Given by Don Bromley - Vineyard Church of Ann Arbor - www.annarborvineyard.org
Vineyard Church of Ann Arbor Sermon Podcast
Simply Christian (#1): The Thirst for Spirituality (Don Bromley)
Our argument in this series is that Christianity satisfies every human’s innate longings. This week I’m tackling the thirst for spirituality. When the Bible describes an extreme longing for God and for God’s presence, the Bible uses the image of thirst As a deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God? (Psalm 42:1-2)
The argument that we're going to be putting forth in this series is that Christianity satisfies every humans in a deep-seated longings. And this week I'm going to be talking about how Christianity addresses the deep-seated longing we have for spirituality, the longing we have for something outside of ourselves, something beyond just the material world that we see around us. And he writes in the opening chapters of this book, he tells a parable about a fictional land where there's a dictator who rules the land with an iron will. And in this land at first, water was plentiful. Everywhere you turned there were streams and springs and puddles and ponds and lakes and water was just all over the place. And sometimes that created problems because sometimes the water was polluted and sometimes the water would create floods and rivers would go where they're not supposed to. And it was a little bit chaotic. And so what this dictator did is he paved the entire land. He put a thick layer of concrete over the entire country. And then what he did is he piped that water through a complex system of pipes so that everybody could get just the right amount of water at the right amount of times and he added chemicals to it so that it wouldn't be unsafe for drinking. And it was a pretty good system. People pretty much liked it. The water tasted a little bit funny because of the chemicals. But pretty much it was a good system. You could get the water in little quantities where you wanted it. And that worked fine for a while, but after a while the water just built up underneath that layer of concrete. The pressure grew and eventually it just burst forth. It cracked the concrete and burst forth and water just sprung up from everywhere. And it created all kinds of problems. Now Wright argues that we in the modern industrialized western countries are the citizens of that country. And the dictator of this country is actually the philosophy of materialism. All there is in this world and this life is the physical universe that surrounds us. That is the only reality. And the hidden springs of water that build up under this layer of concrete are what we would call spirituality. Now Wright argues that skepticism is what has paved our world with concrete. It has separated the spiritual realm from our everyday lives. It has put this fixed hard boundary between the spiritual and our everyday existence. And all the water we need in this existence we can get through our religion which has piped to us and separated it off from the rest of the world and we can get it on Sunday morning and then shut it off and live the rest of our lives as if spirituality didn't even exist. But the truth is many of us, if not all of us, have been aware of an indefinable thirst, a longing for springs of living, refreshing water. And what I'd like to suggest that this longing, this thirst for spirituality is a longing for God's presence. When the Bible describes an extreme longing for God or God's presence, it often uses the image of thirst. The thirst is the most fundamental of human desires and drives. I mean you can go for weeks without food but you can't go more than a few days without water. Some of you have experienced that you've been out working in your yard in a hot day and digging and man you just get so thirsty. Or for you more sedentary types that aren't outdoors much maybe you just ate a party-sized pack of potato chips. And it said 48 servings and you ate all 48 servings and there's just this incredible thirst that you experienced. Thirst is just the most fundamental and basic of human drives. The text we're going to look at this morning is from Psalm 42. The first two verses of Psalm 42 and it goes like this, "As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, oh God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?" Psalm 42 is the cry of every human heart. Every man, every woman, every teenager, every child, every Christian, every non-Christian. It is the cry and the desire of every heart. Everybody prays Psalm 42 all of the time whether they know it or not. For some of us it's a conscious cry. We are consciously aware that what we're seeking after is God and God's presence. And some of us have allowed ourselves to become aware of this. And we have expressed that in prayers and hymns. We have said to God, "My soul is thirsty for you." And we recognize that and we cry it out. But for many of us, for many people in this world, it's an unconscious prayer. It's a thirst that we're not even aware of consciously. Our hearts are praying this, but the minds are only dimly aware that the real thirst, the real thirst of the heart that lies beneath all the other thirsts, is for God. The person may be aware that they're thirsting for spirituality, thirsting for beauty, thirsting for relationships, thirsting for justice. They're thirsting