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- Welcome back to Drive Time Devotions.
We're looking together at Psalm 63 today.
The title of Psalm 63 is A Psalm of David
when he was in the desert of Judah.
You know, when you're in the desert,
you tend to think about thirst,
especially in David's day,
when it was only the odd oasis
that you might find every once in a while
where you could drink.
There wasn't an a.m. p.m. on every corner.
Let's just say it that way.
And this is a psalm about thirst.
But it's a psalm not about physical thirst,
it's a psalm about what do you do with a thirsty soul.
In Psalm 62, we looked at how to find rest for your soul.
In Psalm 63, we look at what to do with a thirsty soul.
There is some wonderful soul work in these two psalms.
And Psalm 63 reminds us that whether we recognize it
or not in the moment, our soul thirsts for God.
Your heart longs for God because you're made by him.
You're created by him to be in relationship with him.
And this is a psalm that helps us recognize that longing.
It helps us to continually learn how to approach God
to satisfy this longing of our heart, mind, body, and soul.
To quench our thirst, our deepest thirst,
there are five practical and spiritual actions
that this psalm invites you to.
Number one, recognize what you're thirsty for.
That's where you start.
You recognize what you're thirsty for.
Verses one, well, let's just read verse one to start with.
Oh 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.
So out in this desert, David is reminded of our real thirst.
We might think it's something else,
but all soul thirst is a thirst for God.
Now, I'd like to say personally
that I always feel this thirst for God.
God, I'm thirsty for you.
As a deer pants for water, I'm always panting for you.
David often expresses this,
and I know a lot of friends who often express this,
this constant emotional feeling of a thirst for God.
I have to admit, I don't have that all the time.
I'd more feel that I'm thirsty for a break
or for rest or for entertainment
or even for selfish pleasure.
I feel like I need a banana split
when my soul feels restless.
But the truth is, whenever your emotional makeup
and whatever your emotions might be telling you,
the reality is our greatest thirst is our thirst for God.
And God's presence and his presence alone
can quench this true thirst that's in our soul.
Two of life's biggest questions are,
for what do I thirst and what am I drinking?
First, for what do I thirst?
Jesus talked a lot about thirst.
You might remember this.
Matthew 5:6, "Blessed are those who hunger
and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled."
You are made to thirst, both physically and spiritually.
And when you're physically thirsty,
you don't think, what's wrong with me?
I shouldn't be thirsty.
The truth is, there's something right with you.
It's okay to be thirsty.
Your thirst tells you that you need to drink,
which you need to do to survive.
Spiritual thirst is the same.
God designed you with a spiritual thirst for his presence.
And that spiritual thirst can be seen
in a feeling of loneliness or maybe emptiness
or maybe discouragement.
Those emotions don't mean something's wrong with you.
We all have those emotions.
They're the feelings of a soul thirst,
a thirst that's quenched only by the presence of God.
So for what do I thirst?
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.
And then the second question is, what am I drinking?
Jesus in John 4:14 famously said,
"Whoever drinks the water that I give him will never thirst.
Indeed, the water that I give him
will become in him a spring of water
welling up to eternal life."
The water that I give him,
that's what quenches your soul thirst,
the water that Jesus gives, the water of salvation,
the water of eternal life.
Now, it's easy to miss this
because we are surrounded by so many other things
that promise to quench the thirst of our soul.
It's like, let me give you this picture.
It's like you're floating in the middle of the ocean
and you're thirsty, but all you've got
is you in the raft for some reason.
It's a long story, I won't go into it.
And you're thirsty.
And you think, well, there's all this water around me,
maybe I need some salt water.
Well, it's water, but if you drink it,
it's just gonna leave you more thirsty.
It's gonna dehydrate you
and leave you needing more real water.
Here's the truth about you and I as human beings.
We live in a world of salt water,
of things that promise to quench our thirst
that will only leave us more thirsty.
Just flip on the TV, just surf YouTube for a while.
The more you drink of it, the thirstier you get.
Has this happened to you?
And when you do that, then Satan's temptation comes.
You drink it once, it leaves you thirstier,
and Satan comes and he says,
you know what you need, you need more.
Wait a minute, it left you thirstier when you drank it.
Does that make sense?
It's not gonna help to drink more
of what left you thirstier.
Jesus says to really quench your soul thirst,
you need to drink of living water.
And when you drink that, immediately you think, that's it.
That is what I needed.
Quenching my soul thirst begins with recognizing
my soul thirst for the presence of God.
That's what I'm thirsty for.
There's some other things that this Psalm
talks to us about.
It also says to us that if I'm gonna quench my soul thirst,
I need to worship with others each week, very practical.
Verses two and three, I have seen you in the sanctuary
and beheld your power and your glory
because your love is better than life.
My lips will glorify you.
