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.
Isa.26:8-9 Yes, LORD, walking in the way of your laws, we wait for you; your name and renown are the desire of our hearts. 9 My soul yearns for you in the night; in the morning my spirit longs for you.
All those same terms that describe thirsting (longing, yearning, desiring) are used here alongside waiting. But the concept of waiting adds a crucial component into the mix. It is possible to thirst, long and yearn for something that you will never get. But that is not waiting. Waiting implies an expectation of fulfillment. Another term for the expectation of the fulfillment of your desires is “hope.” Yearning and longing are not joyful unless there is hope of fulfillment. Remember – thirst is miserable when there is no hope of water, but when there is something to drink thirst is actually something you would rather have than not have.
Ps 130:5-6 I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope. 6 My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning.
Waiting is more than just standing around during the time before something happens. Waiting has to do with expectation. If you have a loved one who is at war, and you are not sure if he is dead or alive, and he is supposed to call you Monday at 3:00; and there is also a soap opera that you care nothing about and have no desire to watch that will come on TV at the same time; in this time between now and then you are waiting for the phone call, but you are not waiting for the soap opera.
Part of waiting, then, is looking forward to the thing anticipated. Waiting is not just existing until something happens; it is a desirous anticipation of that thing. The psalmist said My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning. Standing on a wall all night long without a magazine or IPod or anything else, just staring out into the darkness hour after hour is an incredibly boring thing to do. The watchmen longed for the morning to come.
So when they were out there guarding the wall, they were waiting for the morning. But they were not waiting for the next night when they would have another shift. Both things were in the future, but there were waiting for one and not the other. So waiting means looking forward to something in the future that has such a draw on my heart that it captures the affections and attention.
When you are leaving on a dream vacation in three days and you just can not wait to go – that is what the Bible means by waiting. When it is three days before you need to do your taxes that you are dreading – that is not waiting (it is just dreading). If someone is coming to your house but you do not care much about his arrival, that is not waiting. Or even it is someone you do care about and will very much enjoy seeing - if you are so engrossed in the present that you are not thinking about the future – that is not waiting.
Consider what it means when the psalmist says he waits for the Lord. Think of those little moments of emptiness – when tiny things irritate and depress you, or when you feel down for no reason. Those are indications of the longing of your soul for satisfaction that can not be found in this world. The more petty the thing that bothers you the less petty the longing is. When some tiny, little thing really bothers you, that means the longing in your soul for God is really big. And so the goal is to let those moments be translated into intense longing for the next time of close fellowship with God. That is waiting. When your soul feels empty or depressed, think: “My soul must be starving for fellowship with God. This pain and frustration I feel – it will not go away until my soul has been touched by the presence of God. I can’t wait until my next experience of fellowship with God!”
There is another important part to waiting. Waiting also involves deciding not to choose an alternative. A child waiting to be picked up from school who, after standing there for 10 seconds, decides “I think I’ll just get a ride home with my friend,” will have to face her mother’s question: “Why didn’t you… wait?” Waiting for a your, then, means deciding not to take another way home. If a man is in love with a woman but can not get married because he is still in college, and he says, “Wait for me to finish college,” what is he asking? How does she wait for him? She waits by not marrying anyone else.
So waiting means not going after something else. When you feel those empty moments, when you are irritated or frustrated or you feel depressed or just empty inside, when you have those times when you feel that life just is not the way it should be; say to yourself, “I’ll wait. God, I’ll wait for the next time You let me feel Your presence. I’ll wait for You to satisfy my soul. I will not seek it from any other source.” That means you will not try to satisfy your soul or make yourself feel better another way. If those times come and you try to make yourself feel better by eating something or by watching a movie or by doing something fun or by some sin, that is like taking another ride home instead of waiting for your mother to arrive. God wants us to wait for Him, and that means deciding not to find some other satisfaction for our souls.
God wants us to wait because He knows that nothing else will satisfy our soul. If a child takes another ride home from school she will still get home. But that is not how it is when we fail to wait for God. Failing to wait for God and finding some substitute is like getting on a bus that does not take you home. It takes you into the middle of the desert and then leaves you there. When you feel bad and you turn to something besides God to satisfy that emptiness in your soul – something like exercise or friendship or talking on the phone, or sports or shopping - Jer.2:13 calls those broken water tanks that cannot hold water, and they will never satisfy.
So waiting for God means eagerly and joyfully looking forward to and longing for fellowship with Him and, in the mean time refusing to try to satisfy your longings with a substitute. There are two things that will keep you from turning to a substitute. Believing that the substitute will not satisfy (knowing that it is a bus that is fun to ride on, and that you do not have to wait as long for, but that only goes to the desert), and believing that what you are waiting for will satisfy.
