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
**************************************
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.
So when David said that his soul was thirsty for God, he was saying that the appetite of his inner man – the immaterial part of him, and also his body – the material part of him; had a sensation of longing that was similar to the sensation of longing your mouth has for water when it is extremely thirsty. So what, exactly, is that longing? What is the sensation David was talking about?
To answer that we must understand what David means by “God.”
The meaning of “God”
At first it may seem obvious; he just means God. But in practical, real-life terms, if your soul were to drink or eat God at, say, 9:30 tomorrow morning, what exactly is it that would take place?
In v.1 David is thirsty for God. In v.5 he talks about being full. Sometimes he is hungry and thirsty; other times he is full and satisfied. God is everywhere present all the time. So why is everyone not full all the time? If you are a Christian, you have God as your father and savior and shepherd and king and husband all the time, 24/7. But you are not always drinking and eating.
So what is the eating and drinking? One thing that is certain is that it is some kind of an experience. What else could the psalmists be talking about if not an experience?
Ps.42:1-2 As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. 2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
The word “experience” is defined in the dictionary as something personally encountered, undergone, or lived through; the act or process of directly perceiving events or reality. You experience God when you personally encounter Him.
The analogies God uses to describe this are the most experiential terms there are. We are to hear Him, behold Him, walk with Him, listen to Him, enjoy Him, be satisfied by Him, drink Him, and feast on Him. Those are images that communicate enjoyable and satisfying experience. And it is that experience David talks about in v.5 that leaves him completely satisfied. Or in Ps.17 –
Ps.17:15 I will be satisfied with seeing your likeness.
So what was David longing for out in the desert? What was it that he did not have but that he so strongly desired? I believe it was a mystical experience with God that would bring satisfaction to his soul.
Mysticism
Many red flags should go up when you hear that phrase “mystical experience with God.” I have spent a great deal of time preaching about the problem of mysticism. For years I have thought of mysticism as a huge problem in the church in our day. People imagine God is speaking to them through feelings or visions or voices, or using the Bible in superstitious ways, or suggesting that when you pray you should stop talking to the Lord and just listen, or they use subjective impulses to determine what is true.
I have always preached against those things, calling them mysticism. I guess I thought of mysticism as imaginary or superstitious experiences with God. But then recently it occurred to me to look up the definition of the word. As it turns out, this is the definition of mysticism: Any direct experience with God. When I read that I realized mysticism is not a bad thing; it is a wonderful thing! I am still against all the superstition. But instead of calling it mysticism, now I call it imaginary mysticism. Imaginary mysticism is bad, but not all mysticism is imaginary. There are real, direct experiences with God.
Certainly prayer, for example, is a direct experience with God. But is that it? We know that the Bible writers, on certain special occasions, had visions of God or other unusual experiences, but what about for us? Does the Bible teach that we are to have any direct experiences with God (other than prayer) on a regular basis?
I think the reason we tend to be reluctant about that is because the people who usually talk about mystical experiences with God so often point to bizarre, strange experiences. You ask, “How were your devotions today?” “Oh, really good. I was transported to heaven and had a great conversation with Enoch. It turns out his favorite food is watermelon.” And so most of us have come to associate mystical experiences with God with the kooks and nuts. But we must not throw the baby out with the bathwater. The truth is, Scripture speaks of direct, mystical experiences with God all the time.
Eph.1:17-19 I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. 18 I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you …
They are already Christians, but Paul is praying that they will have an experience with the Holy Spirit that will result in them knowing God better. What does it mean for God to “open the eyes of your heart”? Is that not a direct experience of God? References to direct experiences of God appear with incredible frequency in Scripture.
So, back to the question of what it would look like for you to eat and drink God tomorrow morning at 9:30. God has revealed Himself to us by describing Himself in Scripture. Each one of those descriptions God uses to reveal Himself we call “attributes.” And that is the only knowledge of God we can possibly have. Nothing can be known of God except that which He has revealed. That means that the only experience we can have of God is to experience, or personally encounter, the expressions of His attributes.
For example, God is love. When you enjoy some specific expression of His love, you are having a mystical experience of God. It is nothing weird or strange. It should be as commonplace as a man kissing his wife. What would it look like for you to have a mystical experience of God’s love tomorrow morning at 9:30? You could feel the sunlight stream in through a window and have one of those moments when it just feels so good – it just makes you happy and not only warms your body but warms your heart; and you realize that at that moment God is giving you a gesture of His love. And your heart responds to Him with joy, “God, I love this. You know just how to make me happy. Thank You Lord – I love You too.”