You worship weekly.
There is something about worship
that reminds us of how powerful God is,
that reminds us of how much we need that power.
I think that the most significant thing
that happens in worship is not that we come
and think about God and realize,
oh, you know, God can meet this need in my life.
I think there's something greater in worship
that happens in that.
And it's that I come and I realize
how much God is thinking about me,
how much he's thinking about me every moment of my life.
That builds into your heart an ability to depend on him.
It's like this weekly exercise
to build your dependence on God muscle.
God is thinking about you right now.
He is loving you right now in this moment,
but we forget it sometimes.
Worship allows us to do that.
This is a reminder when it says,
I've seen you in the sanctuary,
beheld your power and glory.
There's the reminder here
that quenching the thirst of your soul
is not just something you do alone.
You need others.
You need to worship with others.
Sometimes we think soul work is always solo work.
It is not.
Many times we need other people in our lives
to encourage and strengthen us.
Don't try to just do this alone.
It's often in being with others
that God quenches the deepest thirst of our soul.
So you worship with others each week.
And then number three,
you physically express your soul's desire.
Listen to verses four and five.
I will praise you as long as I live.
And in your name, I will lift up my hands.
My soul will be satisfied as with the riches of foods.
With singing lips, my mouth will praise you.
So here you've got raised hands and singing lips,
something you're doing with your body.
These are things that we do with our body
that actually impact our soul.
You see, we often think of our soul and our body
as two different, totally disconnected things.
They are not.
God has made you as one package
and everything affects everything else.
And this is the truth about your body and your soul.
Your body informs your soul
and your soul directs your body.
Your soul directs your body.
Your soul is the seat of the will.
It's where you decide what you're gonna do.
It tells your body, I'm gonna go get in the car.
We're gonna go to work now.
But there's a deeper truth here than that.
Your body also informs your soul.
Let's say you don't feel like exercising,
but you start anyway.
And you've seen, we've all seen this,
your soul oftentimes catches up.
And by the time you're done, you feel like exercising
or you don't feel like going to a worship service,
but you go anyway.
And by the end of the worship service,
you feel like, what was I thinking?
Your decision that you made with your body
actually informed your soul.
They work together.
And until you recognize that connection,
you're not gonna be able to truly worship.
Remember, Romans 12 tells us that our bodies
were supposed to offer our bodies as a living sacrifice
and that this is our spiritual act of worship.
They're tied together.
Trying to quench the thirst of your soul
through just internal thinking
will often leave you wanting.
So, here's where you start.
Get your physical body involved in your worship.
First, by actually going to a worship service.
And then, by expressing with your physical motion
in that worship service, your love to God.
Now, you don't have to break dance for Jesus to start out,
but maybe you could just sway a little bit.
Remember, your body informs your soul.
Just try this and see what happens.
Now, there's so much more in this psalm
about how to quench your soul thirst for God.
Let me just touch on the last two very quickly.
In verse six, we're told to turn your thoughts to God
through the night.
That's one of the ways
that we quench this thirst of our soul.
On my bed in verse six, I remember you.
I think of you through the watches of the night.
And in verse eight, we're reminded to cling to God
as our only hope.
That's how you quench the thirst of your soul.
Don't hope in something else.
Hope only in God.
Verse eight, my soul clings to you.
Your right hand upholds me.
In verse eight, that word for clings,
it actually means both to pursue and to hold on to.
It's a word that has both meanings.
And that verse in the amplified version
brings out both meanings.
In the amplified, it says,
my whole being follows hard after you
and clings closely to you.
Your right hand upholds me.
This is the verse from which we get that old chorus
that expresses the thirst of our soul.
Give me one pure and holy passion.
Give me one magnificent obsession.
Give me one glorious ambition for my life
to know and follow hard after you.
Let's pray together.
Our Father, forgive us for all the ways
we try to quench our thirst,
the thirsty souls we have that are apart from you.
We know you understand us.
We know you love us.
We know you forgive us.
But Lord, we don't want to just live in this place
of asking for forgiveness.
We want to live in the new place
of quenching the thirst of our soul through your presence.
And so God, we do pray
that you would give us a pure and holy passion
to follow you, follow hard after you.
Make that the most important thing in our lives.
And God, when we feel emotionally like doing something else,
remind us that spiritually,
there's nothing more important about us
than that we're your child and that you called us.
You called us to a life of holiness.
You called us to a life of love.
You called us to a life of forgiveness.
You called us to a life of purpose
and a life of passionately following you.
And whether we're recommitting to this today
or maybe making this commitment for the first time,
we say we want to live a life
passionately following you, Jesus Christ.
In your name we pray, amen.
Tomorrow, we're gonna talk about how to find victory
in that battle that you're facing.
(upbeat music)
(upbeat music)