Good morning,
Praise the for summer days here in New York. It is monsoon time in Orissa, India. I love the long and unhurried days of summer. Alice and I walked for close to 4 miles last evening between 9 PM and 10:10 PM around neighborhood. It is going to be one of the brilliant days today.
In Psalm 63 , we read about the passion and zeal of King David, “O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee. My soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth after thee, in a barren and dry land where no water is.” You and I, who have been redeemed and rescued by the Lord are to seek Him earnestly and entirely. In other words, knowing Him and pleasing Him should be our consuming passion.
What we are normally satisfied with doing is simply adopting some of the minor external requirements of the Christian faith,to our already busy lives, and merely adding God to the many other loves, desires, and passions that drive us.
During my student days I had great blessing of knowing Bishop Leslie Newbigin, who was the Bishop in Madras. He was a great scholar, who was zealous for Jesus and for Kingdom. He was also a great churchman and a great servant-leader. He relays how he arrived in India as a Christian missionary, only to hear from his predecessor that his region of India had already been successfully evangelized for the Gospel. What Newbigin discovered, however, was that the locals had simply added Christ to the pantheon of other Hindu gods and goddesses they had worshipped for centuries. But, Jesus Christ will be Lord of all or Lord not at all. Given who Jesus is, what He has done for us, and what He will yet do for us, our only response is to make knowing the Lord, pleasing Him, and finding our satisfaction in Him, the consuming preoccupation of our life. We tend to seek to God and find satisfaction in God, plus position, possessions, power, pleasure, or (you can fill in the blank). The question for us this morning is whether we are like the Disciples who left their nets, their fields, and their counting houses to follow Christ when beckoned to do so, or whether we are like the rich young ruler who walked away sad at the Lord’s invitation to follow Him because it would have cost too much.
How do we come to possess such a passion for God? It begins with knowing who we really are and what we have done, and knowing who God really is and what He has done. This is the reason that in the Parable of the Pharisee and the Publican in Luke chapter 18 the self-righteous Pharisee can only congratulate himself in prayer and the tax collector can only humbly appeal for mercy. Paul Thigpen said it like this, “The secret of a passion for God: The greater the debt, the greater the devotion” (Discipleship Journal, Issue 66).
Jesus said about the sinful woman who came and washed His feet with her tears and dried them with her hair, “Wherefore I say unto thee, Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much: but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little” (Lk. 7:47).
We notice from Psalm 63 that believers make it a habit to praise the Lord for His the provision, protection, power, and providence (vv. 3-8). This praise involves recalling and retelling God’s mighty acts of redemption in the past: (verse 8) “Because thou hast been my helper; therefore under the shadow of thy wings will I rejoice.” This praise involves realizing God’s mighty acts of redemption, provision, protection now: (verse 5) “As long as I live I will magnify thee…and lift up my hands in thy name.” And this habit of praise anticipates God’s mighty acts of rescue for the future: (verse 6) “My soul shall be satisfied…when my mouth praiseth thee with joyful lips.”
St. Paul reminds us in II Corinthians 5:15 that Christ died to save us so that we would live no longer for ourselves, but for Him who died for us and rose again. The first question and answer of the Westminster Catechism is, “What is the chief end of man?” That is, what are we here for? What were we created to do? What is our purpose for being? The answer is that we are “to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.”
The Bible is filled from start to finish with praises, with tales of God working mightily in people’s lives which resulted in praises, and with admonitions for everyone, everywhere to praise the Lord. David’s praise involved praise for blessings past, provisions now—even in the midst of trouble, and praise for provision yet to come. Past, present, future. The last verse of the last psalm, Psalm 150:6, synthesizes our joyous obligation: “Let every thing that hath breath praise the LORD. Praise ye the LORD.”
What are you thirsty for? In what or in whom are you trusting and finding your satisfaction? We can and do pursue all sorts of things, but they will ultimately fail us and leave us thirsting again. David’s thirst for God ought to sound familiar . In John chapter 4 Jesus encounters a Samaritan women in the town of Sychar, near Jacob’s well. She had come there for water. She was thirsty—in ways she was not even able to verbalize. She had had five husbands and was currently living with a man who was not her husband. Jesus said to her: “Anyone who drinks of the water from this well will thirst again. But whoever drinks of the water that I shall give will never thirst again. The water that I give will become a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.”
C. Samuel Storms, in an article entitled “Is Jesus Really Enough?” (Discipleship Journal, Issue 65) said, “I am persuaded that all of our problems are conceived and born in the sinful belief that something or someone other than Jesus Christ can quench the thirst of our souls.”
"My soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh also longeth for thee,
In a barren and dry land where no water is."
Whether we are in the rich land of Canaan or the desert of Judah, there is only one help, and only one being that can satisfy your agonizing thirst for significance: The Lord who made heaven and earth.
AMEN.
In Christ,
Brown
http://youtu.be/UZv3jzOTE70
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