Another attribute is God’s faithfulness. When you let your heart rest on His reliability, you are experiencing God directly. So tomorrow morning at 9:30, you are reading your Bible about how God takes care of the birds of the air and the grass of the fields, and how you are so much more important to God than they, and you have a sensation in your heart of feeling protected and secure in Him, knowing He will always take care of you. You just had a mystical experience of God’s faithfulness. That is the same thing as drinking or eating God. And that sensation of security you are feeling – or the sensation of being loved when you feel the sunlight - those sensations are the kind of thing David meant by being full and satisfied as with the richest of foods.
Consider another attribute: God is light. Every time you are guided in life by His light, you are having a mystical experience with God. What would that look like tomorrow morning? You are trying to make a hard decision, and you are praying and studying Scripture, and finally, after a lot of confusion, the whole picture begins to clear up in your mind, and God guides your thought process so you put the right principles together with the right facts, and you realize what you should do. There is no voice from heaven; just a providential work of God through your natural thought processes so that your reasoning process ends up going one way instead of another. And certain pros on one side begin to look especially important and certain cons begin to look especially significant. And the right choice becomes clear. You just had a mystical experience of God’s guidance.
Those things are not indirect, theoretical experiences of God, but direct, literal experiences of God in person. They are just as direct an experience of God as my experience of my wife if I hold her in my arms. And if that statement is hard for you to swallow, you probably need to study more of the doctrine of the imminence of God. The Bible teaches us that God is both transcendent and imminent – both far off; way up in heaven, completely distinct from the Creation; and also nearby, close to you; present with you.
The psalmists knew and believed the truth about God, but they longed for something more. They longed to experience (personally encounter, undergo, perceive and live through) the direct reality of God’s presence. And when they did personally encounter, undergo and live through it, it was the most fulfilling, joy-producing and satisfying experience imaginable.
Where people go wrong with experience is when they try to use their perception of their experiences to determine truth (“I think this is true because of this experience I had.”) That is dangerous and wrong. We should never change what the Bible says to fit our experiences.
But that is not to say that experience is not important. Experience does not inform us as to the truth, but experience is the goal of truth. Do not discard experience altogether, as though learning the truth from the Bible is the final goal. Discovering facts about God is not the final goal. God is not just a set of propositions. There is a set of propositions that are true about God, and we must know those before we can know God. But mere awareness of and agreement with those truths is not the same thing as experiencing the presence of God. Do not stop with just knowing and being interested in and intrigued by the truth. The whole purpose of truth is to bring us to experience. The reason I need to learn what the Bible says about peace is so I can experience peace. What good is it if I can recite from memory every single fact in the whole Bible about peace if I do not experience peace in my heart? The reason I need to learn what the Bible says about joy is so I can experience joy. The reason I need to learn what the Bible says about the presence of God is so I can experience His presence.
I began with the claim that the most important diagnostic question for assessing the health of your spiritual life is “How’s your appetite?” In previous weeks we have talked about the importance of desire when it comes to loving God. Desire is an essential component of love. To say that you love someone or some thing but you have no desire for it is nonsense. So loving God means desiring God. And the more you desire God, the more everything in the Christian life will fall into place. The stronger your desire for God, the more all the planets and moons and everything in the solar system of your whole life will be kept in proper orbit.
Many Christians wonder “How can I discipline myself to spend more time with God? I have resolved to do it 100 times, but I can never seem to be consistent with it.” What do you think would happen tomorrow morning you had a powerful, driving desire to read your Bible and pray, and you desired that more than you desired anything else? You would do it – just as sure as you go get a drink when you are thirsty. How about if you struggle with loving a certain person? What if you desired to love that person more than you desired anything else? You would do it. That goes for everything in the Christian life. If you have a powerful enough desire for something, and you have access to that thing, you will satisfy that desire.
Desire is the engine that powers the sanctification process (the process of becoming more holy – more like Christ in your character). It is the gravity that has enough power to hold even massive Jupiter where it belongs. You will not make any further progress in your spiritual life unless you find a way to increase your desire (hunger and thirst) beyond where it is now.
So how do you increase your appetite for God? How do you develop a more intense thirst for Him? As we go through this psalm we will learn how to feast on God’s love. But until you work up a big appetite, you will never have to motivation you will need to feast – nor will you enjoy the feast as you would if you were really hungry and really thirsty. How do you do that? The answer is in v.0.