for an unfair situation to be righted. People are thirsty for real change in their lives. They're thirsty for help and intervention. People are thirsty for resources that go beyond themselves. But so many people are not conscious of the fact that what they're really thirsty for is God. Every person, every single one of us, all of the time, with virtually every beat of our heart are praying Psalm 42. As a dear pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, oh God. My soul thirsts for God for the living God. The great Augustine expressed this longing in the opening words of his famous confessions. Back at the end of the fourth century, he wrote, "You have made us and drawn us to yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee." That restlessness that we experience is our thirst for God. Everyone has a restless heart because we have been created for God. As the great mathematician and philosopher Pascal said, "Everyone on earth has a God-shaped vacuum inside a hole that can only be satisfied by God." So everywhere you look in this world, everywhere you look, you're looking at people who are thirsty for God. And it doesn't matter how much self a person is filled with, how self-actualized they are, how self-realized they are, how enamored with ourselves we become, how self-fulfilled we are, how successful, how often we express ourselves or need to express ourselves. No individual has within them the fountain that will satisfy this thirst. Nobody. Nobody has the fountain that will satisfy this restlessness, hunger that was put in us by our Creator. We cannot satisfy our own heart's hunger. Our spiritual emptiness can't be satisfied by things. People all over the world are panting after things in this world. You see people panting after sex, after drugs, people panting after relationships and money and clothes and cars, but the things in this world will never satisfy that thirst. The Psalmist says, "My soul pants for you." In verse two, "My soul thirsts." The Psalmist recognizes that he is more than just material stuff. He is more than just a collection of molecules and atoms. The Psalmist recognizes that he is more than just stuff. And so therefore material stuff is never going to satisfy and meet that need. He is a person. His soul thirsts. And as a personal being, the longing can only be satisfied by a person. The longing of a person's heart can only be truly satisfied by a person. What we really crave isn't ever going to be met by more clothes or more food or another piece of furniture or a better body or a better job. You are a person and the thirst inside of you can only be met by a person. Your thirst is for love, to love truly, to be loved truly, to be touched. And the Psalmist recognizes that the hole inside himself is so big and so wide and so deep that it can only be filled by an infinite person. "My soul thirsts for you, O God." "Yes, I need a person, but not just any person on this earth." You ever see two people in a relationship who are just miserable because they are looking to the other person to satisfy all their needs? One looks to the other and says, "You are not meeting my needs." And the other looks back and says, "Well, you are not meeting my needs." And there is misery. The thirst in the soul can only be met by a person, but that person must be an infinite person. He must be a sufficient person. He must be a fountain that doesn't run dry, a fountain that dispenses the justice that we seek for every wrong and unfairness in this life, for every hurt, for every evil. We need someone who is infinitely great and infinitely just to give us justice. We need someone who is eternal to meet our thirst for eternal life, for ongoing life. We need someone who is infinitely merciful and good. Now, whether you are conscious of praying Psalm 42, whether you are not conscious of it at all, you just know something is going on there. With every beat of your heart, your soul is panting after God. Your soul is crying out, "When can I go and meet with God?" Now, I want to switch gears here and say that because God is your real need, because you and I have been made by our Creator who has shaped us with a whole inside of us that can only be filled by Him, because God is our real need, becoming aware of your thirst is a very good thing. It's very good to become aware of your thirst. Thirst is a good thing. You know, I've noticed something really fundamental about the people, about the way people meet and experience the kingdom of God, and the way people meet Jesus, or the way the kingdom of God is experiencing this world. Jesus generally doesn't approach us with thunder and lightning. That's not how most of us experience God. Most of us aren't Moses. Most of us didn't have a burning bush experience. Most of us didn't go on our backyard, and God talked to us through the azalea. Most people don't go up and meet God on top of a mountain that's shaking and quaking with fire. Most people don't get to be Gideon in the Old Testament who, you know, having an angelic visitation. That's not how most of us meet God. Most of us aren't the apostle Paul. Most of us weren't knocked down and blinded by the physical appearance of the resurrected Christ. Here's how most people meet Christ. Here's the way the kingdom of God has extended and expanded in our world for the most part. Most people meet Christ during times of failure, frustration, emptiness, and thirst. Those are the times where most people meet Christ. You know, it's an amazing thing because in general we tend to run from failure. We tend to run from failure. We do everything we can to avoid it. We hate moments of frustration, of emptiness, of thirst. We hate times in our life where we've blown everything up, where we've made just a complete absolute mess of things, or where someone else has blown up our lives for us. We do everything in our power to avoid facing failure. But, you know, here's something you can take to the bank. Moments of frustration, failure, and extreme thirst, those are the main moments that Jesus is going to use to extend the kingdom of God, to extend his reign and his rule in your life. It's during those moments. It's during moments of great thirst and unrest and upset. It's during those, what the Bible calls, chiras moments, appointed times, appointed seasons. It's during those times that you're going to see an extension of the kingdom of God in your life, or someone else's life. You know, we see this over and over. You know, when people come to the place in their life, where their soul is just crying out, where they've become so unhappy with their lives, you know, nothing is working out. Nothing is going the way it's supposed to. Maybe they've just, maybe they've done something completely stupid. Maybe they've had an affair. Maybe they've completely just messed up in school, flunked everything, had to repeat a year. Maybe they get charged with drunk driving. Maybe they get pregnant before they're married, or they get someone else's pregnancy, pregnant. Maybe you've gone through something that's just completely, totally beyond your own control, something that you didn't really have a pardon. Maybe a miscarriage, the death of one of your parents. Maybe your spouse left you, or you've experienced the rebellion of a child. You go through some sort of pain, some kind of failure. Maybe a financial setback, you got laid off, or you're going through bankruptcy. In so many situations, pastoral counseling, we've told people, you know, it's not a bad thing that you're going through and experiencing some failure. I know it doesn't feel that way, but it's actually a good thing that you're desperate right now, that you're desperately thirsty. Because if you aren't desperate, if you haven't come to a point of desperation, no amount of counseling is ever going to help you because you're not in enough pain right now to motivate you to change. If you use this time in your life, when things just are completely blown apart, to discover a genuine relationship with God, if you've finally let yourself get to the bottom of yourself, get to the root of your own self-will and your own self-life, you can experience how real God can be for you. You know, Jesus isn't just something we talk about. When your life is at rock bottom, when things have just gotten as bad as they can get, you can discover that Jesus can be real for you. That Jesus really does quench the thirst in your soul. And sometimes the pain that you're experiencing can be the best possible thing that's happened to you. Because right now you're in a place where you've got nothing to lose. You've tried everything else, you've got nothing to lose. Thirst is a good thing. Being empty and out of resources is a good thing. Didn't Jesus say blessed are the poor and spirit for theirs, is the kingdom of God? In other words, blessed are those who are completely out of their own resources, who have run out of answers, who've tried a million ways to make themselves happy, and nothing has worked. Everything's just been a complete failure. The gas tanks are completely dry. No more self-will. They've come to the end of their rope. Blessed are the poor and spirit. Blessed are those who possess nothing. Blessed are those who are completely empty. It's when your heart is broken. It's where your heart is broken, that God can come in. God enters those broken places in our hearts and our lives, and He uses those to extend His kingdom in your life. I experience this in my own life. The worst brokenness I experienced was when my mother died at 47 from cancer. And I just created this huge broken spot in my life. And I had answers for everything. I had plans for what I was going to do. I was very confident, but that created a brokenness that I couldn't fix. It brought me to the complete end of my rope. And it created an opening where I allowed God to come in. I said, "Nothing I'm doing is satisfying my desires. Nothing I'm doing is fixing this brokenness. I've got nothing to lose. I'll give you a try." It's when you come to that place. It's when your heart is broken that you can let God in. When you encounter somebody who's thirsty or empty or frustrated and in pain, who's just had the rug pulled out from under them, watch out because so often those are kingdom moments in their life. Dryness and dissatisfaction, those aren't bad things. If you're feeling kind of dry or dissatisfied with your life, that's not a bad thing. What it is, it's a warning light. You know, if you're lucky enough to have one of those warning lights on your gas gauge, you know, how it goes on when you get almost empty. If you're not lucky, you just stop driving. But if you're lucky, you've got one of those little warning lights. And