And the joy you get from knowing for sure that it will satisfy is called, “hope.” Hope is feeling good today because you are so sure that what is coming tomorrow will satisfy.
So how does joy fit with suffering? When you are thirsty, and you know water is on the way, you like being thirsty. When you are hungry, and you are on the way to a Thanksgiving feast, you like being hungry. The joy comes only when you know for sure you are about to get what you are so hungry for and that it will satisfy.
So when you suffer, do not just suffer. Do not let your suffering be mere suffering. Make it waiting. The knowledge that what is coming will be satisfying and wonderful, and the decision not to look to something else for satisfaction is what makes it waiting instead of just mere suffering. If you make your suffering waiting, then it will intensify your thirst for fellowship with God.
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Waiting for a vacation, however, is only exciting if the vacation is a certainty. If there is a 2% chance that you will go, that does not get you very excited. It has to be a sure thing.
So how sure is it that God will come to you and that you will be successful in experiencing His presence to the degree that you will be satisfied in your soul and full of joy? How likely is that to happen sometime in the next 12 hours? Is that kind of fellowship with God always available? And if so, how hard is it to obtain?
Seeking God
How did David respond to the thirst of his soul in v.1?
O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you
David’s suffering intensified his thirst for God, resulting in an earnest seeking. David used the term “seek” to describe the effort he was making to satisfy his thirst for God. Why do you suppose he used that term? What does it mean for a believer to seek God? Is God lost? Why do we need to seek Him? Whatever happened to God’s promise in Dt.31:6 that He will never leave you? What happened to Jesus’ promise in Mt.28:20 that He would be with you always, even to the end of the age? If He is always with you, why do you have to seek Him?
How could David have written both Ps.139 and Ps.101? In Ps.139 he says:
7 Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? 8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. 9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, 10 even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.
But then in Ps.101:2 he says: when will you come to me? “God, You are always with me. When will you come to me?”
Ps.13:1 How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?
How can the same man write both those? Is God always with you or not, David? And if He is, why do you need to seek Him all the time and with such earnestness?
The promise that He is always with us means fellowship with Him is always available. There are some times when greater fellowship is available than other times, but some fellowship with God is always available. There is never a time when seeking fellowship God would be a fruitless effort. If there were ever a time when seeking after God would not work, then God would be a liar when He says “Seek Me.” Because the command implies the possibility of success. That is the logic of Isa.45:19.
Isa.45:19 I have not spoken in secret, from somewhere in a land of darkness; I have not said to Jacob's descendants, 'Seek me in vain.' I, the LORD, speak the truth; I declare what is right.
If God were to command someone to seek Him knowing that such seeking would be a vain effort, God would not be speaking the truth, because the command to seek Him implies He can be found by the repentant sinner. If you hang on to your sin, that is like closing your eyes. You will not be able to find fellowship with Him then, because that is not real seeking. (Isa.1:15) But if you repent of your sin, you will be able to find fellowship with Him.
Fellowship with God is not easy
So fellowship with God is always available, which means there is never a time when joy is impossible. You can have joy at any time. Any time when you do not have satisfying joy, it is always because you are not experiencing something you could be experiencing.
God is always with us, but we are not always experiencing fellowship with Him. To have that, we must seek it. How hard must we seek after it before we will find it? David gave us a clue to the answer to that question in v.1. In what way did David seek after God? Earnestly. The Hebrew word translated “earnestly” means “persistently” or “insistently.” That implies it is difficult – especially in “desert” times.
You do not earnestly seek something that is easily found. Have you ever earnestly sought after your right hand? The earnestness of the psalmists in seeking God shows that finding God is not easy. That has some profoundly important implications for us in our understanding of what daily communion with God is. Most of the time, when I ask people about how their prayer life is going, the answer is something like: “It is very strong. I don’t spend long blocks of time in prayer; instead I pray all through the day. I’m constantly praying without ceasing all day long.”
If that is true – if you are genuinely fellowshipping and communing with God all day long, that is terrific. But before we pat ourselves on the back too much, we need to take a close look at what kind of prayers we are praying all day long. For most of us, the natural process is for our prayers throughout the day to become hollow – so hollow that they are not really even really prayers.
What would it sound like if God recorded all your little prayers through the day and played back the tape?
“God, please make this light turn green before I get to the intersection.”
“Oh no, I can not find my wallet, Jesus, please show me where it is… Oh, here it is – thanks Jesus.”
The phone rings – “Oh Lord, please do not let it be that person I do not want to talk to.”
You face some hard decision – “God, please give me wisdom. Should I do this option or that one? Which will work out better?”
“Dear heavenly Father, please take this headache away soon.”
“God, I’m having trouble falling asleep. Please let me go to sleep.”
Is that kind of thing really fellowship with God? If so, there is nothing difficult about finding fellowship with God. If that is fellowship with God, why did David have to seek so earnestly for it? How hard is it to mumble requests for our preferences to God all day long? When I go through the day mumbling statements to God about which events would be convenient to me, that does not generate a lot of intimacy with Him, nor does it give me the kinds of rewards Scripture associates with the presence of God. True fellowship with God satisfies the thirsts and longings of the soul. It actually gives you satisfying helpings of contentment, joy, happiness, strength, encouragement, motivation, awe, excitement, etc. Ask yourself, do you really walk away with noticeably satisfying helpings of joy, strength, encouragement, and happiness when you say things like, “God, please let me recover this file I lost on my computer”?
If I have been doing my best to live the Christian life for 20 years and still I am not a man of great joy, and my times with the Lord are not the most enjoyable part of my day, either God is not satisfying to me, or I have not been having fellowship with Him all this time. The former is impossible, so it has to be the latter. If your times with the Lord are not satisfying and joy-producing, you have not been communing with Him.
How can you seek God for 20 years and not find real, heart-moving intimacy with Him that produces exuberant joy? It is very possible that this whole 20 years it has not really been God you were seeking. Could it be that much of that time you were really seeking something else, and looking to God as the means of getting what you were really seeking? Many people pray to God, pray to Jesus, read their Bibles, go to church, and carry out ministry thinking those are acts of seeking God, but really they are spiritual adultery. Because all we are really doing is seeking something else – like relief from our suffering or something else we think will satisfy, and we are just using God as a tool to get that thing. And all our prayers and so-called “seeking” of God are really just effort to use God to get what we think will really satisfy.
That is exactly the kind of prayer James calls adultery in James 4. It is like a wife asking her husband for hotel money so she can spend the night with her boyfriend.
James 4:3-4 When you ask (in prayer), you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. 4 You adulteresses! Do not you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God?
When we look to earthly things to satisfy the thirst of our soul, that is adultery. And when we use prayer to ask God to supply us with earthly things to satisfy our thirst, we are just asking Him to finance our adultery with the world.
The natural tendency of the Christian life is to decay into a religious version of a secular life. For most secular people, the goal of life is to find fulfillment through maximizing enjoyment of things, people and activities. That is how a child decides what toy to play with. And as he grows older, not much changes. College students select a major based on which major will most help them maximize their enjoyment of things, people and activities later in life. Adults chose a spouse and a job based on what will maximize their enjoyment of things, people and activities. That is the secular life.
When a Christian goes through the whole day with little sentence prayers that are mostly about matters of convenience, is that not simply a religious version of the secular life? The only difference is we are asking God to help us maximize our enjoyment of things, people and activities. The only time you are actually seeking God is when you are seeking fulfillment through maximizing your enjoyment of God. Any prayers for things or circumstances you desire that do not have that as their purpose are adultery against God.
Fellowship with God is the only thing that matters
We have already discussed Jesus’ words to Martha in Lk.10, where Jesus said, "only one thing is needed.” He did not say fellowship with Him is the most important thing. He said it is the only thing that is needed period.
If asked if you desire the experience of direct fellowship with God you would probably say yes. But that is not really the important question. The important question is not, “Do you desire to experience God’s love?” The question is, “Do you desire anything else?” You want to experience God, but is that the only thing you want?
Ps 27:4 One thing I ask of the LORD, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple.
Ps 73:25-26 Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you. 26 My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
That sounds like a profound theological truth, but if you are honest, you are probably thinking, “What about milkshakes?” If there is no desirability outside of God, why do millions of Christians go to Dairy Queen and pay hard-earned money for ice-cream?
In the NIV Psalm 43:4 says I go to the altar of God, to God, my joy and my delight. In the Hebrew it literally says this: …to God the joy of my enjoyment. In order for there to be enjoyment, there has to be a spring of joy supplying that enjoyment. You have a lot of enjoyment in life. You enjoy your friends, your stuff, gifts, holidays, football, food, sleeping, new clothes, music… In our natural, idolatrous flesh, we tend to assume that the source of the joy we get from those things is those things themselves. So when you go to the store and get some new clothes, and that brings you enjoyment, the natural tendency is to assume that the spring of joy that supplies that enjoyment is in the clothes.