Redirecting Desire
A Psalm of David. When he was in the Desert of Judah.
David then goes on in v.1 to describe his miserable, dry spiritual condition. He says it is like being thirsty in a dry and weary land where there is no water. And David knew all about that, because when he was writing the psalm he was in a literal dry, weary desert where there was no water.
His circumstances were about has horrible as it is possible for circumstances to be. His son Absalom had turned the hearts of the Israelites against David. The people who had once loved him now turned against him, and it was all being done by his own son, whom David deeply loved. David had to scramble to get things together and escape out of town before Absalom arrived. As he fled he covered his head in humiliation and walked barefoot and cried. Then David’s close friend and most trusted advisor, Ahithophel, went over to Absalom to help him kill David. Absalom asked Ahithophel’s advice and the first thing Ahithophel told him to do was sleep with David’s concubines in a tent on top of the palace roof so everyone knew what was happening. And if all that weren’t enough, as David walked along, Shimei walked along the ridge above him and cursed him and insulted him and pelted him with rocks and showered dirt down on him. David was completely disgraced.
This had to be one of the most miserable, painful moments of David’s life. He was used to having his enemies against him, but to have friends and family turn against you - that really hurts. On top of all that was the physical discomfort of being on the run in the desert with no 7-11’s around. In 2 Sam.17:29 it says David and those who were with him had become hungry and tired and thirsty in the desert. When you are really suffering emotionally, physical suffering just intensifies it.
Put yourself in David’s shoes at that moment. What kind of desires do you think you would have? What do you think you would pray for? If someone walked up and said, “Hey, do you have any prayer requests?” what would you say? Most of us would probably desire water most urgently, and then food and rest – maybe some shelter.
Deeper desires would be for reconciliation with your son who has turned against you. You would want him to come to repentance, and be restored to him. You would strongly desire to be able to go back home, to get your friends back, your throne back. You would want respectability back, your honor back. You would want a good night’s sleep in your own bed at home.
All those desires would come from appetites in the soul. You would be thirsty for all those things. But in that circumstance David was thirsty for one thing.
O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek… Restoration? Water? Rest? Reconciliation with Absalom? What are you really thirsty for David? In this miserable condition, what does your heart long for the most? … earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you When David was in the pit of misery, his soul thirsted for one thing – God.
What life-giving, practical truth can you learn from v.0 that will help you in your everyday walk with God? Learn not to waste your suffering. When you suffer – when you have hard circumstances – when you find yourself in a dry, weary land where there is no water; that has the effect of intensifying the thirst of the soul.
The thirst is always there, but you really feel it in times of suffering. And that gives you an incredible opportunity. If you can do what David did and successfully make God the object of that thirst, you have just succeeded in achieving one of the greatest and most important goals of the Christian life – You will have intensified your desire for God!
The principle we learn from the heading of this psalm is this: use the intensifying power of suffering to intensify your thirst for God.
But how is that done? It certainly is not automatic. The natural response to suffering is not to thirst more for God, but to thirst only for whatever form of relief you can think of. Our natural reaction is to run to some broken cistern, not to God. So how do you get to the point where suffering intensifies your thirst for God? Faith.
Isa.55:2 Why spend your money on what is not bread and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen! Listen to me and eat what is good and your soul will delight in the richest of fare.
That is a fascinating verse. When he talks about that which is not bread, what is He talking about? Bread. The kind you buy at the store. (Or, by implication – any other created thing you might look to for satisfaction.) So if you go to the store and buy a loaf of bread; that is not bread. Why? What is not-bread-like about it? What is it about that loaf that proves that it is not really bread? The fact that it does not satisfy the hunger of the soul. Bread from the store is just a symbol or an emblem of real bread. It has a kind of temporary, physical satisfying effect that gives us a little, faint reflection of what real bread can do – the kind that can delight the soul. Physical bread gives us an illustration of satisfaction, but not real satisfaction.
And so God asks, “Why pour your energy into seeking after that? Why spend your money on that? Why spend your time, and effort and energy trying to get that? If you are going to seek something, why not do like David in Ps.63:1 and seek after me and thirst for Me?”
