becomes dry as the Christian becomes conformed to the ways of the world instead of being transformed by the renewing of the mind (Rom. 12:2).
Instead of satisfying our thirst, the world's fountain is like acid that eats holes in our souls making them harder and harder to fill. Has anyone ever tried containing gasoline in a styrofoam cup? It doesn't work! We are the same – God didn't create us to be fulfilled with sin but only with Him. God created us in His image so we would thirst for Him and He alone can satisfy.
What seems like God desertions/abandonments.
We know from Hebrews 13:5 that God will never leave you nor forsake you.
This feeling of desertion is sometimes experienced by those going through tests, trials, and difficult times.
Reminds me of the famous poem written by Mary Stevenson in 1936:
Footprints in the Sand
One night I dreamed I was walking along the beach with the Lord. Many scenes from my life flashed across the sky.
In each scene I noticed footprints in the sand. Sometimes there were two sets of footprints, other times there was only one.
This bothered me because I noticed that during the low periods of my life, when I was suffering from anguish, sorrow or defeat, I could see only one set of footprints, so I said to the Lord, “You promised me Lord, that if I followed you, you would walk with me always. But I have noticed that during the most trying periods of my life there has only been one set of footprints in the sand. Why, when I needed you most, have you not been there for me?”
The Lord replied, “The years when you have seen only one set of footprints, my child, is when I carried you.”
GOD DOES NOT ABANDON HIS PEOPLE!
“A third cause of soul dryness in a Christian is prolonged mental or physical fatigue.”
Reminds of the need to hear Jesus' words found in Matthew 11:28 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”
Soul dryness is the inevitable result when we labor in our own strength and fail to delight in God's refreshing presence.
3.Thirst of the satisfied soul
a)Jesus tells us in Matthew 5:6 “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.”
We want to always thirst so as to always be filled.
The founder of Harvard University, Thomas Shepard, said “There is in grace an infinite circle: a man by thirsting receives, and receiving thirsts for more.”
The great puritan Jonathan Edwards said “Spiritual good is of a satisfying nature; and for that very reason, the soul that tastes, and knows its nature, will thirst after it, and a fullness of it, that it may be satisfied. And the more he experiences, and the more he knows this excellent, unparalleled, exquisite, and satisfying sweetness, the more earnestly he will hunger and thirst for more.”
A.W. Tozer prayed “O God, I have tasted Thy goodness, and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more. I am painfully conscious of my need for further grace. I am ashamed of my lack of desire. O God, the Triune God, I want to want Thee; I long to be filled with longing; I thirst to be made thirsty still.”
Thomas A. Gaskill says “The more you thirst after God, the more you will want to thirst after God because only God can satisfy in such a way that gives us an holy desire for an holy more.”
You may be asking “how do I get this thirst?” “Can I conjure it up on my own?”
God initiates spiritual thirst.
1 John 4:19 NIV We love because he first loved us.
The Holy Spirit enables you to thirst after Him.
Galatians 4:6 NIV Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, "Abba, Father."
You cannot conjure it up on your own; but you can seek to thirst more.
Jesus tells us:
Luke 11:9-13 NIV "So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. (10) For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened. (11) "Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? (12) Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? (13) If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!"
When was the last time you asked the Holy Spirit to be given to you. God wants to fill you with His divine presence! Are you walking with the Holy Spirit?
Dr. Whitney offers some “Practical Steps for Thirsting After the Thirst-Slaker”
Meditate on Scripture
Pray through Scripture
Read thirst-making writers
How's your spiritual health? Do you thirst for God?
Jesus invites you: Read John 7:37-39a (Amplified Version)
I invite you now to thirst after God! Be filled with the Holy Spirit! Earnestly desire Him!