But the joy of your enjoyment of new clothes does not come from the clothes. That becomes obvious when the day comes when you are down and depressed and you have lost your joy and you go to the mall and buy some clothes, and your find they do not bring you any joy. The spring of joy that supplies the enjoyment is God.
Another passage that teaches the same thing is Eph.1:23, where God is called the one who fills everything in every way. Things like new clothes and vacations and good friends and family all have a certain amount of fullness (abundance of goodness). And Eph.1:23 says that God is the only source of all that fullness.
When we look to things, people and activities as the source of our joy, that is idolatry. But when you are enjoying a milkshake and you look at that shake in your hand and you realize at that moment you are in the presence of a God who makes things that taste so good, and you just find yourself loving it that God is like that and the fact that the God who is like that is right there next to you and can not stop giving you good things, and will do that for all the rest of eternity, and you find yourself just loving the fact that you are the child of a God like that; then you are going to slurp that shake or munch down on that potato chip or drive that new car or lay in that soft bed, and it will be an act of worship and communion with God and fellowship with God.
If we are going to honor God with every detail of our lives we need to understand that the desirability of all things derives from God’s goodness. The reason a milkshake tastes so good is because God designed it to reflect something about His own goodness and desirability. That is also why soft pillows feel good on your head, it is why waterskiing is fun, it is why it is enjoyable to watch the power of a huge lightening storm, it is why rollercoasters are exciting, it is why spending time with friends is pleasurable. Every pleasure that exists is pleasurable because it is designed by God to carry an illustration or example of something of His goodness. If God were not good there would be no such thing as pleasure.
All the pleasures of life are good because they are emblems – tiny little scale models of God’s love. When God created everything, first He designed the human soul to enjoy and be thrilled by Him. And then He invented a million little pleasures in life (like milkshakes and video games and skiing and shopping and hunting and friends and family) to serve as pictures of his goodness, so we could understand how desirable He really is. The millions of pleasures of this world are nothing but little illustrations of God’s goodness. And by enjoying them as such, we are worshipping God by showcasing His goodness. The thing that makes a desire evil is when the emblem itself becomes the object of desire and is looked to as the source of joy. That is the core of idolatry.
So now do you see how David can say that he desired and requested nothing but to experience the presence of God in Ps.27? And how Asaph could say he desired nothing on earth besides God? And how Jesus could tell Martha that only one thing is needed? David was saying, “I’m a one-desire man.” Asaph was saying, “I’m a one-desire man.” Jesus told Martha that she needed to become a one-desire woman like Mary.
Being a one-desire person means you have no desire for a can of Pepsi unless drinking that Pepsi can be an act of fellowship with Christ. It means you have no desire to celebrate a holiday with those you love unless it can be an act of communion and intimacy with Christ. It means you have no desire for money unless your possession and use of that money can be an act of fellowship with Christ. It means you have no desire to go to a movie or on a vacation unless that can be an act of fellowship with Christ. That is what it means to be a one-desire person.
And anything short of that is idolatry. You can not serve two masters. Nor can you have two desires. You need to love the one and hate the other. Jesus said only one thing is needed.
If there were 961 important things in life and I missed one, that wouldn’t be a big deal. But if there is only one important thing in life, and I miss that, I have wasted my entire life – I have blown my entire existence! Use this to assess your day. Most of us get to the end of a day and decide if it was a good or bad day by how much we got done, or how much fun we had, or how much money we made. But none of that matters apart from having fellowship with Christ. If you had close fellowship with God yesterday, then yesterday was a good day for you. It was a huge success. If you did that last Tuesday then last Tuesday will go down in the books in heaven as being an eternally significant day for you. 50 billion years from now you will be in heaven looking back on that day and being super glad you spent it that way. You will not regret any day spent in fellowship with Him.
But if you broke fellowship with Him; if you ignored Him and went through the day oblivious to Him (like Martha – running around doing school and everything else you do without enjoying fellowship with Him), your day was a total waste. If last Tuesday you found a cure for cancer and AIDs, and you fed 1000 starving people and you preached 50 sermons and you managed to bring about world peace, but you didn’t seek fellowship with Christ, it was a wasted day. And when judgment day comes you will regret that day, because it was a day you neglected the only thing that matters.
How to enjoy the creation
So does that mean it is wrong to enjoy the creation or to desire things in this world? No. There is a way to enjoy things in this world without committing idolatry. God gave us the creation so that we could use it as a way to enjoy Him. There are two ways to enjoy things in this world. If you use the creation to enjoy God; that is worship. If you enjoy the creation instead of God; that is idolatry. If you use a doughnut to enjoy God; that is worship and it honors God. If you enjoy the doughnut instead of God, that is idolatry and it dishonors God (by making Him look like He is not even as desirable as a doughnut). If you use a ski trip or a vacation to enjoy God; that is good. If you enjoy those things instead of God; that is idolatry.