The bottom line is this – your physical eyes will tell you that the kind of bread you get from the store will satisfy the thirst of your soul. You want satisfaction (contentment, joy, happiness, strength, encouragement, motivation, awe, excitement, etc.) – all those appetites of the soul; and your physical eyes will tell you that you can get those things from the creation, from a relationship, from money... But then God tells you in Isa.55 that none of those things are really bread. And then He tells you again in Jer.2 that those are broken cisterns that cannot hold water. And then He tells you that if you buy bread and milk and wine and water from Him, your soul will delight and be satisfied as with the riches of foods. So the only question is, do you believe Him? That is why I said it all comes down to faith.
How do you translate the longings that come from suffering into thirst for God? How do you make your suffering intensify your desire for God? By faith – by believing that the things you think you want will not really satisfy, but fellowship with God will.
Examples
Suppose you lose your job. Now you are suffering, because there are a number of painful things associated with losing your job. You have anxiety over how you will make a living feeling, you may feel rejected or inadequate or like a failure, or you may have anxiety over having to go through the miserable process of job hunting fear that you may end up having to take a job you do not like. It is not the worst kind of suffering there is, but it is significant enough to get your attention in a powerful way. It is probably not going to slip your mind – it will captivate most of your thinking and make you acutely aware of the thirst of your soul.
What is your soul thirsty for when you lose your job?
• When you have anxiety over how you will make a living, the thirst of your soul is a thirst for security and provision.
• When you feel rejected and inadequate, that is a thirst for the feeling of being accepted and useful.
• When you feel like a failure, that is a thirst for success and fruitfulness.
• When you fret over having to go job hunting, that is a thirst for rest.
• When you are afraid of ending up with a job you do not like, that is a thirst for joy.
So what is your soul thirsty for when you lose your job? The same things it is always thirsty for, but you really feel it when you lose your job, especially your thirst for security and provision, the feeling of being accepted and useful, success and fruitfulness, rest, joy. So now you are acutely aware of the thirst of your soul for those things.
Now, what does the flesh and the world tell you about how to quench that thirst? Get a good job. What does God say? Satisfaction only comes through Him. An ideal job is bread that is not really bread. It is a broken cistern. God is the only true bread and Spring of living water. The question is, do you believe that? Does your soul believe that?
In times of suffering you need to preach to your soul, and explain all this to yourself – like the psalmist in Ps.42. You need to say, “Look, soul, you need to understand that you could get what you think of as the best job in the world, but even if you get that job, unless you experience mystical communion with God along with that job, then you will not get security, provision, acceptance, usefulness, fruitfulness, rest and joy. A job, by itself, will not provide those things. They only come from God. But on the other hand, if you enter into the presence of God and have close fellowship with Him, that is guaranteed to give you security, provision, acceptance, usefulness, fruitfulness, rest and joy, even if you do not have any job.”
And you keep preaching that to your soul until your soul believes it. And once your soul believes it, you will do what David did. You will say, “I am in this miserable desert. O God, You are my God – earnestly I seek You.” You will not say, “I can not stand this desert anymore; I have got to go back home.” You will say, “I can not stand this desert anymore; I have got to have the experience of Your presence.”
The great men and women of faith in Scripture understood this. When Job lost all his money and his family and his health, did he cry out to God in pain? Yes. But what did he cry out for? If you study the first of his speeches (ch.3), you will see it is all about peace. Job did not say, “God, give me my money and family and health back.” He said, “God, give me my peace back.” And where did Job look for that? To God.
You see this example everywhere in the Psalms.
Ps.40:17 I am poor and needy; may the Lord think of me. You are my help and my deliverer; O my God, do not delay.
The solution to my poverty is not money. The solution to my poverty is God thinking of me favorably.
Psalm 101:2 when will you come to me?
Psalm 143:3-7 The enemy pursues me, he crushes me to the ground; he makes me dwell in darkness like those long dead. 4 So my spirit grows faint within me; my heart within me is dismayed…
He has serious problems. What is the solution? Defeat of his enemies? Some strong ally? What did this trial make him thirst for?
… 6 I spread out my hands to you; my soul thirsts for you like a parched land. Selah 7 Answer me quickly, O LORD; my spirit fails. Do not hide your face from me or I will be like those who go down to the pit.
Jesus is our greatest example of all. What did He crave in the desert? How did He respond when Satan tried to make Him think physical bread could satisfy Him?
Mt.4:2-4 After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. 3 The tempter came to him and said, "If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread." 4 Jesus answered, "It is written: 'Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.'"
Jesus was satisfied by fellowship with His Father.
Jn.4:31-34 Meanwhile his disciples urged him, "Rabbi, eat something." 32 But he said to them, "I have food to eat that you know nothing about." 33 Then his disciples said to each other, "Could someone have brought him food?" 34 "My food," said Jesus, "is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.