it tells you, "Look, you're just about out of gas." And sometimes, dryness and dissatisfaction, that's a warning light to us. You don't have enough God in your life. You're lacking and missing something that is just fundamental to your existence. Let me put it a little differently. The fundamental issue of life is what will move you and me from a place of self-dependence and self-reliance into a place of Christ-dependence and Christ-reliance. Faith is all about becoming conscious of your thirst for God and then running to Him with your thirst. Jesus had a very hard thing to say in the New Testament about how difficult it is for the rich to enter the kingdom. The reason He said that is not because money is in itself bad or having money is bad. But here's why. He said it's difficult for the rich to enter the kingdom because when you have lots of money, it can be very difficult to feel thirst. Wealthy people are not often thirsty people. Or rather, they are thirsty people, but they have a thousand ways to attempt to quench their thirst with a thousand different diversions and a thousand activities and a thousand projects and a thousand new purchases. And often they aren't able to slow down long enough to really feel thirsty for God. When you secretly know that when everything breaks down, you've got a dozen backup systems for what you can do about it, then it can be so hard to take that path to God. So often that door to God is just shut to you because you have so many other paths to take. But it's when your backup systems just keep failing. When all those things are failing, it's in the out of control stuff. Failure, frustration, trials, dryness, depression. It's in those times that you're most inclined to cry out to Jesus. It's when you have all the things that should quench your thirst and you're still dying inside. You see this so often in the lives of the successful. There might not be any external failures, but there's a dryness, an emptiness. An internal feeling of dissatisfaction like, is this all there is? Is this all there is? I have everything that's supposed to have, everything that's supposed to make me happy, and yet I just feel so dry inside. That's a person who's conscious of this cry in Psalm 42 as a dear pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. Two worship arises out of a thirst for God. I believe Psalm 42 is at the heart. It is in the main spring of Christian worship. It's an intense agony, a desperation, an utter dryness that prompts us to cry out to God and to draw near to God. It's a longing for God that draws us to worship. It's where in C.S. Lewis's great illustration, you stop being satisfied playing in mud puddles and you start believing that there's a beach with an ocean out there that actually exists for you. This point is that so often we've become satisfied with just playing in mud puddles, with our diversions and our ways of preoccupying ourselves or the little thrills that we seek after. We've allowed ourselves to become satisfied with that. But we want our thirst to bring us to a place where we realize those things never satisfy. It's a longing for God that's in us and that is at the core of what it is to worship. See, people get tired of playing church. We can get tired of just playing church. Sometimes we get tired of just believing that Christianity is about having all the right answers. It's just about believing a certain set of truths. That's what it is to be a Christian. Why does that leave us so dry? Why doesn't that just satisfy us to the brim, just knowing certain things? People are tired of just playing church, just experiencing a dead orthodoxy. When there's nothing inside, no real spiritual reality. Many of us unfortunately have been taught that the Christian life consists of not much more than just accepting Christ and believing a certain set of things and saying a certain prayer and then just getting our ticket to heaven in the afterlife. That's what it is to live as a Christian. How unsatisfying. You know, there are lots and lots of people who are supposedly saved but don't know anything about being hungry for God, about being thirsty for God. There's so many people in this country who are satisfied with so little of God. But if you go through the lives of the saints, you read those lives, you'll see one continual characteristic and all of them. And that is that they were discontented with their present experience of God. They weren't satisfied with how much of God they already had. You see this all through the Psalms, not just in Psalm 42. How about Psalm 27? One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek that I made well 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. My heart says if you seek His face, your face, Lord, I will seek. That's someone who was aware of His longing for God. Who allowed Himself to be thirsty enough to realize that what He was really thirsty after was God. Not just trying to, you know, immerse Himself in a thousand different diversions or cheap thrills to try to satisfy that but allowed Himself to realize I am thirsty for God. Psalm 63, O God, you are my God. I earnestly seek you. My soul thirsts for you. My body longs for you in a dry and weary land where there is no water. I've seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and your glory because your love is better than life. My lips will