Everything is a mailman
Most people do not understand idolatry. They just think that if you get to liking something too much, then it has become an idol. And so the solution is to like it less. But is that what God wants? Does He want you to enjoy His gifts less?
Think of it this way: every good thing in this world carries a message from heaven – like a mailman carrying letters. Imagine a man who is overseas for an extended period, and his wife is at home, and so he sends her mail all the time. Does that man want his wife to be happy and excited when she sees the mailman coming? It depends. If she was getting excited because of the message he is bringing from him, then yes, that would make him happy. But if she does not care about the letter and only gets excited because she was in love with the mailman, that would not make him happy.
The question of whether she is honoring her husband or being an adulteress has nothing to do with how happy she is; it has to do with why she is happy. If she is happy for the right reason, then the happier she is the more that honors her husband. If she is happy in an adulterous way, the solution is not for her to just moderate her happiness when she sees the mailman; the solution is for her to forsake her love for the mailman and stoke the fires of her love for her husband.
Every pleasure on earth (that is not sin) is a mailman, carrying a message from God to you. Chocolate cake is a mailman – carrying a message from God about what He is like. A beautiful sunset, your best friend, a comfortable bed, some new clothes, a family vacation, money, sleep, humor - all those things are mailmen, carrying a message from Your Father in heaven.
What is the message? I love you and created all kinds of pleasures for you to enjoy, and this pleasure is my expression of love for you. I am good and pleasurable and satisfying, and to prove it I have created things like cake to teach you little examples of what it feels like to be satisfied by Me.
So things like cake or money or vacations are mailmen, carrying a message from God. Is it good or bad to get excited about those things and enjoy those things? It depends. If you get excited about them because you are excited about the message from God telling you about His goodness and love and how satisfying He is then of course you should enjoy them! God wants you to be thrilled with them! The happier you are over them, the more you are honoring God. In fact, failure to be happy over them actually dishonors God (like a wife who does not get very excited when the mailman arrives with a letter from her husband).
However, what if I get excited about all those things (food, shoes, friends, etc.) without seeing them as messages from heaven? What if I just enjoy them without paying any attention to the One who sent them? That is wicked, adulterous idolatry. God does not want us to fall in love with the mailman.
If a single man gives his girlfriend an engagement ring and she was excited about it, would that make the man happy or sad? It depends. If she was excited only because she loved diamonds, and she grabbed the ring and walked away and never spoke to me again, that would be bad. But if she was excited about the ring not because of the diamonds but because of what the ring meant, (the fact that it was a symbol of his love and his desire for her) that would make him happy.
Every pleasure in life is like that. Every enjoyable good thing in life is like getting a ring from God. You can see it as a proposal from God to enjoy His love, or you can just see it as a round piece of gold. If you eat some food or spend time with a good friend or go on a vacation, or whatever other pleasure you can think of, there are two ways to enjoy that. If you enjoy the pleasure and walk away thinking, “Wow, I liked that” with no thought about God at all, you are like a woman who gets an engagement ring and cares only about the gold. If you do that will you have a happy life? You will have a little bit of happiness. But can it bring the kind of joy we were talking about the first week – the kind that is far greater and more powerful than any suffering? Not a chance.
Conclusion
Ps.63:1 is such a beautiful picture of exactly the way suffering should work in our lives. You find yourself in horribly painful circumstances – out in the desert, and your joy is gone. Then by faith (by believing that the presence of God is the only water there is – it is the only source of joy behind any rejoicing), your soul interprets all the pain as exactly the same thing as longing for fellowship with God – nothing more or less, the effect of that faith is that you take the thirst-intensifying effect of suffering and use it to intensify your desire for fellowship with God, and that intensified desire for God drives you to seek earnestly – not for anything in this world, not for relief from your suffering, not for reconciliation with your son, not for restoration to honor – but only for God. You say, “God, You are the joy of all my rejoicing; You are the only source of satisfaction; please, give me Your love that is better than life. Give it to me through some emblem, like reconciliation with a loved one, or healing, or through marriage, or through a vacation or, better yet, just give it to me directly without bothering with any emblem. I do not care what method You choose Lord, just let me have access to Your presence and Your love. And if You do choose to do it through some earthly, created emblem, protect me from thinking that emblem is the source of the joy.”