In Hosea 6 the people are in terrible straits. It says God had torn them to pieces like a wild animal. It says they had been injured and wounded and were bleeding. Their cities had been laid waste, their homes ransacked, And they desperately wanted… what?
Hosea 6:1-3 Come, let us return to the LORD. He has torn us to pieces but he will heal us; he has injured us but he will bind up our wounds. 2 After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will restore us…
(for what purpose?)
… that we may live in his presence. 3 Let us acknowledge the LORD; let us press on to acknowledge him. As surely as the sun rises, he will appear; he will come to us like the winter rains, like the spring rains that water the earth.
They did not say, “Let’s return to the Lord so He will restore us and we will get our houses back.” When your eyes are opened to the real needs of the soul you realize that is not the issue. They said, “Let’s return to Him so we can be restored, which means we will once again be able to live in His presence. When He appears and comes to us – then our troubles will be over, homes or no homes.”
But they did not always have that attitude. God had to teach them the hard way that the other cisterns they had dug were broken and couldn’t hold water. Look back at ch.5.
11 Ephraim is oppressed, trampled in judgment That suffering intensified their thirst. But they did not preach to their souls, and so their thirst was misdirected. 13 "When Ephraim saw his sickness, and Judah his sores, then Ephraim turned to Assyria, and sent to the great king for help.
When you are in military trouble, human wisdom dictates that going to the most powerful nation in the world is probably your best bet. But God needed to teach them that that is a broken cistern and bread that will not satisfy.
…But he is not able to cure you, not able to heal your sores. 14 For I will be like a lion to Ephraim, like a great lion to Judah. I will tear them to pieces and go away; I will carry them off, with no one to rescue them. 15 Then I will go back to my place until they admit their guilt. And they will seek my face; in their misery they will earnestly seek me."
When you suffer the first order of business is to define what relief means. And if your definition is something other than, “Relief means enjoying the presence of God” then watch out, because you are going to have to learn the same lesson Israel did.
When you have a need, or when you suffer loss, the solution is the presence of God. You are upset because you lost your wallet, what you need is the presence of God. Lose your job? You need the presence of God. Lose your leg? You need the presence of God. Lose a loved one? You need the presence of God.
Most people are undergoing significant suffering of some kind - physical problems, emotional suffering, estrangement from a loved one, an intolerable situation at work, etc. Having God reach down and transform your spouse so he or she does not do what they are doing anymore would be wonderful. Experiencing the love of God would be better. Transformation of your boss would be nice, but by itself that wouldn’t satisfy. Fellowship with God will. No matter what the cause of your pain, fellowship with God would be better than relief. Relief alone wouldn’t make you happy. Fellowship with God without relief would.
Augustine said, “My soul is restless until it finds rest in You God.” It takes faith to say that. Think of how much faith you have in physical water for quenching physical thirst. When you are thirsty, you do not wonder whether water will do the trick. In fact, you have so much faith in water’s ability to quench your thirst - your body actually interprets the sensation of dryness in the mouth as exactly the same thing as a desire for water. The feeling of discomfort is interpreted as exactly the same thing as a desire for water – that is how much faith you have in water. Faith in God is when you interpret the discomfort of your soul as exactly the same thing as desire for God. So instead of running around trying to fix everything and trying to eliminate all the things that cause you pain, when you feel unhappy you immediately interpret it like David interpreted his misery in v.1 – as a thirst of the soul for fellowship with God.
Have you ever noticed how quickly and easily thirst is quenched? The instant the water touches the inside of your mouth you feel better. And it is your faith in that truth that drives you to drink water when you get thirsty. Our goal is to get so we believe that about the presence of God and the thirst of our soul. When I am sad or depressed or upset or scared or whatever – that is thirst in my soul for God. And all it would take to feel better would be for the presence of God to just touch my soul. The split second it touches my soul I will feel better. If I really believed that I would run to try to experience the presence of God whenever I feel like that.
Conclusion
The most important thing is to love God. And desire is at the core of love. If you have a driving, powerful desire for God’s love, that will be the sun at the center that will hold all the parts of the solar system of your life in place.
And one of the most powerful ways to intensify your desire for God is to use the suffering in your life as an appetite builder. You never feel the thirst of your soul more than when you suffer. And so if you can teach your soul that that thirst is really a longing for the experience of fellowship with God, that will intensify your thirst for God. And when you understand that, suffering becomes precious to you.