glorify you. How many of us when we're in a dry and weary land, we say, oh, what's wrong with me? I don't want to feel this way. And so we have an extra glass of wine or we turn on the television and try to immerse ourselves in something so that we don't have to feel that sense of dryness or we look for a new relationship that's thrilling and exciting. Or we figure, oh, I need a new job. I'm just not feeling satisfied. How many allow ourselves to feel that thirst and to seek what we're really thirsty for? Psalm 84. How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord Almighty. My soul, yearns, and even faints for the courts of the Lord. My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God. You see this heart cry for more of God in the life of Moses. Moses had this amazing relationship with God. God would meet with Moses. His presence would be there and Moses would have an incredible encounter with God. But in Exodus 33 you see this thirst for God played out in the life of Moses. Where Moses says to God very boldly, you know, "More, Lord, show me your glory, God. I am not going to be satisfied with anything less than all of you." The Christian life is so much more than just accepting Jesus in being satisfied with that. Just being satisfied with, I have a belief. It is so much more than that. There's so much more to it. Real worship springs from a desperation for God, for more of God. You see this in all the Christian hymn throughout history, this longing for God. There's a wonderful old hymn based on Psalm 42. It's called "As Pants the Heart for Cooling Streams." That's H-A-R-T heart. It's an old archaic word for a deer. In the words of the hymn go like this, "As Pants the Heart for Cooling Streams, when heated in the chase, so longs my soul, O God, for thee and thy refreshing grace. For thee, my God, the living God, my thirsty soul, doth pine. O, when shall I behold thy face, thou majesty divine." That was written by somebody who was thirsty for God. You know, in the vineyard we have similar songs, songs of yearning, longing, and desperation. One of the songs we'll do after I'm done is called "Hungry." It goes like this, "Hungry, I come to you for I know you satisfy. I am empty, but I know your love does not run dry, and so I wait for you, so I wait for you." I'm falling on my knees, offering all of me, "Jesus, all this heart of mine is living for. Broken I run to you, free arms are open wide. I am weary, but I know your touch restores my life, and so I wait for you, so I wait for you." The author John Piper, he wrote a great book called "Desiring God." He says that the problem in our lives isn't that we want too much out of life. That's not the problem, the problem isn't we want too much of life. It's that we're satisfied with so little. And regularly we are trying to quench our thirst with things that only increase our sense of emptiness. How many times have we sought after something that we thought was going to satisfy us, but it only left us more thirsty, more empty. Worship is God's invitation to you and to me to drink, to come to waters and drink. You know, to drink, we need to come to Jesus. The streams of God are channeled through Jesus, not through another person, not through another relationship, not through stuff, but through Jesus. That's what he meant when he said, "Those who drink the water, I give them will never thirst." Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water, welling up to eternal life. I want to close by reading to you a couple pages from a children's book written by C.S. Lewis. It's part of his famous Chronicles of Narnia. You might have heard of the movie that came out a while ago. And this is from the fourth book in the Chronicles of Narnia called "The Silver Chair." And in the Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis portrays Jesus as being a lion named Aslan. And the story I'm going to pick up talks about a little girl named Jill who's thirsty. And here's what C.S. Lewis writes, "Crying is all right in its way while it lasts, but you still have to stop sooner or later when you do, you have to decide what to do." When Jill stopped, she found that she was dreadfully thirsty. She had been lying face downward and now she set up. The birds had ceased singing and there was a perfect silence except for one small persistent sound which seemed to come from a good distance away. She listened carefully and felt almost sure it was the sound of running water. Jill got up and looked around very carefully. There was no sign of the lion, but there were so many trees about it, it might easily be quite close by without her singing it. For all she knew there might be several lions, but her thirst was very bad now. And she plucked up her courage to go and look for that running water. She went on tiptoes, stealing cautiously from tree to tree, stopping to peer around it at every step. She finally came to the side of the water and it made her feel ten times thirstier than before, but she didn't rush forward and dream. She stood as still as if she had been turned into stone with her mouth wide open. And she had a very good reason, just on this side of the stream, lay the lion. It lay with its head raised and its two four paws out in front of it like the lions and Trafalgar Square. She knew it once that it had seen her. Its eyes looked straight into hers for a moment and then turned away as if it knew her quite well and didn't think much of her. If I run away it will be after me, thought Jill. And if I go on I shall run straight into its mouth. Anyway, she couldn't have moved if she had tried and she couldn't take her eyes off the lion. How long this lasted she couldn't be sure. It seemed like hours and the thirst became so bad she almost felt she would not mind being eaten by the lion if only she could be sure of getting a mouth full of water first. If you're thirsty you may drink. The voice was not like a man's, it was deeper, wilder and stronger, a sort of heavenly golden voice that didn't make her any less frightened than she had been before, but it made her frightened in rather a different way. "Are you not thirsty," said the lion. "I'm dying of thirst," said Jill. "Then drink," said the lion. "May I? Could I? Would you mind going away while I do?" said Jill. The lion answered this only by a look in a very low growl. As Jill gazed at its motionless bulk she realized she might as well have asked the whole mountain to move aside for her convenience. The delicious rippling noise of the stream was driving her nearly frantic. "We promise not to do anything to me if I do come," said Jill. "I make no promise," said the lion. Jill was still thirsty now that without noticing it she had come a step near. "Do you eat girls?" she said. "I have swallowed up girls and boys, women and men, kings and emperors, cities and realms," said the lion. He didn't say this as if you were boasting or as if you were sorry, nor as if you was angry, you just said it. "I dare not come and drink," said Jill. "Then you will die of thirst," said the lion. "Oh dear," said Jill, coming a step near. "I suppose I must go and look for another stream then." "There is no other stream," said the lion. It never occurred to Jill to just disbelieve the lion. No one who had seen a stern face could do that, and her mind suddenly made itself up. It was the worst thing she ever had to do, but she went forward to the stream, knelt down and began scooping up water in her hand. It was the coldest, most refreshing water she had ever tasted. You didn't need to drink much of it for it quenched your thirst at once. And the point of course of the story is that there isn't any other stream that will quench our thirst than the one that runs through Jesus, the one that runs through the lion of Judah. And so my point is that if you're thirsty today, if you're experiencing thirst in your life, if you're outwardly, things are going great, but inside you're completely dissatisfied. You're completely thirsty. And I invite you to embrace your thirst. Not to go running after things, to draw your mind away from it. Running after things that you know in the long run aren't going to quench that thirst. Distractions, diversions, thrills, embrace that thirst. If your life is falling apart, if you've gotten to a place where you've just completely run out of resources, you've completely run out of answers. Thank God for that. Because this might be an opportunity, an opening, for God to do something wonderful in your life, for the kingdom to be advanced in your life. For God to come into that brokenness, those broken places. So I'm going to invite the band to come back up, and we're going to share communion and worship. And so as the band comes up, why don't we go ahead and stand? And I'd like to pray, as the ushers come up and prepare communion. God, we just confess to you that in so many ways, when we've experienced dryness, dissatisfaction, disillusionment, we've run after things that Lord God in the end are just going to leave us more empty. We've immersed ourselves in diversions and projects, and we've run after things that we think will bring satisfaction, but they don't. Lord, some of us, our lives are broken, things are a mess, our relationships are a mess, our health is a mess, our home is a mess, we're hurt, we're broken. God, we just pray that we'd embrace this time of dryness of thirst as an invitation to draw from you, to learn from you. God, I pray for everybody here who is just struggling with brokenness this morning, a place in our life that is just hurting. I pray, God, that we wouldn't seek after other things to cover that up, but that we'd come to you for living water. And so we blessed this bread and this grape juice, God. I pray that it would be your body, broken for us, your blood shed for us, God, that we could take you into ourselves. Lord, we desperately need you, we are thirsty for you. Amen. So as we begin to come up down the Center for Communion, I'd invite those of you who are experiencing a deep sense of dryness in your life. I'd like for some prayer ministers to be available, just that God would strengthen you not to run after things to quench that thirst, but that you'd run after God to quench that thirst. For those of you who are experiencing brokenness, whether it's health related, you are a loved one, whether it's financial, you lost your job, or you think you're going to lose your job, or you've just come to the end of your financial resources. I'd like you to come forward for prayer on the wings here. The God can use this time of brokenness and emptiness and being out of resources to do something in your life. So let's go ahead and worship and go ahead and start coming down. [BLANK_AUDIO]